Take to the high seas with this swashbuckling adventure FROM Westwood.

Pirates: Legend of Black Kat is an intriguing title offering a combination of free roaming platform action and swashbuckling action on the high seas. The game has been in development for quite some time and has seen some changes which have probably benefited the game, however in some areas, mainly technological, Pirates has been left behind slightly. Despite the length of development there is precious little that we’ve not seen before in some form or another, not that this is necessarily a bad thing if it’s done well, but it is nice to see innovation and experimentation. <br /> <br /> The game and story centre around a young woman called Katrina de Leon, known as Kat, who is setting out on an adventure to seek vengeance against the man who killed her father. She is also looking to find her mother who she has never known, save for the knowledge that she is a legendary pirate called Mara. This provides the basis for the game and gives you a good reason to tear around the oceans getting into fights and finding treasure. <br /> <br /> After a nice introduction that teaches you the basics of the game you are free to start exploring the landscape on foot. The land based part of the game is quite enjoyable, large environments based on several different groups of islands give you a lot to explore, and indeed you will spend a lot of time exploring. Rather than offering puzzles based on the landscapes a large part of the land-based game revolves around simple fetch quests. This is not necessarily a bad thing per-se, there is a fair amount to do en-route such as talking and fighting, and the fighting system is rather nice. Kat is quite a dab hand with a sword and thanks to some nice motion capture the combat is enjoyable. <br /> <br /> There are special attacks to be learned and new weapons that you can pick up if you take time to explore and complete various little missions. Slight niggles with the camera affect this as in practically all other games of this nature, but they do not distract from the gameplay too much. Whilst the combat is enjoyable you can’t help but wish there were a bit more depth to the combat, that the main bulk of the action was not made up of just chaining a standard move together. However given that the combat is not the main focus of the game this is not a major gripe, just that a little depth in this area would just lift this out of the ordinary. <br /> <br /> The various locations are pretty standard fare you see the standard volcano and ice landscapes as well as haunted islands, voodoo islands, pirate islands and skull cove - which was the previous title for the game. Each of these areas features a boss who is suitably, erm, suited, to the location and provides some degree of tension as you battle through the game. Each of the islands landscapes is rather large often made up of smaller islands and it can take some time to move around. Thankfully there are warp points dotted around the place and save points are numerous so you don’t find yourself having to backtrack vast distances when you die. <br /> <br /> On the whole the land based sections of Pirates: Legend of Black Kat are well done, but a bit simple really, it would be nice to have perhaps a smaller game area but more focus on puzzles and deeper combat rather than simple fetch tasks. However what it does it does with panache and it’s certainly not bad, just not offering much in the way of new gaming experiences. <br /> <br /> The ability to take to the seas is quite refreshing especially when it is integrated with the platforming elements. If you need to go to a new island you just wander over to your boat, hop on and you’ve got an entirely different style of game to play. Kat’s ship is called the Wind Dancer and you control it from a zoomed out overhead perspective. This allows you to see for quite some distance and take a look for ports that you can moor your ship at, when moored the Wind Dancer cannot be attacked until you get back in start sailing, unrealistic but welcome. <br /> <br /> Combat is not just limited to taking on other ships indeed you must take out forts and defence towers that do their best to sink your quest. The water based combat has more depth than the swashbuckling antics on land and this is quite welcome. You have to think about your tactics rather than just sailing along and firing your cannons a bit. To succeed you have to exploit the weaknesses of the other ships which means locating their defences and manuvering in such a way so that you can attack as much as possible without being hit. This makes you consider your tactics, which have to be adapted for different boats as well as the different types of land-based enemies that you have to defeat. <br /> <br /> The ship combat is rather satisfying, not least in part to an effective damage model, which sees masts snap, having bits broken off, catching on fire and finally sinking into the depths of ocean. Once you have defeated a foe you can loot their booty and use your hoard to upgrade your boat defensively and offensively via upgrades and entirely new weapons. You can also purchase entirely new ships meaning that you can end up with some rather impressive boats stacked to the brim with cannons and various forms of bombs to inflict some serious damage. <br /> <br /> Graphically things are all right, the characters look good, a nice level of detail and some very good animation bring them to life, but the rest of the game world, despite being expansive suffers from a lack of texture resolution and some odd level of detail issues that detract from the visual quality. When out on the open sea the waves are done nicely, not the best you’ll see, but they convey the effect of water suitably well and can look rather pretty when it captures the sun in a nice glistening shimmering way. There are a few instances of slowdown here and there, when the draw distance is long and there is a lot happening, this doesn’t detract from the game too much, but as always it would be better if this were not here.