"An Arrrrrgh-cade Treasure"

Age of Booty – An Arrrrrgh-cade Treasure

Age of Booty is a “light” real time strategy game by Creative Affinity for the Xbox Live Arcade. Its set in an era of plundering pirates, and you control a single ship, in your efforts for oceanic domination. There are 21 single player missions (7 easy, 7 medium, and 7 hard). In online, there are 2v2, 4v4, and 2v2v2v2 matches. There is also a fully-fledged map editor.

The game itself is quite simple, but it is very enjoyable and actually much deeper than then straightforward controls would have you think. There is actually a lot of strategic depth to it, particularly when playing online. The map consists of hexagonal tiles. You simply move your ship by moving your cursor to the tile you wish to move to and pressing X. You can also use curses by pressing Y, and that's really about it when it comes to controls. Your ship fires automatically when beside a target. There is also a mini-map you can pull up with the bumper buttons.

Each pirate team has a home base, and the goal is to capture as many neutral cities as you can. The team that reaches the required amount or has the most when time expires wins. To capture a city, you simply move beside it and you will automatically attack it, when its defenses are destroyed you then need to capture it. Each town also grants you resources. There are 3 resources – lumber, rum, and gold, and they are accumulated automatically over time. Towns increase the rate at which you get these resources. You can spend your resources to upgrade your ship's armor, cannons, or speed at the home base or upgrade the defenses of the towns you own. There are also neutral merchant ships which you can sink to get curses, which are basically power-ups, and neutral villages that grant you a one-time resource boost when destroyed.

The graphics are fairly well done. They're nice and clean, nothing spectacular, but they get the job done. The water is actually fairly impressive, for an arcade game. They could have done a better job with the cannons and explosions, though. The menus are done in a spirited pirate theme that comes together nicely, and the music also gets you in that plundering spirit. The sound effects are serviceable. The game does a great job of portraying the pirate theme.

Single player is a reasonably fun, but short romp. It'll take about 5 hours to beat all 21 challenges, and there's no reason to come back to them after that. The goal is always the same – capture a set amount of towns, and the missions aren't really much different than a standard versus map. The AI is not the greatest – there's no way to command your teammates (singleplayer's biggest flaw), so you often just have to follow them around and hope for the best. The map editor is very robust, and allows you to create maps just like the default ones. You can even share these maps with others. If you're into that kind of stuff, it can extend this game's replay value a bit. But online is really where it's at.

Multiplayer is the main focus of the game, and it can be very fun and somewhat addictive, if you can get a good team going. There is both local and online, and you can take multiple people on the same console online. The main problem is with people who don't have mics - you can't really communicate with them, so you might as well be playing with bots. This can be really annoying at times, as can people who just sit around and don't actually play. Teamwork and planning is key to victory, and it really is a very enjoyable experience, particularly 4 on 4. Facing off against another team online with your buddy on a second controller sitting right beside you is a blast, as you try to outsmart your opponents.It isn't too hard to find a game, though sometimes you do have to wait a while for the lobby to fill up. This seems like the type of arcade game that will have a decent online community going even for a while after its release. All in all, the multiplayer is excellent for an arcade game.

I really enjoyed Age of Booty, and consider it 800 MS points well spent. It's not a particularly long game, and it can get a bit repetitive. It actually gets you to think and plan, which very few games do these days. There were many tense and down to the wire moments I've had. How much you get out of it ultimately depends on how much you get into multiplayer. If you do get into it, however, you'll have a whale of a time.

Graphics- 7/10
Sound – 7/10
Gameplay – 8/10
Presentation – 8/10
Multiplayer – 8/10
Replay Value - 7/10

Overall – 7.5/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/08

Game Release: Age of Booty (US, 10/15/08)