Crazy Chicken Pirates has you taking up arms against a
barrage of such foes as cannon-operating and scimitar-wielding fowl in your
effort to rack up a high score. The control scheme is natural enough to master
within seconds, requiring a mere tap to gun down poultry and a sliding motion
to pan the camera left or right.
The presentation also has a certain degree of polish that plays
a role in captivating the player’s attention. The backgrounds and character
designs, while perhaps borrowing too heavily from overused pirate tropes for my
tastes, should be reasonably appealing to the younger crowd or those with less
jaded eyes. So far, so good.
Both Classic and Arcade mode are intended for brief periods
of play. The design reflects this as well – tight time limits of 90 seconds and
60 seconds respectively are enforced. Unfortunately, there’s only one map in
the game and everything except the spawning of chickens seems to be predetermined.
Thus, the happenings in every round are virtually the same. It gradually
becomes less of a “game” and more of a mathematical calculation of which items
should be collected and how many of the randomized birds should be shot to
maximize efficiency.
There is still some strategy to be found in that approach,
but limited seconds mean the experience becomes stale and less competitive at a
point. Though it is technically achievable to increase that limit in arcade
mode, the challenge in doing so is markedly high and the best of runs will
still be short-lived affairs.
One noticeable issue for newcomers is that countless targets
– mobile or inanimate, chicken or not – can be shot for points. While that
should theoretically enable diversity, the game often does a dubious job of
conveying which ones are eligible and some objects need to be hit in seemingly arbitrary
weak points.
Between items that give shoddy points and one masterful chicken
that can deflect bullets to the point of emptying entire gun barrels, it seems replaying
and memorizing is the core of Crazy Chicken Pirates. At a certain point you’ll
no longer have to decipher the minor details, but considering both arcade and
classic deal with time restrictions, the vagueness might actually dissuade the
player from experimenting in environments where every second is crucial. This is masked somewhat by the range of achievements, which encourage you to take different courses of action, but it's more of a band-aid solution.
Defense mode offers something more up my alley thanks to the
lack of a time limit. Rather than go for a traditional Defend Your Castle-esque
approach where various legions storm your base from one direction, the player
is penalized when just one chicken from either side gets across. The high
demand for a methodical play style becomes apparent out of the gate as hordes of
chickens will barrage you from both sides.
Crazy Chicken Pirates offers solid shooting gallery action,
but I can’t shake the feeling a few extra levels or greater randomization would
have been preferable to multiple modes. Should an update or DLC never show, I
suspect the charm may still satisfy on a very surface level.
- Clark A
Technical Editor
Miiverse: Midori