Jul
Review: Pirates: The Key of Dreams for WiiWare
The US release of WiiWare a few months ago has yielded some interesting titles, but also a number of flops. The games are meant to be small, simple, and casual which means that if they are not spot on or they have just a few annoying features a good idea can turn into a disaster pretty quickly. With Virtual Console games you know what you are getting–the games have been released before–but with WiiWare (which does not have demos) you have to sink some money ($10 or 1000 Wii Points in this case) in order to find out if the game is any good or not.
In the case of Pirates: The Key of Dreams consumers should be prepared to be disappointed. History has taught us that it is hard to mess up anything dealing with pirates, but this title is repetitive and simplistic enough that even this golden rule is broken. The story is your run-of-the-mill Pirates of the Caribbean-type story, complete with magical coins, governors that tell everyone what to do, and a whole lot of flying cannonballs.
The story line barely matters though–what the game comes down to is sailing your ship around and blowing up anything in your way. As expected, larger ships have more guns and are tougher to beat, but smaller ones are faster and more maneuverable. This can be fun for a few minutes, but the fighting is much too simplistic so even on harder levels it gets old fast. The ship uses what videogamers generally refer to as tank controls, which is to say that you can move forward, rotate your ship, and even move backwards (something that is hard to do under sail power) slowly. Your cannons will automatically fire on either or both sides depending if enemies are present or not. It goes without saying that any semblance of reality was left out of the game with the basic fighting, but once you get rockets that fire from the bow, buzz saws, and floating mines you might as well be piloting a spaceship instead of a pirate ship.
The game has a few small surprises now and then, like a floating crew member that you can pick up or maybe a few tri-corner hats, as well as the small assortment of special weapons, but they are not enough to stop the game from being repetitive. Overall the story mode seems more like one extended level than it does a series of separate levels and the game never gives you much more than what you got on the first stage or two.
There is also a local multiplayer mode (no online play) which will let you and a few friends fight it out. This has the potential to be fun for a few minutes, but the simple, unrealistic mechanics mean things get boring pretty quickly. With the right group it could be a good party game, but considering the Wii’s strength in this area there are better options.
Overall, Pirates is a disappointing title for the WiiWare. Those who were coming to it expecting a better version of TradeWinds 2 (the excellent title from AstraWare) will be severely disappointed as Pirates has no where near the depth or replayability of this series, even though it was on Windows Mobile. The use of the nunchuk to control the ship helps, but you can’t get around those tank controls and the Wii’s pointing ability is underutilized. Consumers will be better off spending their 1000 Wii Points elsewhere, either waiting or picking up a VC title or two.
In an episode of The Office, Michael Scott said he wanted to wake up to the smell of bacon each morning. So every night before going to bed he laid strips of bacon on the grill and set a timer for it to turn on in the morning. One morning he stepped on the grill and cooked his foot.
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