Arrr! Pirates vs. Aliens– Review

For years the debate has always been Pirates vs. Ninjas… By the way, I stand on the Pirate side of the ledger.  But now we’ve got to add Aliens to the whole mix.  Thankfully Red Knight has given us a new app that makes it possibly for the pirates to take out the aliens… I guess the ninjas were busy, or perhaps just super stealthy.

In “Arrr! Pirates vs. Aliens” you take on the role of a pirate crew that is trying to get it’s rum back from a horde of invading aliens.  Why rum, you ask?  Simple.  Rum is like fuel to the aliens… okay, it actually IS fuel, for their space ships.  And, if you know anything about pirates, rum is the fuel for their bodies.  So, with it being so important to each side… the battle is on.

The game is set up as a pretty standard shooting game.  Your ship moves down the shoreline as you look for aliens.  Luckily they are easy to spot because not only do they look really weird, they also like to jump right out in the open (or parachute in from the looks of the graphics).  And once you spot them you do what pirates do – and I’m not talking about the rules of Parlay here, I’m talking about shooting.

Since I mentioned graphics above, let’s start with the look of this game.  It’s one of the best things the game has going for it.  There is a very vibrant and colorful theme to this game.  The cartoony look for the game serves it well and gives a fun feeling to the overall play.  From the aliens with the big eye or the big mouth, to the waves that look like a set piece from community theatre, everything looks very good.

And the fun continues into the humor of the game.  There are a lot of fun elements to the to Arrr!.  My favorite thing was the way it kept track of your main weapon’s ammo.  Instead of just putting up the old “infinite” moniker the devs used “loads”, and “lots”, and other words like that to show that the number seems to be going down.  Not sure why it made me laugh, or even notice, but I liked it.

But even better than the graphics are the controls for the game.  Moving your left thumb along the bottom left corner is all you need to do to aim.  This worked just like a nice thumb button on a controller and did it very well.  Tapping on the right bottom corner will fire the shot.  The whole thing is very slick and works well.

But there are a few areas where I think the game could use some tweaking.  The biggest to me is the hit detection.  Or maybe it’s not… You see sometimes I can’t tell if I hit a target or not.  At times it seems that it takes one hit to get rid of the rum stealing alien and other times it seems like I hit it 20 times.  Either I’m not hitting it (which I doubt) or these aliens all have different health levels.  I wish the game would let me know what’s happening here.

Another thing that caught me as being off was the store.  I liked that you used rum instead of money but you can’t touch a product without buying it.  I didn’t even know what a weapon was and wanted to touch it to get some info, next thing I know I’ve bought it.  Where’s the “do you really want this crossbow?” type prompt.

I was afraid to touch anything after that.  Also, even when you buy it you still don’t know what you’ve bought.  It’s later, when you switch to that weapon that you get to see what it looks like and what it does… and then you don’t even really know how powerful it is.

These two issues will really resolve themselves over time.  After a few plays you start to see what the weapons do so it’s not an issue, but I wanted to give you a warning up front.  And maybe it is my aim that’s off, it’s just hard to tell.

In the end it’s really a choice thing.  Arrr! Pirates vs. Aliens is a really well done game with great controls and a fun look.  But if you’re into a more “real” shooting experience you might want to look elsewhere… and if you’re really into really shooting people you might want to get some help.  That’s why I stick with zombies… and the occasional rum stealing alien.

The Good

Fun, Cartoony Look
Nice Controls
Rum Replaces Money (They Are Pirates After All)

The Bad

Don’t Like “Store” Mechanism
Poor Hit Detection
What Kills These Things?

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1. Pirates: Sea Battle 2
2. Alien Assault Review
3. Boom Brigade

Category: Games