Tortuga Two Treasures
© N/A

Mania Grade: D
Platform: PC
ESRB: T
Genre: Action
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Ascaron Entertainment
Publisher: CDV
Suggested Retail: $29.99
Graphics: C-
Sound: C-
Gameplay: D-
Replay: D-
Fun Factor: C-

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"Tortuga Two Treasures"

Welcome to the 18^th century. Prepare to enjoy the pleasures of the day, which include looting and killing people. Of course those where just the events that you could experience as the life of a pirate, and as Thomas "Hawk" Blythe (Blackbeard’s right hand man in the beginning of the story) you will have your fun with these things. Immediately in the storyline though, you are double crossed and left in a prison to die. What is worse is that they have stolen your ship, and had your voodoo girlfriend killed. It is later said that is was because Hawk is a little too greedy for his own good, and that his girlfriend would never forgive the crew, so they were put into these situations. Now Hawk must avenge his girlfriend by taking revenge on those that wronged them. 

Getting straight to the point on this game there are two forms of gameplay in the game, one being on the sea, and the other being on land. On sea is where you will find the most enjoyment, even though it could have been so much better. As a lone ship you set sail on the high seas on preset maps/areas, while trying to accomplish one goal or another. Sometimes your ship will change, going from the best to the worst to work your way back up again. This means that your durability will be reduced to only being able to take a single cannon shot, or even being unable to take a stroll over a coral reef, but there are generally enough power-ups to keep your vessel in tip top shape. Of course what would a pirate game be without cannon battles? Not an entertaining one I say. Here you must line up the sides of the boat where the cannons are situated with the enemy boats that you are planning to fire at. Sometimes multiple ships will be within your firing distance, where it seems to switch your cannon attacks between the two. 

Now the goal is generally to destroy the enemy ships, though you may be called upon to damage a ship to the point where you can board it. If you go the distance and sink ships a few things will happen. For starters some of their crew will land in the water, and secondly their power-ups will too. You will need to quickly pick up these crewmembers as there are sharks circling looking for their next meal. I find it fairly odd that they are so willing to help out your ship, since you just destroyed theirs, but you know what they say about rats and ships. Some power-ups help your cannons by firing rapidly, or different types of cannonballs, but to get the full pirate experience you can also drop exploding barrels. Exploding barrels can be your best friend so long as you can actually hit an enemy with one. There are other power-ups as well like summoning a kraken, but overall the gameplay is too simple. I personally would have loved to assemble a fleet and explore the areas, but the game wags a finger at that. I guess I will need to go back to the Uncharted Waters series for that. 

The second part of the game involves land combat. Here you will need to walk around on shore, or even on other people’s boats, and engage in swordplay. Combat has been simplified to the lowest form of button mashing where you only need to click the left mouse button to attack in secession. You also have the option of using the right button to defend yourself, though you will hardly ever need to do that. As the game continues you will also pick up a few extra attacks, like flinging a kick at the enemy to send them on their backside, but they can be fairly difficult to land. 

One thing I noticed is that all enemies like to team up against you. Generally you will be battling alone against a group of enemies, which can even go up to around nine opponents. Luckily if you are unable to click fast enough to strike them down, you can always use a pistol for a quick shot, voodoo powder to put them to sleep, rum to set them on fire, or a potion to restore your health. Of course while it is annoying to take on groups of enemies it does have its advantages. Once you kill many enemies in a given area, if their bodies are close enough, you will get a cemetery bonus. This bonus will give you additional gold, which you can spend on power-ups. I spent an entire level just leading enemies back to a single area and killing them all in the same spot. Those pirates never saw it coming. 

The land combat also has you moving around areas -- in third person -- and looking for hidden power-ups. These can be activated at any time, but in all honesty you do not need to find them. Your character’s movement is fairly hindered, where you can only walk around on the areas. This means you cannot run, climb, or swim... Which is fairly odd. The most annoying part of the game involved not being able to walk over ledges, which forced me to walk down paths of stairs that I could have just avoided. All in all this area of the entire game truly needed the most work before even having a chance of being entertaining. The game turned from somewhat fun to a snore fest in the blink of an eye, and the worst part is that there is plenty to experience.  

Graphically the game has good an bad moments, but I guess you could have guessed that by now. Sometimes there will be errors with dying characters where they will twitch inexplicably on the ground until they disappear. Sometimes they will partly fade through the environment, which hardly helps them from twitching. The ships of the game are fairly intricate, but they are far from perfect. It really only gets worse from there since general travel on land is very lacklustre. The environment is filled with invisible walls, which force you to stay on track. The environment itself is designed poorly, which means the time you spend on the land will be a boring experience. Sound wise again the game falls into a similar category, where it comes off as a boring experience. The general main characters do a better than average job, but do not always follow the narration at the bottom of the screen. They also seemed to be a little rushed, making it sound like they were under a deadline and reading a script. General enemies though, which you will hear much more often, are a little annoying. 

In the end, this game is a few pirates short of a full ship. I wish I could put it another way, but this is the best way that I can view it. Half of the game is simply boring, mainly the part of the game that you are walking around instead of sailing, but the other half of the game only offers a little fun. I could see the game being much more enjoyable if there was an expanded battleship experience, much like you could find in Uncharted Waters on the SNES, or even its follow-up New Horizons: Uncharted Waters. As it is though most of what is in the game is not worth experiencing. If you are really into a battling ship game you probably will find a little enjoyment. Wrapping up, Captain Gordon gives Turtuga Two Treasures a D. 

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? CaptainGordonEdward@Gmail.com