Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat

"Instead of being a good piratey adventure, this one walked the plank. Arrr..."

I believe there is a small proverb that goes kind of like this. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, then, I see this game, Pirates: The Legend Of Black Kat, sitting on the rental shelf at my local video store. This game, which clearly had the names EA and Westwood on the front cover, seemed appealing to me. For one thing, EA has had a good track record for the last few years, and two, Pirates kick ass. Well, what does this have to do with the aforementioned statement? Well, Westwood’s main series, a little game you might have heard of called Command and Conquer, certainly ain’t broke. Well, after making this game, I can say that Westwood now has a whole lot to fix. Pirates: The Legend Of Black Kat is one of the worst games I have played in the last year, and probably ever.

Command and Conquer this ain’t!

Just to get it out of the water, this game is absolutely nothing like command and conquer. Instead of going up against the commies or the axis powers, you’re up against…well…other pirates. In the game you play as Katarina, a sea worthy scallywag out to avenge her father’s untimely death (yes, he was a pirate too…), and by avenging I mean punishing his murderer, Captain Hawke (yes, he’s a pirate as well. Lots of pirates.). Luckily for you, you just so happen to have a pirate ship at your disposal, the Wind Dancer. This story has been reused so many times, it’s starting to get funny. And about the only thing funnier than that is a pirate ship named “Wind Dancer”.

At least all in the game is not lost. For one thing, the Graphics are colorful enough to pass, and the characters look good enough. The water looks very pristine as well, so you won’t have a problem with sailing. But wait…actually you will have a problem with sailing. For one thing, the slowdown in this game is horrible, especially during battles at sea. But, having slowdown when you’re just running on land, well, there is no excuse for that. Plus, hills and beaches are very bland in design, and there are a lot of jaggies on smaller objects like trees and bushes. Finally, the game just doesn’t even look good enough to be an Xbox game. A lot more could’ve been done with the power of the Xbox hardware.

After seeing how lame the graphics are, the game went even more downhill (if it ever was uphill…), with how horrible it is to control. Katarina controls like a car with a drunk driver in it. By that, I mean, she can’t turn worth a darn, and she stops running about a second after you let go of the analog sticks. She also will take a step forward while slashing her swords, making her vulnerable to enemy attacks. Controlling the ships is easier, but not by much. Your ship can’t turn worth a darn either, and there is no way to aim your cannons at other ships. Using the Y buttons, you can switch to different weapons, but these weapons fire the exact same way, and look no different than a regular blast. Finally, is it too much to ask to be able to make a character run without looking like they have a pineapple shoved up their butt?

Watch me as I slice up…crabs…

As I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, the slowdown and jaggies really inhibit the gameplay. But, the graphics are not all at fault for how horribly unbearable it is to play this game. There are basically two modes of play inside the main game. One part has you commanding your scallywag crew (actually, your crew is basically just you and the helmsman as far as I could see.), while the other part is you controlling Katarina on land, running around trying to find maps, treasure, etc. Unfortunately, neither of these modes are fun, or worth playing.

To get onto land, you can dock your boat and run out to try and find gold to buy upgrades, new weapons, etc. But, don’t expect to get it without a fight! In your way are Pirates, and what appear to be giant crabs, both of which are hell bent on making sure you never sail the seven seas again. But that probably won’t happen, seeing as the enemy AI is so horrible, the pirate henchmen you fight will actually start carving each other up if they get confused trying to fight you. As for the crabs…well…who was the lamebrain who thought of making a big tough pirate like her fight crabs? (Don’t think sick thoughts here, guys ;))

As you run around with Katarina, you will see that you have only two main attacks. One is a sword swipe, which really doesn’t do that much damage, and the second is some big ultimate finisher attack. But, this attack really isn’t that big and ultimate, and rarely ever hits your enemies, let alone finishes them. I would have liked it a lot more if you could have some sort of auto aim. Unfortunately, fighting is made even harder having to constantly rotate yourself with the horrible controls. When you’re not fighting crabs and soldiers, you get the chance to find treasure, and every once and awhile, you can come upon buried treasure, in which you have to dig it up with a shovel. You can also come along mermaids, mystical sea creatures, and other pirates who have errands for you. But eventually, these searches and challenges eventually just become hunt and fetch, and really do not add anything to the gameplay. Plus, all these annoying pop ups come up with gameplay tips at totally random times, and really gets annoying.

Arrrr, but now it is time to get to sea, ye landlovers! Unfortunately, the adventure doesn’t get any better. Out at sea you’ll run into many a scallywag that want to sink your boat, but you gotta swear over Redbeard’s grave that you won’t let them! Basically, the only thing you really do out at sea is fight other pirate ships. You can do this by either firing your cannons, which just looks like you’re shooting a pebble out of a pellet gun, or you can just use one of your special moves, a huge gust of wind, to go really fast and just ram the hell out of the guy. I liked the latter, because it looks really cool when the ship explodes. But wait…pirate ships are made of wood! They aren’t supposed to explode…are they? Just another example of how lamebrained EA was in making this game. Through the game, you will open up new islands by gaining sections of a map, and all over these islands you will come across new opponents, and will need to get a bigger stronger ship to sink them. But this gets extremely repetitive. Once again, you can go searching for secret items, but it does really nothing to further the game. Yaargh.

Avast, ye landlovers!! Dullness ahead!!

Now, you must be thinking that this game couldn’t get any worse, right? Well, if you think that, then you’d better walk the plank! The audio in this game is about as lively as Bluebeard’s ghost. The voice acting is very uninspired, and it just sounds like the speakers wanted their money and to get on with their lives. Also, most of these sections where the voice acting is found is in really long, drawn out cinemas that are way longer than they should be. Other than that though, the sounds during the heat of battle are remarkably crisp, and sound very lifelike.

Finally, I was surfing the menu, and I found that there actually was a multiplayer option. Well, I decided to give it a try with a friend of mine, and I immediately knew that this was probably the high point of the game. No walking around on land or boring fetch quests on ships here. Nope, in this, it’s just an all out battle royale on the water, just you against friends, duking it out in pirate ships. There were quite a variety of maps to choose from, although I didn’t really care, since I was having too much fun blowing up his ship.

Overall though, I can’t really recommend this game to anyone. Bland graphics, bad voice acting, and boring gameplay really did this otherwise ambitious title in. About the only good thing that came out of this game was that it has pirates in it, and it gave me an excuse to write “scallywag” in a review. As a closing note though, I really would rather be pepper sprayed in the face for an hour than play this.

Final Score: 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/02, Updated 07/02/02