Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat

"How to make a TRULY AWFUL first impression."

OK, I know it's generally a cardinal sin of game reviewing to write a review without first beating the game, or at least playing through it for a good long while. That's why I'm warning you all now: I've played roughly one hour of Pirates. Perhaps this makes me unqualified to review the game, and if that's what you believe, then I ask that you just stop reading right now. But the fact of the matter is, I bought this game, used, for $11, entirely due to the slew of high scores given to it by fellow GameFAQs reviewers, and my first hour of gameplay was so painful, so utterly awful, that I doubt I will EVER play through the game in its entirety. Even though it was only a paltry $11, I feel that it was a complete waste of my money, plain and simple, and I place the blame for that solely on pirate-lovin' gamers who failed to realize that this game is nothing more than PS2 scurvy.

That having been said, the sole saving grace of ''Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat'' may, ironically, be its gaping flaws. The first hour of this game is so jam-packed full of poor gameplay, horrible plot devices, and utterly random situations that I've actually popped it in to show to just about every one of my friends since getting it. The introductory plot scenes and the inexplicably bizarre iron key quest at the beginning never fail to make me chuckle, and when first encountering them, they'll have you laughing for days on end!

Maybe I'm just overly sarcastic. I don't know. All I know is that the first hour of Pirates is one of the greatest examples of absolute failure that I've ever encountered, and holds the same sort of morbid intrigue and painful humor value as a truly awful b-movie. If there were ever a video game equivalent of MST3K, this game would be perfectly suited for its debut.

Let's take an in-depth look at the first hour of ''Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat'', shall we?

There's certainly plenty of promise at the beginning, with an upbeat and pirate-y song accompanying an above-average FMV that depicts every sort of situation we've come to know and love about pirates. Pair this with a unique title screen using cool swashbuckling sword sound effects, and you'd think this game might actually be good!

Start the game, though, and things immediately go downhill as we watch a little girl, presumably in her own house, prepare to ascend a staircase. Suddenly, from the shadows, the world's most stereotypical pirate pops out and grabs her. The girl screams and struggles, breaking free from his grasp... but doesn't run. The ''old salt'' pirate apologizes for his actions (with semi-painful voice-acting), and says he was merely interested in the little girl's pendant.

Now, if you were this girl, face-to-face with a pirate who's presumably just broken into your home and attempted to steal the pendant you wear around your neck, what would you do? ... No, seriously, think about it for a moment. What would you do? ... Really? Well, that's not what she does! Nosiree! Her eyes light up, and she says, ''it's magic!''. The pirate then begins to tell her a story, and she sits down on the stairs and listens intently. To this story. About her magic pendant. Being told by the trespassing pirate who just attacked her.

OK, that's cheezy, but if the story he tells is any good, I guess it can be forgiven, right? Unfortunately, things only get worse from here. As his story begins, we're suddenly thrust into the middle of a sea battle, knowing only that the ship under the player's control is called the ''Wind Dancer.'' Never mind the enemies in question. Obviously, you just have to destroy them. I mean, this is a game, right?

Once the sea battle ends, we're suddenly shifted into another, seemingly unrelated scene of a pirate swordfighting with some guy. We quickly learn through conveniently-scripted expository dialogue that the guy in question is the governor, and the pirate wants his land. The governor refuses to give it up, and the pirate thus decides that the best way to handle the situation is, of course, to kill. We see the governor get stabbed.

Flash back to the boat. Someone notes that the governor's mansion is aflame. ''My father is in trouble!'', says your heroine.

Flash back to the mansion, which is now completely engulfed in flame (when did that happen?). Katarina (your main character) enters the governor's room and finds her father's dead body slumped over a desk... a desk upon which he apparently used his last ounce of strength (after being stabbed in the stomach) to write an incredibly long and verbose letter to you.

Regardless of the fact that the room around you is smoldering and falling to pieces, you sit down and casually read the letter. Beams crackle and break behind you. Flames rise ever higher. And you sit there, reading. Taking the letter and running out of the burning mansion with it apparently never crossed your mind.

Now we flash back to Katarina's father as he writes this letter. The room is already aflame, yet this mortally injured man sits down and begins scribbling away. Now, if you're dying, and trying to write a letter to someone, you'd probably want to get straight to the point, right? Well, not if you're the governor! This guy begins by going into all kinds of detail about how he ''never planned to tell you this'' and was ''sorry to have kept it from you'' and all kinds of other junk that no stomach-stabbed pain-ridden man in a burning room would ever bother with. All the while, we hear a voice-over of the governor, wincing in pain, as he writes, and we're treated to the ludicrously comical sight of his face writhing in utter agony as he continues to write for over a full minute, with the background aflame. Finally, on the second-to-last word of the politely formal closing to his grammatically-sound prosaic letter, he collapses, dead, leaving a big streaking line down the bottom of the page.

Now, pretend for a moment that I'm this dying governor. I have a message to deliver to you, and not much time to write it. Even if I had to use proper grammar, I could easily just leave you the following note:

Your mother was a pirate.
Her things are in a loose floorboard in this room. Take them.
I love you. Take care, Katarina.

That's basically the long and the short of your father's letter -- and I even included an ''I love you'' message, which the governor apparently was too busy waxing poetic to think of. Not a good thing for a dying father to forget, now, is it!

