Arrr, matey! Playmobil, the international toy line of playsets and figures that encourages imaginative role-play, now lets your kids pretend to be a swashbuckling pirate on the Nintendo DS. In Playmobil: Pirates, be a buccaneer and search for treasure maps to help rescue the mermaid from a wicked army.

Playmobil: Pirates is, at heart, a 2-D platform jumping adventure. In fact, it’s almost exactly like its sister game: Playmobil: Knights (kind of like this review, heh heh). You’ll usually talk with a person in port who will send you on a fetch quest in a short, 2-D obstacle course to retrieve an item. Along the way you’ll defeat enemy soldiers and collect coins to spend on equipment in town. You can buy new ships and keep them repaired and armed as your means of transportation around the various islands. From time to time, you’ll also have the chance to play a touch screen mini-game. The graphics are colorful and retail the playful spirit of the toy line. Control in the 2-D sidescrolling sections is simple, but a bit slow.

Kid Factor:

Playmobil: Pirates is rated E-10 for Everyone 10 and up with ESRB descriptors of Alcohol Reference, Mild Cartoon Violence, Mild Language, and Simulated Gambling. In one mission, you must deliver a barrel of rum to an island. But what’s a pirate adventure without a little ‘yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum?” In some of the mini-games, you use dice, so that’s where the simulated gambling comes from. Violence is mild. Defeated enemies just sit down in a slump and disappear. Reading skill is a must as everything is in text. What’s strange is that even though Pirates is rated E-10, it’s actually better suited for younger gamers than Playmobil: Knights (rated E), because it’s less complex and easier to understand. Older gamers might get bored of the endless fetch quest gameplay, though.

Tags: Game Reviews