Friday, January 13, 2012

CrowdStar's Mighty Pirates: A treasure trove of Facebook gaming

Since Playfish's Pirates Ahoy! all but sunk a few months ago with little to no activity, swashbuckling Facebook gamers have been hankering for a fix to their rampant peg legging. Well, move over Pirates Ahoy! as CrowdStar has met the demand with Mighty Pirates. A pirate game with multiple layers through two different gameplay modes and a sprawling storyline (completed through collecting treasure maps) designed to guide players along, this just might be the answer to our inkling for island hopping.

Find out if Mighty Pirates is the game for you after the break.
Island Exploration
Mighty Pirates operates on two levels: Exploration and Battle. The former is accessed by clicking on any one of the island surrounding your vessel, which will immediately transport your avatar (who will strangely appear in his skivvies) to the island. It's from here that you will have to search under every tree, bush and piece of rock to hopefully find a piece of the treasure map and some resources along the way. But beware, skeletal pirates lurk beneath the sand, and will need to be dealt with if you want to complete the entire island. Depending on the area in which you're digging, it will expend a certain amount of Island Energy, which is only used for exploration. As for the other form of Energy, you'll be spending that by firing off a cannon ball or two.

Now, this is where the real fun begins. To access Battle Mode, all you need to do is click on any of the surrounding ships while on the home screen, but be wary of the opponent's level in comparison to your own. Once in Battle, you'll be trading blows in a turn-based style fight with the enemy. As for your options, there are only three: Fire Cannon, Put out Fire and Improve Weapon Accuracy. The amount of Crew Members you've added to your ship--the amount you can have increases with level--affects the amount of actions you can take in a single turn (they'll also be around to help in Exploration). The main goal of Battle is the destroy the opponent's ship while keeping your own from burning down die to fire damage, which becomes an interesting balance given that fire damage puts a dent into your ship's health points every turn. Winning battles rewards you with experience, coins and sometimes even a treasure map piece.

Battle Mode
While turn based battles with big explosions are certainly enjoyable, what makes warfare more interesting in Mighty Pirates is that every ship you engage in naval combat is an actual player of the game. While these battles don't occur in real time, the player will be updated upon logging in of whether they won or lost a battle. And to tack on even greater risks, you can even steal treasure map pieces from enemies by defeating them (and vise versa), which is certainly an incentive to keep your ship in tip top shape.

As you progress in the game through either Battles or Exploration, you'll gain access to improved parts for your ship such as cannons, hulls and sterns. However, you'll also need resources like Iron and Wood, which can only be found while digging for treasure on various islands. That being said, it's not wise to play to only one of the game's two primary modes. Also, leveling up will allow players to increase their Battle statistics like attack power, defense and accuracy, all of which are necessary but are open to different play styles. Though, a high accuracy rating is pretty much a must-have in battle or you'll end up making more splashes than explosions.

Might Pirates Home Screen
If you end up growing tired of a particular area, you can Set Sail once every eight hours to a new set of islands to explore and ships to battle. Though, we'd recommend at least exploring an entire map first before leaving to another region. Just remember to keep track of your Journal progress so that you move along through the game's story smoothly and you should do just fine. Just watch out for those pesky enemy pirates just waiting to thwart your progress. This brief player vs. player element combined with strategic turn-based battles and exploration make for what could be the next big pirate adventure on Facebook.

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