Pirates Ahoy

Of all the murderers and robbers in the world, pirates have by far the best press. No lens is tinted more rosily than the one through which we view the murky world of sea piracy. The perception is peg legs and bearded eccentricity, while the reality is men killing people and stealing their boats.

Whether piracy is high jinks or horrible, one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Or, indeed, video game. If people really had to be honest about pirates, we wouldn't have Pirates of the Caribbean (the film, rather than the game) or the excellent Monkey Island game series, so let's don our pinkest specs and take a look at Pirates Ahoy, HandyGames's attempt to depict the lives of the salty coves who playfully terrorise the seven seas.

Quite rightly, the game follows the high jinks school of thought. Before the action has even begun you're treated to the Pirate O Meter, a one-armed bandit that randomly selects your pirate avatar. The playful, irreverent influence of the Monkey Island games is clear.

HandyGames has also stuffed the help pages with elaborate descriptions of the characters; Beauty Bill is a womaniser, for instance, while Bonny LaGrace is a femme fatal who murders men she cannot seduce.

You begin by choosing the number of opponents – from one to three – in the field, with each possessing a set of idiosyncrasies. So, Parrot Pete prefers collecting chests to fighting, Bonny dislikes whirlpools, and William Wood avoids the edges of the map, because he believes the world is flat. Armed with this intelligence, you can adapt your approach with regards to the characteristics of the opponents you're facing.

The nautical war-themed action itself is turn-based, so a lot of the game entails watching computer-controlled characters dawdle elsewhere while you wait for your go or, worse, watching them pulverise your ship with cannonballs unchallenged.

When you do get a turn, you have the option of attacking people, collecting items, or trying to combine the two. Success entails amassing sufficient gold or being the last ship remaining, and while attacking others yields a couple of gold pieces, most of the time pursuing an aggressive course will see you end up bobbing amidst splinters.

Which pretty much leaves the collecting items option. Most are concealed in floating barrels and, in effect, the game is an exercise in picking these up. Yet, since you don't know what you're collecting until you've done so, you can just as likely spend your time reaping bounteous riches and repairs as reeling from explosion to explosion should you pick up volatile cargo.

Speaking of detonations, we should mention that placing your ship in range of an enemy sees you automatically attack the latter with cannonballs, and the closer you are the more likely you are to hit it. (The health of every player is evident in its appearance, with wind billowing in the sails of undamaged vessels, and flames billowing from those that are ailing.)

With all these various factors at play – the chance element of the power-ups, the varying predispositions of the enemies, the turn-based structure, and the mixed terrain of the map – you'd be forgiven for assuming Pirates Ahoy has the makings of a very interesting game. However, the mix isn't quite right.

The reality is like real pirates, Pirates Ahoy suffers from an identity crisis. It feels like an action game, yet there's no scope at all for employing manual skill (as there was in Anno 1701, for example). Which therefore suggests it must be a strategy game, but the dynamic relies too much on blind luck and basic reasoning for that to really wash.

In the end, this emerges as a fairly slender approximation of a traditional boardgame – and it passes the time like one – but it lacks the structure to fulfil its own promise.