I started Monkey Pirates in the area I always go to when I’m playing a game which is completely foreign to me – the tutorial. Completing it with ease (not really anything to brag about) I netted myself my first achievement, for 10 gamerscore. It’s something I suppose?
Monkey Pirates is a download only local multiplayer Xbox One title, based around ship based combat with a face down view of your ships. It holds your general local multiplayer stuff, like various powerups, and a gimmick to go along with it; in this case, monkeys.
First impressions were nothing more than standard to say the least.
I moved on to the challenges, of which there were four. These are divided into the categories of testing your sailing, drifting, shooting and, to quote the game itself, to test your “raw power of destruction”. The first challenge to complete, ‘Pirate for the wind’, sees you greeted by Giburt Lancaster who instructs the player to grab some floating chests. I have to admit the challenge is fairly amusing – for the 30 seconds it lasts. It is your typical ‘collect so many things before the time runs out’ scenario, and I’m pleased to say I got a bronze medal with 21 chests collected, earning me spot 2279 on the leaderboard.
Again, it’s quite obvious that these games are somewhat alien to me.
The drifting technique found in Monkey Pirates is interesting, with the odd whirlpool placed to stop you sailing wherever you want. There are times when you’ll have to keep stopping your ship in various sized zones to amount for a “drift”, but luckily there is time added for each one which is successfully completed. My position you ask? Well, that’ll be place number 1223. To be fair though, a lot of people above me obtained the same score but perhaps that is me just reassuring myself.
One thing that frustrated me indefinitely about Monkey Pirates is its respawn times and map sizes. The maps are minuscule, which to be fair is expected, and you would think the size would help you out when doing these challenges, but it doesn’t. As you try to manoeuvre around the tight corners, you can’t help but consistently bash into rocks. This is where the spawn times come in. When I’m up against the clock, I want to be back in the action instantly, not sat waiting around for several seconds watching my ship attempting to re-enter the game world! Either change the maps, or make the load times zero.
The last challenge I particularly enjoyed. It revolves around you taking out as many ships as possible within two minutes, which, while tiresome, was definitely the best fun of the four included. I managed to get a good rhythm going with a circuit I would follow to maximize my score. Typically, I ended up crashing and dying, losing my powerups. However, once I found a way around this, this mode became the one I genuinely wanted to get a good score on.
And I can say, I’m rather proud to have ended up 50th on the leaderboard. That’s something I suppose.
The versus mode within Monkey Pirates can obviously be played with friends, but you can also set it up to go against three AI players, which I thought was a nice touch. Surprisingly there were a fair few maps, nine in total.
Unfortunately most of these were complete with the cramped rocky conditions I was already used to from the challenges. In general, Monkey Pirates is fairly average and pretty much what you would expect from this kind of game. The usual things I’ve seen before from a hundred local multiplayer download only affairs.
Controls are nothing short of simple with not many being used – just a button to shoot, a button to drift, and the stick to obviously control your ship. This became slightly bothersome, mainly because I’m used to using a lot more buttons, jumping around them back and forth like a tap-dancer, but also because of the movement of the ship itself. As mentioned before, I would continuously crash and burn, and this was not just because of the cramped maps. The ship’s control, coupled with the wind speed, flung me all over the place, as if Henchmen Studios, the game developers, had me on a rope and were rapidly swinging me in a circle; my frustration increasing with each loop I made.
While the “monkey” idea is a bit different, it’s nice to see some (partly) hidden extras. Unfortunately the only extra included (if you don’t count the credits and statistics) is “Captain’s story”. Although it’s interesting to see and read an actual, fairly detailed story on each of the pirate captains, the bios that are included are only really going to get looked at once and then never again. With the target audience quite possibly being that of a youngster, I guess they may be more inclined to play as certain ones depending on their style. Though personally, I think there should have been another mode included instead of wasting time on this.
While stereotypical in the local multiplayer gig, where there aren’t many modes going for it, Monkey Pirates is definitely one that would be better for the target audience I believe it to be assigned for: young children.
Though if you are considering this, for the fourth challenge I recommend ‘duck foot shots’ and ‘oars’ for your power ups! You might stand a chance against my score then.