Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat

Pros • Fluid & fun ship to ship combat • Huge, living environments • Solid hybrid land/sea action game • Two-player combat mode • Style & ambiance to burn	Cons • Rare frame rate slowdowns • Some muddy sound mixing
Bottom Line Finally, an across-the-board, A-grade pirate game. Drink up, me hearties! A PIRATE'S LIFE FOR ME (HUMANITARIAN REMIX) Electronic Arts and Westwood Studios let this game loose on the public with only the tiniest ripple of publicity, which seems to make no sense...or perhaps, sadly, it makes all too much sense. Tell a halfway-experienced gamer you're putting out a pirate-themed video or computer game these days, and they'll likely react as though you've suggested a new Pamela Anderson movie---there aren't any in memory they'd particularly wanna see (except one...and that ain't the one you're talking about). For some people, that "one" was the Pirates! of long ago, and for others it was the too-cute-to-live Shipwreckers! (maybe there's just something about an exclamation point). In any case, a decent pirate-themed game has been long overdue; thankfully, Westwood has sailed into port with a new treasure.

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is a hybrid land-sea action game. Players fill the boots and leggings of Katarina de Leon, a red-headed beauty and adventurer who has taken up the family business--seems Mom was a famed pirate-for-the-people herself once upon a time, before she disappeared. Now, one Captain Hawke and his band of Crimson Guard sea-thugs have been taking over all the local islands one by one, and Katarina has culled fortunes captured from these oppressors into a resistance operation of her own; essentially, you're playing an anti-pirate pirate. Captaining the ship the Wind Dancer, Katarina has much to do in this game, including exploring secret islands, discovering buried treasure and fighting foes with blades, ranged weapons and explosives, as well as commanding the Wind Dancer in full-broadside sea battles.

There's a lot to do on the PS2 controller, too. Every button and stick is used, with only the R1/R2 shoulders being redundant (cycling up/down through inventory), and the L2 shoulder has a context-sensitive additional function, such as digging up buried treasure when it is nearby. On land, the game employs a removed camera that follows Katarina as she walks, runs and even slides (Tarzan-style) down steep slopes (an even more involved camera is used in the ship mode, which we'll get to in a minute). The game's most pervasive (and immersive) aspect is the freedom and roamability of the vast environments--with rare exceptions, if you can see it directly or on a map, you can get to it, in a variety of ways.

The second most noteable feature of the game is the sheer sense of life in these environments. Tons of little details make the experience all but breathe onscreen--the footprints and boot-slide marks Katarina leaves as she races along a beach or down a slope, the groups of wandering, oversized mutant crabs that click and crawl about (Stephen King readers may think of the "lobstrosities" in The Drawing of the Three, the second book of the Dark Tower series), the flocks of birds that race through the air, the crawl of cloud-shadows on the ground and the sway and spray of the ocean as the Wind Dancer cuts the waves. Everything you see and hear has a function in this pseudo-Caribbean microverse, and the mood is so rich and constant that the game feels like somebody poured the mechanics of a Zelda game into a martini shaker full of Crème de Monkey Island and then throttled that sucker for all they were worth (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it only means that you now have to go play a few Zelda and Monkey Island games as well. You'll be the better for it, trust us). There are unique characters to meet, deal with and embark on quests for foes (including a vain and possibly-lesbian mermaid...I'm just sayin'), both alive and undead to dispatch, and an overarching story to follow without worrying about getting too bogged down in too much slow, boring stuff. And that's all on land. The sea is another matter entirely.

The sea-combat portion of PLBK is a somewhat different beast--a breezy, almost arcadish game that nevertheless requires a smidge of real naval tactics and reflects damage to the ships involved. It shouldn't work, but it does. The right stick moves the camera for close follows or zooms out high above, showing off the somewhat-crunchy but still glorious waters that reflect grand sunsets, show sunken wrecks below, and offer bobbing crates from destroyed vessels (which can be nabbed as cargo). Players can also use the directional buttons to offer instant first-person views forward, aft and to each side, which come in handy when trying to line up cannon shots. The waters in this game are crawling with patrolling Crimson Guard ships, of course, so special measures must be taken in addition to the expected broadside cannon-strikes: Sail-shredding chain shots can slow down the enemy, fire-pots can add damage, and "stink-pots" can act as chemical warfare to gag the enemy gun-crews into temporary submission. After you've bombed a few land-based cannons and fortresses to ruin, you can take over said fortresses and use them for drydocks to repair, resupply and upgrade your ship, but some upgrades can be purchased from smugglers or just plain discovered on land. Some treasure chests appear on land in the open, while others must be found ye olde-fashioned way--by schlepping around on foot until Katarina's "treasure sense" kicks in via the Duel Shock's rumblings. In addition to all of this, the land/sea schemes fit together seamlessly: It's possible to, say, attack a cannon from the one (land or sea) in order to later facilitate your operations on/in the other. Likewise, those patrolling Crimson Guard ships you see from the beach aren't just eye-candy; those are actually the ships you'll have to deal with once you leave dock. Captured fortresses can be of service in this area.

All in all, Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is the kind of product Westwood is largely known for--complete, compelling, full of great little touches, and just generally elegant (which is a funny thing to say about a game of pirates, pillage and plunder, but so be it). It's a large game with lots of personality and freedom, and even includes a two-player Sea Battle mode for those who can't abide all this land-lubbin' exploration/quest fluffery and just want to blow stuff up; it definitely has the feeling of a secondary mode, but it's a good one and does extend the already-considerable gameplay. And (perhaps because Westwood knew just how devoid of piratey goodness the gaming world has been) players can collect shells in the game that open up a gallery of conceptual artwork--and I mean good pieces of fleshed-out artwork, not the scribbled-on-bar-napkins crap that developers often try to pass off as a "bonus feature." In one fell swoop, Pirates makes up for an awful lot of a gaming genre conspicuous by its near-total absence. Now if we can only talk Westwood into riding to the rescue of the Western-themed game: Talk to me, guys.

Info & Screenshots