Age of Booty? More Like Age of AWESOME!
I just wanted to weigh in that [b]Age of Booty[/b] is [i]really really great,[/i] and it sucked me in for 3-4 hours easily last night. It's so ridiculously easy to play, but you end up gnashing your teeth and shaking your fist between fits of cheering - at your opponents, your stupid teammtes, your choice to choose cannons instead of a speed upgrade.. The game is much more in-depth and competitive than you'd think from the "durr hit A hit A hit A" appearance of the user interface.
The object of the game is to cruise around with the "A" button telling your ship where to go, you sink neutral/enemy ships, collect crates of resources and "curses," capture cities and villages which generate resources over time or when razed, respectively. When in port (within 2 hexes of your volcano) you can highlight your ship to upgrade speed armor or cannons if you can afford to. The UI takes a moment to figure out, but as soon as you understand what little there is to see, it's extremely intuitive and easy to glance at for status updates, I suspect even a child or a girlfriend wouldn't have much trouble keeping track of their resources once you show them that [i]"hey, the house lights up when yuo can upgrade towns, and the ship lights up when you can upgrade it!"[/i]
Each Challenge "stage" has 3 individual levels, so don't forget to collect all three stars for each of the 7 challenge stages.
You can play quickmatch or private match multiplayer games for the first 48 hours of your trial period, so don't neglect to check that out, and be ready for your quickmatch teammate to lose the game for you, but it's still a ton of fun.
If you don't know where your teammates are and what they're doing, you almost certainly will lose most multiplayer and single-player matches in AoB. It's a fact of life, and if you're playing by yourself you will get frustrated enough at your teammates' stupidity sometime, that you'll simply want to quit.
