I recently went hands on with Oxygen Studio’s soon to be released Pirates - Duel on the High Seas DS game. Now honestly, in a fight I think a ninja would whoop the pants off a pirate (Note: I think someone should make a Ninjas: Duel on the Rooftops game.. that would be awesome) any day, but these pirates are slightly different.

After a chance encounter with an old sea-dog the quest begins for the 7 keys of the 7 seas. Set across the planet the player can experience different environments such as the Caribbean, the South American jungle, the Chinese port of Kowloon and even inside a volcano to fight bosses such as a sea monster, a Witch Queen and even famed pirate Blackbeard. The story is told through text and art scenes before each mission begins, explaining what’s going on. The artwork is nice but some voice acting would have been good as well.

I had the chance to play through a few levels of the game including the tutorial level, another leading up to a fight with the Kraken and finally the end boss level which for lack of a better term was epic. During the tutorial level I got to grips with the controls which are effective on Nintendo’s little dual screen system. Having either the D-pad or the touch screen to steer your boat I must say that I think the D-pad wins the day as it just feels more responsive. Does that mean the dual screen is useless? ‘Nay me ladee! (Ok I promise I won’t do that again).

When starting up, the player get a choice of 3 different boats in both single player and multiplayer, each varying in size, speed and firepower. They also dictate what difficulty setting you play on in single player, with the smallest ship being on the easiest setting and increases in difficulty each increased ship size. Each ship also has its own level of armour which this adds to the experience of each play through on the difficulty settings and is something the WiiWare version of the game also features.

Your ship can also be kitted out with Mario Kart style weapons picked up along the journey such as bombs, buzz saws and flame-throwers for use both in single and multiplayer. In addition to these weapons, ships also have 4 constant abilities which can be activated one at a time. The abilities are gained when picking up stranded sea-men after battles with other vessels and gain abilities such as increases view range, repairing your ship quickly, increased speed and increased fire range. These can come in really handy and can also be used in multiplayer to allow some variation and are all used/eqipped with the touch screen (told you it wasn’t useless!).

After playing around on the tutorial level with weapons and abilities of my ship I was thrust into one of the first boss battles - The Kraken. As I made my way around a harbour the Kraken’s head burst out the water and shoots a line of fire out its mouth, while I dodge it, the Kraken also whips its tail towards my ship. Using some rockets I had equipped on my ship from a nearby crate as a special weapon I took him down after repeating the process a few times. The Kraken wasn’t the hardest fight I’ve ever had (I was playing on a version of the game where I had all the upgrades on my ship so I was a little overpowered) but it was enjoyable.

Once I was standing proudly over the Kraken, I had the chance to play a few rounds of multiplayer with the developers. Duel on the High Seas supports both Single and Multi-card play with no penalty if one person doesn’t have a copy, I was reassured you would get the same experience either way apart from a small load screen. I can safely say that the multiplayer is some of the best I’ve ever played on the DS with a similar old school feel to it that Worms, Micro Machines and Goldeneye have. The 35 multiplayer maps varied in size from quite small maps suited to a quick 1-on-1 to larger maps for big 4 player battles. After playing a few ‘first to 10 kills’ matches the developers could clearly see they had been outmatched and we called it a day, Just kidding (but really).

While the multiplayer is the glue that holds this game together I was a little disappointed with the lack of customisation options for multiplayer games with options only allowing for pre-set game rules available I would I preferred more of a Worms style approach allowing me to alter smaller details. The multiplayer is also dying to be online and if it was, it would really take off as a portable pick-up-and-play kind of game.

Graphically the game runs nicely on the DS with some pretty sharp enemies and detailed environments. One of the later boss fights is also extremely well done with some great detail, its clear that Oxygen have tried to squeeze everything they can out of the DS. Most of the time the game runs at a steady frame rate of 30, that is until you encounter some boss battles, then things get a little laggy.

At the end of the day, Pirates - Duel on the High Seas has found a nice spot on the DS library that hasn’t been filled yet and it does it well enough for me to look forward to the games release later this month. A truly unique experience but mainly because no one else has thought of it yet. The multiplayer is definitely more worthy than the single player, and will be the bread and butter of the game and if they had Wi-Fi the game would be top-notch. Always space for a sequel right?

Pirates - Duel on the High Seas is scheduled for release at the end of July.