Pirates: The Key of Dreams (WiiWare) - Review by Chris

Introduction

Early adaptors to Nintendo's WiiWare service will be under no illusion as to what the service is capable of offering with such a small game size. 40Mb doesn't sound big but so far we've seen triumph in LostWinds and a semi triumph in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the service. These games serve as an example of what the service and the developers are capable. And with a continually increasing amount of games being added to the service, crossing various genres, the future looks bright for the service. Those gamers out there who have been waiting for a slice of sea faring, naval warfare to appear on the WiiWare service can no release a sigh of relief as their prayers have been answered. Or is the game destined to walk the plank?

Gameplay

Pirates: The Key of Dreams is the first WiiWare title from Oxygen Studios (or Oxygen Interactive Studios. They switch between the two when the game is loading up so I'll just go with Oxygen so as not to confuse). The game has you take control of a British American ship under the guise of a pirate ship in the hope of recovering the fabled Key of Dreams from its last known possessors: the Spanish. The reason for the disguise is given at the beginning of the initial level with the story being told through the medium of static artwork and wording along the bottom of the screen. Luckily, you can skip the whole story playing and just get on with the gaming. In order not to start a full on war between the British and the Spanish, your ship is disguised as a pirate ship so that it may go undetected. To make it more convincing, the game has the other British ships attack you as well as the Spanish ships that later appear in the game.

The games single player spans over 35 levels as you search out the illusive Key of Dreams with these 35 levels being stretched across the entire world with 8 different locations, such as the Arctic, Persia, the China Sea and even the Bermuda Triangle. The 35 levels might sound a lot but the games is relatively simple and over pretty quickly. What sets out as an initially fun run and gun game with ships soon becomes a simple get from A to B, while destroying enemy ships, in the majority of the levels with only the small extra included, such as collect a certain amount of crates. The gameplay lacks any form of variation as the same skills employed in the earlier levels are essentially the same ones you will be using later on. Through-out the levels, you'll find treasure lying either in the water, after destroying certain ships, or on shore and this is used for repairing your ship or for getting new crew members which you will encounter after destroying enemy ships as they jump overboard and float in the water waiting for you to pick them up. While it's a nice inclusion, the extra crew members don't really bring anything to the game other than helping with detection of enemy ships earlier on the map, which is something of a miss opportunity. Other power ups include the skull coin which helps in the repair of your ship when damaged.

Controls

The control of your ship is achieved by one of two possibilities: using the Wiimote on its side or by using the classic controller. The control types are virtually the same with the d-pad/analogue stick used to move the ship around. On the classic controller, you can use the L and R shoulder buttons to move forwards and backwards leaving the d-pad/analogue stick for turning. Your b/1 button is used to fire your primary weapon, which in this case, are your cannons. The a/2 button is used for your secondary weapons, such as mines, rockets, etc., and these are picked up from crates found floating in the water. For the most part the controls are fine and take no time to get used to. Problems only crop up when in the heat of battle and it becomes a bit frustrating trying to line your ship up alongside enemies to fire off your cannons. It also doesn't help that the AI is able to out manoeuvre you at every turn whereas it can take what can seem like an age to turn the ship.

Graphics

Graphically, the game is neither great nor overly bad. The menus are your staple fare but lack any real detail to make them stand out. But they it does its job and works fine. In game, it's a bit of a mixed bag. The ships look nice and detailed with their animation being fluid. With the scenery, however, the developers have tried to make it detailed but in doing so they have forgotten to add any polish to the graphics which look horribly low res and wouldn't be out of place in an N64 game. Animation of on shore weapons, such as cannon towers, is shoddily done as they jerk their way round to follow your ship. A few extra frames of animation couldn't have been that hard to add to smooth things out. The water is in a similar vain to the shore detailing. There's nothing spectacular about it and again, it looks pretty low res and wouldn't be out of place in an N64 game, with the wave break animation taking a leaf from the cannon tower in that it seems to be missing a few frames. The game is played out from a birds eye perspective with a nice, but simple, cloud effect that crosses the screen every now and again. On the whole though, the graphics run smoothly for the most part with only the occasional slow down coming because of there being loads of enemy ships on the screen at once.

Sound

In some games, music plays a big part. This is one game where the exact opposite can be said. The music is horrendous and will have you reaching for the mute button immediately or a set of headphones to cleanse what has just passed through your ear drums. It's typical of the style of game but you'll become irritated with it after a couple of seconds.

Final comments

Where the single player fails, the multiplayer adds some length to the gameplay. There's only one mode which is basically a deathmatch which can be played on a huge selection of maps against either 3 friends on local multiplayer (sorry, no Wifi) or, if you are Billy No Mates, then you can play against 3 bots. The game crowns the winner who reaches the set amount of points needed to win. Because it's very limited, you'll probably choose to show your friends something along the lines of Mario Kart or Smash Bros instead as you'll quickly bore of the multiplayer on offer here. Overall, for a first shot at a WiiWare title, it's not a horrendous effort from Oxygen. The biggest problem is trying to persuade you to part with 1000 points for the game and with other more polished and complete games on offer, you'll probably opt for them instead. That being said, it can be good fun but it's over quite quickly. If Oxygen decides to continue with the Pirates series on WiiWare, I can only hope they spend some more time on polishing off the graphics, drastically improving the sound and increasing the length of the game.

Pro: Looks Great.
Con: Far Too Short.
Final score: 4

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