Sick of
playing board games that leave you feeling bored? Do you like anime and would
be interested in interacting with select One Piece characters? One Piece:
Pirates’ Carnival is ready to answer your desires. Built for four players on
GameCube and PlayStation 2, this party game features over 30 mini-games. Climb
steep mountains, waddle on stilts, play a game of explosive dodge ball – the
choices are quite varied, keeping multiplayers occupied for the duration of
the board.
Points
and virtual game cards are bonuses for skillful playing, but it’s board space
that decides who wins. The introductory board gives you a 5×5 playing field.
Each space counts as one potential point, and since each player starts in a
corner, everyone begins with one point. The board portion is turn-based. You
can select any empty space you want, triggering a mini-game, an event card, or
a boss fight. All three are random, so there’s no way of knowing exactly what
you’re going to get every time.
The
thing about mini-games is that it doesn’t matter who’s turn it is when it
started, only who wins the game itself. Win the challenge and you gain that
space on the board. Event cards and boss battles, however, do have a different
affect on the player that chose them. Event cards can take one or more of an
opponent’s spaces and make them your own. It’s a sneaky, perhaps even dirty,
technique that’ll drive the guy in lead (whose tide will have been turned)
crazy. But you don’t control who gets an event card – that’s up to the game.
Your part is based on luck.
One
Piece’s mini-games consist of all things quick and easy. To give you an idea
of how much variety the game is shooting for, one is an FPS-style treasure
hunt. Collect the most treasure by bashing chests using a device that looks
like a spring-loaded punching glove.
There’s
a rhythmic game where one player is essentially the "enemy" and the rest must
defend against it. First the enemy has to press a sequence of buttons that
trigger various attacks. These attacks may be spaced or performed one after
the other, with one fake attack option thrown in to throw your opponents off
guard. If you’re in control of one of the other three players, you must
memorize the sequence and press the right button at the right time to dodge
the enemy’s attacks.
Similarly there are boss fights where the person that selected that square on
the board become the boss, and the other three players must defeat it. In one
I had to stomp on a boss’s head three times. As that boss I would’ve had to
avoid getting stomped on while attacking three opponents. Another had me
dodging a stream of spears while jumping over waterways. I was also expected
to search for masks that would block the dangerous gas filling the screen.
Later
on I encountered a mini-game where everyone walked on stilts. The stilts’ lack
of stability made it very difficult to move. Walk too much in one direction
and you’ll fall over, losing a point. The goal is to knock your opponents down
by leaning on them. This poses another challenge – leaning is likely to make
you fall as well. But if you take down all three opponents when you
fall, the point gain will make up for the loss.
There’s a cannonball game where you have to destroy
objects out at sea (everything but the white flag ships). In one of the games
I had to tap the square and circle buttons as fast as possible to charge my
energy, then hold the X button to run up a steep hill, and quickly press X
again to hold on before you fall. This is done while hanging onto the back of
a giant bird that resembles a Final Fantasy chocobo.
Middle-games take place at half time. They include a sports game that could be
described as dodge ball meets Bomberman. Players are put on teams. 1st place
hooks up with 3rd place, while 2nd place is stuck with 4th. Together you must
pass the ball (a bomb with a short fuse) and throw it at your opponents to
deplete their life bars. Bombs can be dodged, but they can also be caught and
returned to sender. This mini-game – or rather, middle-game – is a lot of fun
and is going to be enjoyed by dodge ball lovers everywhere.
Sailing into stores just in time for the carnival
season, One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival ships this May. There are dozens more
mini-games than the ones talked about in this preview, many of which are still
being perfected for the final version. Expect to engage in memory games, a
round of darts, more boss battles, and more multiplayer mayhem than you can
cram into one article.
