Plunder

March 13, 2008 - Hold on to your tri-corner hat --
there's a pirate-themed, casual real-time-strategy game coming to a
console near you, and it's fun.

Plunder
was on the scene at Capcom's Digital Day this week and gave a handful
of weak-willed, out-of-shape videogame players the chance to take to
the high seas and live the life of some salty sea dogs. An admittedly
casual RTS, Pluder maps are comprised of connected hexagonal tiles that
make up land or sea. It's your job to take a pirate ship from your
pirate base -- a volcano with an angry face carved into the side that
belches smoke -- and capture towns on the map by moving your sword
marker to whatever tile you desire. Capture the preset number of towns
needed on the map and win.


X marks the spot.

It's harder than it sounds.

Plunder is designed for up to eight online/LAN players (four locally)
to divide into teams and unleash hell on one of the game's 25 maps.
When your game starts, you'll have a set number of upgrades you as a
team can use to make your individual boat faster, your cannons stronger
or your armor more effective. From there, you'll scan the map for
unclaimed towns (they're designated with sheep flags) and head out for
adventure.

Now, just because a town isn't inhabited by the enemy, it isn't exactly
ready to welcome your intrusion with open arms. To capture a town,
you'll need to pilot your boat into one of the water tiles on the
exposed side of the city's hexagon. You'll drop anchor, begin firing
your cannons and watch as the town's health bar decreases. Meanwhile,
the denizens of your would-be capture will have turned their weapons on
you and you're health bar will be steadily dropping as well. Beat them
before they beat you, and the town's health bar will refill with your
team color and hoist your pirate flag above its buildings. Fail, and
your ship sinks, the town retains its damage while sitting there
exposed for whomever might swim by, and you'll restart at your pirate
base.


Offline co-op?! Woo-hoo!

Again,
capturing towns is what the game is all about. Once you've got the
city, you'll not only get another port to stop in and heal as well as a
place that will attack invading enemies, but you'll also get constantly
regenerating resources. Each town will have some resource -- rum, trees
or gold -- that it will give to its pirate overlords. The HUD at the
bottom of the screen will monitor the number of resources you have as
well as the progress of generating a particular resource. You can then
take these stockpiled items and turn them into upgrades for your ships
and towns.

In our hands-on time, it seemed rare to hold a town for an extremely
long period of time. Even once you've captured a town and turned it
into one of your minions, the enemy can just swoop up on it, blow it up
and take it for themselves -- remember how easy it was for you to
capture? If everyone's running around doing their own thing, the towns
change hands like hot potatoes, but if you can actually implement some
teamwork, it's not hard for a duo to take a town and wipe out any
opponent coming in solo.


When we claimed Earlton, a small costal village whose chief exports are
two barrels of rum, we probably held the port for a minute or so. See,
capturing the beast took a chunk of our health. Although sitting next
to Earlton was replenishing our reserves, it wasn't as fast as the
health boost we'd get from our Red Hand -- one of seven warring
factions -- pirate lair. We could try to backtrack south to the lair,
but an inbound Blue Devil enemy had set a heading for our town and we
couldn't let it go without a fight. We battled, did a bit of damage and
got killed. Our demise wasn't in vain though, our double-damage cannons
were able to whittle enough of the foe's health away so that the town
could clean up the mess. Of course, the town took a significant amount
of damage and when two Blue Devils rolled in, our Red Hand flag fell.

Aside from the opposing forces trolling the waterways in Plunder,
there are also a number of merchant ships. Normally, we wouldn't advise
taking out people who didn't mean you harm, but not only are you a
pirate in this game, these ships have awesome special moves. If you
survive the defenses of a merchant ship and sink the vessel, a crate
will pop up. Sail the ship into the box and you'll get one of six
curses that do things such as steal your opponent's resources, turn
your ship invisible and bomb a given area of the map.


The town wins.

If
the 25 maps, ship-on-ship battles and eight-player matches didn't get
you excited, Plunder also gives you the tools to create your own maps
from scratch. The game's map editor is actually the same tool Certain
Affinity uses to create its levels and gives you access to every tile
you can have in the game. You can set win conditions, name the towns,
decide where players start -- everything. On top of that, the program's
super-easy to use, so have at it.

Sometimes it's hard to write the first solid preview on a game because
you have to cram so much info on what the game is and how it works
without making it sound too dull. Pluder is anything but dull. Trying
to capture the final town needed for a victory while enemy forces move
in from the north is nerve-wracking, sinking the enemy to defend your
port is gratifying, and the game just looks great with it's bright
color and stylized visuals.

We'll have our eye patches ready for the summer when this PC,
PlayStation Network and Xbox Live game gets released, but until then,
you can look to IGN like a lighthouse in the night for all of your
Plunder news and info.