Shipwreckers - PlayStation

Description

Looking for a hypercute game of pirating and plunder? No? Well, Psygnosis has brought us one anyway: Shipwreckers, a stunning-looking piece of work loaded with cuddly pirate trappings, humorous enemies and weapons, and bizarre power-ups. Though not the most thought-provoking game, its design is certainly original and is executed with graphical ingenuity. It's essentially a third-person arcade-style shooter where you sail the high seas - well, OK, more like the high lake, since the initial levels' bodies of water are entirely surrounded by land, but no matter - battling other pirate vessels and destroying the gun turrets and flamethrowers (on a pirate ship?) of defending ports in an attempt to spread your swashbuckling reign of terror. All right, actually the worst you ever do to these places is bring down their two-colored flags and replace them with a Jolly Roger. At your disposal is stranger weaponry than Bluebeard ever used, from simple cannonballs to mines, oil slicks, and the occasional antiaircraft rocket. In addition, weird temporary power-ups spice things up, like the "instant blimp" that pulls in your sails and "grows" a blimp from atop the mainmast (an amazing animation, incidentally) allowing you to float over obstacles, temporarily above the enemy, out of harm's way. With bomb-dropping parrots, exploding fish, and cutesy Raggedy Anne pirates morbidly afloat in the water after jumping ship, Shipwreckers' design is refreshing and funny. The water effects are incredible, from the glint of light off the waves, to the shadows of airborne predators, to the amazing transparency effects. When enemy ships are sunk they remain visible in their watery graves, a few feet beneath the surface - an offbeat synthesis of depressive peg-legged fatalism and cartoonish goofiness that sets the tone for the rest of the game.