iPhone Review: Pirate Waters

Publisher/Developer: Bootant
Genre: Action
Price: $0.99
Verdict: Really fun action game that  is really difficult to put down
Pros: Tight controls, varying difficulty levels offer a good challenge
Cons: 20 levels may not seem like enough, distinct lack of parrots and peg legs.

There’s just something inherently cool about pirates, isn’t there? Whether it’s the fact they’re outlaws, sailing the seas and taking what they want, or the fact they can have peg legs, hooks for hands and have a parrot on their shoulder, it’s obvious to all that being a pirate is just damn cool. Pirate Waters comes to your iPhone and iPod Touch to give you a taste of the pirate life and blast your scurvy foes out of the water.

Pirate Waters is a new offering from Bootant, creators of Crazy Choppers and Crazy Tanks. Utilizing the same tilt-to-move mechanics that they used in those two games, Pirate Waters could be looked at as merely a clone of those games with a new skin on it. Irrespective of how you look at it, what can’t be denied is that Pirate Waters is simply a fun game to play.

Pirate Waters offers 20 different levels of gameplay set in 5 different environments (south, north, tropics, volcano, snow), while also offering 3 different difficulty levels to choose from. Throughout each level you’ll be tasked with destroying enemy ships, picking up booty from the water, rescuing floating sailors, and saving up the gold you make to upgrade your ship with better guns, a stronger hull, more speed, or buy yourself an extra ship (essentially an extra life). There are also different power ups available on each level, offering more health, improved firepower, or a shield which reflects enemy gunfire away from you. You’ll need to make considered use of these power ups if you want to pass some of the levels, as they can get pretty challenging at times.

Even if you’ve not played the Crazy games mentioned above, you will find the controls to be incredibly easy to use. Simply tilt your iPhone forwards, back, left or right and your pirate ship will move or turn in those directions. Using the accelerometer in this manner does allow you to move your pirate ship in ways you would never expect to see in real life (I’ve never seen a pirate ship do a 3 point turn before), but as the game requires some really quick changes of direction it’s a control method that works really well.

Attacking the various enemy ships is also very simple to do. The targeting reticule will automatically lock on to any ship that enters your target area, and all you need to do is simply tap the touch screen anywhere to fire. You’re not always guaranteed to hit those scurvy pirates as they can be very nippy, but the lock-on feature is a god send when you find yourself fighting off more than one enemy at a time, though if you want to be ultra-hard you can always turn the feature off in the options menu.

The game screen is laid out really nicely as well. The top left shows you what level you’re on, with buttons below it to mute the sound and to enter the options menu. Your life bar runs down the left side of the screen with a mini-map next to it in the bottom left of the screen. Over on the right side of the screen, the top right shows you how many enemy pirate ships are left on the level, while below if you have buttons to pause the game and to get help. Below that will be icons showing you how many ships you have left, with a compass in the bottom right of the screen. At the bottom of the screen in the middle is a total of all the money you have, handy to keep track of so you know when you have enough to buy whatever upgrade you’re hankering for. Despite all this information being on screen at once, it never feels crowded, which is a testament to the way everything has been laid out. The mini-map is especially useful as it rotates as you turn your ship, always allowing you to see where everything is based on the direction you’re currently facing, which is much easier to understand than if it were just a static map.

As mentioned above, you’ll find some of the later levels to be quite challenging as the number of enemy ships increases. You will often find yourself being attacked by two or three ships from different directions at the same time, requiring some skillful piloting of your own ship if you want to escape in one piece. Even when you take on one at a time, as you go through the levels you’ll find the enemy guns level up as well, meaning you’ll take more damage per shot, so picking your fights and trying to approach your enemies from behind or the side becomes something you find yourself doing more and more as you progress.

Graphically, Pirate Waters looks pretty nice, with good-looking ships and levels. The game moves really smoothly no matter how fast you’re moving about the level, and the screen will scale in and out depending on how fast you’re going and what is going on around you. The accompanying sounds are all appropriately pirate like, with music, bells, cannon fire, explosions and “yo-ho-ho’s” to be heard on every level. I’d like to hear a few pirate-style insults in there every time you sink an enemy ship, but that’s just a personal preference really.
Pirate Waters has proven to be one of the most fun games I’ve played on my iPhone recently. It hits all the right spots for a portable game – it’s fun, it’s easy to control, easy to play, with short levels and it saves the state of the game when you exit it (though it does make you start a level again if you quit mid-level). The 20 levels on offer perhaps don’t offer enough variety between them other than the increase in enemy numbers and difficulty, but when the game as is fun as this, I don’t mind it being a little repetitive. Considering the game is currently only $0.99 on the App Store, I have no hesitation in recommending this.