Game Reviews

Potshot Pirates

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| Potshot Pirates
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Potshot Pirates
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| Potshot Pirates

There are plenty of clones on the App Store. These games often feel like expansions, with only a few tweaks to the template laid down by the games they're aping. What there are fewer of is iterations - games that take a template then make it their own.

Potshot Pirates is one of those rarities. While the basic game might be lifted from Angry Birds, there's a distinct feeling that this is a progression of the genre, rather than just another set of levels.

Pirate pals

The first and most obvious change is the perspective the game takes place in. Rather than viewing the physics-powered destruction from side on, you watch it from a first-person perspective, staring down the barrel of one of your ship's cannons.

Each level is a self-contained island, and you can sail around some of these to get a different angle on proceedings. Others are fenced off in places, although you still have some scope to move left or right if you fancy.

Your targets are green beasts who wiggle their rear ends in defiance of your piratical ways. Thankfully, these foolish creatures stand on rickety structures made of planks of wood, glass, and rock.

As you progress through the game you'll be given different cannonballs to play with. Some that are better at smashing through the tougher materials, and others that can set fires among the more combustible sections of the structures.

Shoot to smash

While it might not be as immediate as Angry Birds, there's still a lot to enjoy about Potshot Pirates. The controls are a little finicky to begin with, and they lack the tactile pleasure that comes from pulling back on a digital slingshot, asking you instead to tap when your shot is lined up.

But the levels are well-designed, and there's a compulsion to push on to the next puzzle to see what else the game has to offer. The overall look and feel of the game adds to the polish that permeates every shot and collapse.

And it's in those collapses that the game is at its best, in the crashing chunks of wood and exploding green beasts. It won't strike a chord in the same way its inspiration has, but it's different enough that you'll probably find something to enjoy.

Potshot Pirates

A fresh twist on a genre that's starting to grow stale, Potshot Pirates won't be to everyone's tastes, but it is a lot of fun
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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.