At any rate, Katarina, perhaps struck by the ''emotion'' of the situation, contemplates the fact that her mother was a pirate. Hey, I guess that means I'm a pirate too! is probably what she's thinking. She immediately pushes the rug aside and finds a loose board (wow, that was quick!), which opens up to reveal a tiny ornate treasure chest. Opening it, she finds ''her mother's things''... which includes a black pirate flag displaying an entirely typical skull-and-crossbones. That's it. Guess her mother wasn't much of a materialist, unlike all those other pirates. Maybe Katarina had the wrong floorboard!

The building begins to crumble around her in a fiery mess, so she makes a daring leap over the desk and escapes. Guess she shouldn't have taken so long reading that letter!

Next, we're thrust outside, where a voice-over from Katarina tells the player that she needs to get back to her ship, the Wind Dancer. Which is, of course, anchored on the opposite side of the bay (and swimming isn't an option!). Guess she wasn't in much of a hurry to get to her father's burning mansion. Maybe she had an unhappy home life.

OK, OK, so the story makes no sense. That's fine. Maybe the gameplay makes up for it! After all, you're in a 3D platformer-style stage right now, and it looks pretty good! The controls are kinda shaky, there's no music, and Katarina's sword maneuvers aren't anything special... but maybe there will be cool puzzles to solve! Still haven't given up hope. Still willing to give this game the benefit of the doubt.

Then, you encounter pirates. OK, so the battles are a bit lackluster. They all seem to follow a ''slash with the sword to survive, or don't slash with the sword to die'' philosophy. Still, there's a locked gate here. I wonder how you open it?

...

Oh. It opens automatically when you kill all the pirates. Apparently, their lives had some sort of deep connection to its mechanism. A ''spiritual lock'', if you will.

OK, this is getting ridiculous. But, I continue. Suddenly, Katarina ''senses'' buried treasure nearby. The controller shakes. I walk around a little, and a shovel icon appears on the screen. I press the L2 button to activate it, and lo and behold, a treasure chest magically rises from the ground. So pointless meandering for the sake of needless side-items results in cheezy unrealism. Got it.

The next movement in this symphony of failures comes in the form of giant crabs. The pirates were pushovers, but man, these giant crabs are VICIOUS! What do carnivorous giant crabs have to do with pirates, anyway?!

Finally, I hit the creme de la creme -- the ultimate masterpiece of ludicrosity. I encounter a treasure chest locked with an ''iron key.'' OK, that's been done in lots of games. No biggie. I wonder where this iron key is, though?

Not long after asking that question, I encounter a teleporter. I activate it... and WHOA!! Not only am I in a different area than I was before, but I'm apparently on the other side of the whole friggin' world! That is to say, it was most assuredly noon where I came from, and it's most assuredly midnight where I ended up. And there's a return-teleporter nearby, in the middle of a graveyard, but it's not working. Then I spot the treasure chest.

Inside it is not only the iron key, but also a ''fire tiki.'' A sudden and inexplicable instruction appears on the screen, telling me to ''perform the fire ritual to activate the teleporter.'' And I'd better hurry, because a bunch of skeleton warriors have risen from their graves, and they seem pretty pissed that I stole their key and tiki. I hurry to the teleporter and use the fire tiki... and PRESTO!! Flames rise in a great wall around me, and I'm warped back to the noontime land I call home.

I'm baffled. Warps to the other side of the world? Giant carnivorous crabs? Skeleton warriors? Fire rituals? All for an iron key? WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PIRATES?! There better be something damn good inside that locked treasure chest.

...

But there isn't. There's just money. That brief journey to the other side of the world, to a land where stolen keys and tikis rouse skeletons from their graves, was all for a fistful of gold.

Next time, just pick the lock, Katarina. Save yourself a headache.

Finally reaching the Wind Dancer, I board, and am treated to another sea battle -- this time, to defend my father's fortress from invaders (what the...? My father had a FORTRESS?!). It's here where I discover that my pirate ship can outmaneuver any car, ancient or modern, and even has a ''turbo speed'' setting that allows me to perform hilariously impossible 360s in a boat. And I can rebuild my boat on the fly, using nothing but stocked wood.

And it's at about this point that I decide, I've had enough. I can't take any more of this... this travesty! There are plenty of action games out there that rely on a decent story to drive them along (Devil May Cry, Onimusha, Soul Reaver 2, Ratchet & Clank), and there are plenty of other games that deliver a bare minimum of story in favor of fun and simplistic gameplay (Rygar: The Legendary Adventure, Maximo). These games succeed. It's only when companies make a half-assed attempt at including a story in a game that would be better suited without one, or design uninspired and horribly derivitive gameplay, that one begins to doubt the entire fate of console gaming. And Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat performs both of these cardinal sins, and may very well be an omen that the end is upon us.

Maybe the game gets better, but I fail to see how that could be possible. No game has ever managed to pull itself out of such a deep pool of crap before. Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is very much like an annoying class clown. You really shouldn't encourage it, or else things will just get worse. The fact that the other reviewers here on GameFAQs seem so utterly enthralled with this game is absolutely astounding to me. Am I truly that out of touch?

So please, for the love of all that is holy, leave this terrible piece of garbage on the store shelf! Make an example of it, so that future generations can avoid making the same horrible, horrible mistakes that this game so clearly embodies.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/03, Updated 03/05/03