Age of Booty

Age of Booty is a video game that consists of 2 releases

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8 user reviews 3.9 / 5 avg score

Reviewed on Oct. 17, 2008

Age of Booty's multiplayer is great fun that keeps you coming back, but you'll need a solid crew who wants to work together if you want to dominate the opposition.

By Jeff Gerstmann

GB review 8 user reviews wiki

This review is for the XBLM release of Age of Booty.

Apparently the inspiration for Age of Booty came from the running "Pimps at Sea" gag that Bungie rolls out from time to time.

If you've been following the coverage we've done on the site, you've already seen that Age of Booty appears to be a fun game when played with friends and acquaintances in a local match. But those circumstances--hooking up multiple boxes in the same room to ensure that all trash-talking occurs in a face-to-face setting--aren't likely to be duplicated by most people out there. So I was left wondering how Age of Booty would hold up under more "normal" or "sober" settings. The answer remains mostly the same: Certain Affinity's single-unit real-time strategy game is a well-designed one, with plenty to offer players who want to team up and plunder towns over Xbox Live while fighting off rival pirates and occasionally shouting "yarr."

Age of Booty is, really, pretty simple. You control a pirate ship, usually on a team with other pirates, and you're up against one or more opposing teams. Your goal is to win the map, which is done by either capturing a set number of towns or holding the most towns when time expires. Towns are taken by force with the cannons on you and your teammates' ships. Taking towns can also get you resources, which are used to upgrade your ships or your towns, making them harder for the enemy to capture.

That's the back and forth of Age of Booty. While the towns start out neutral, all the teams are going to be scrambling to take and re-take them until a victor is declared. So deciding when to hang back and defend your existing towns and deciding when (and where) to push forward makes the game nicely strategic. But it's also fast-paced, so you don't have a ton of time to think before you act.

That's why it's nice that the controls are really simple to understand. You do most things using only one button that controls the movement of your ship. The hex-based map makes it easy to determine your attack range--you'll attack anything worth shooting at if you're one hex away from it. If you've got two targets next to you, you'll split your fire, which makes pinching your enemies between two pirate ships or a ship and a town or something like that a totally key strategy. The only time you'll use other buttons are if you need to quickly scroll around the map or spend your resources on an upgrade.

The game tries to give the AI characters a bit of... well... character, but they don't do a great job in practice.

When you look at Age of Booty's online setup, it's easy to see that Certain Affinity, the game's developer, was started by a group of ex-Bungie employees. Rather than the typical ranked/unranked split that most 360 games have, you can either jump into standardized playlists or set up a private game. You can get some friends together and all jump into a game as a party, as well. It's easy to pick up and makes getting into a game pretty fast.

You can also set up matches with AI-controlled bots, and the game has a set of single-player challenges that team you up with some AI guys, as well. This stuff is functional, but perhaps disappointing when compared to the multiplayer. Since there's an extreme need to cooperate with the other members of your team, you're sort of stuck following the AI teammates around, since you can't order them around and they rarely seem to come back you up or play with any sort of meaningful intelligence. Once you've gotten the hang of the controls in a few single-player games, you'll probably get online and never look back.

Age of Booty also has a well-implemented map editor that lets you create different sizes and fill up the maps with anything you find on the official levels. Once you create a map, you can take it online in private games. Any created maps that you encounter are automatically saved to a list of recent maps, where you can decide if you want to store them permanently or not. Also, Certain Affinity seems to have already released two new official maps, which download automatically when you fire up the editor. All things considered, it's a surprisingly deep feature to find in a downloadable game that seems to be implemented a bit better than the N+ custom levels were.

It's easy to hear the words "console" and "real-time strategy" in the same sentence and immediately determine that Age of Booty is not for you. But the game really feels like it was built with the constraints of the average gamepad in mind while simultaneously not feeling dumbed-down or stripped. If you've got some rowdy friends, or if you're willing to take a chance online and try to meet some rowdy strangers, Age of Booty's multiplayer is well worth checking out.

30 Comments Leave a Comment

	One of XBLA's finest multiplayer experiences (XBLM) Finally, a good pirate themed XBLA game, a bottle of rum for you and me! Age of Booty is a lighthearted strategy game, which revolves around pirates fighting other pirates in territorial battles. The game is really simple. You control a single pirate ship in a hex based map, fighting ... Reviewed by EpicSteve on Oct. 19, 2008	1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
	Sweeps Age Of Booty Review (XBLM) Shiver me timbers, this game is mighty addictive!I don't usually blog reviews or impressions or anything like that, but I feel this game deserves my over-valued attention. So here we go, enjoy.Last night I downloaded the Age Of Booty trial - which gives you full access to the multiplayer madness ... Reviewed by Sweep on Oct. 16, 2008
	Age of Booty: A Bounty of Booty, Bombs, and Bang for Your Buck (XBLM) Age of Booty is a simple Real Time Strategy game developed by a new studio named Certain Affinity. The new studio is composed of industry veterans and it really shows in this recent gem they released for Xbox Live Arcade. Where most studios might have seen the Arcade setting as ... Reviewed by L0RDTemplar on Oct. 23, 2008

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General Information Edit

Game Name	Age of Booty
Platform(s)	PlayStation 3 Xbox Live Marketplace PlayStation Network PC
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Developer(s)	Certain Affinity
Genres	Add a new genre Real-Time Strategy
Themes	Add a new theme
Original US Release	Oct. 15, 2008 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	Q3 2008 know the real date?
Aliases	Plunder Pimps at Sea