One Piece: Pirates' Carnival review

The popular crew from One Piece take to the seas once more, this time in an Othello-style clash packed to the gills with mini-games

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Pirates' Carnival features a healthy selection of 35 or so mini-games, and unlike Mario Party, these aren't button mashers that'll wear out your controllers. The mini-games include standard brawling, boss fights versus pirate captains, parachuting onto boats, firing canons at moving targets, a simple first-person shooter, and sports-based contests like basketball and dodgeball. A few are a bit confusing, but overall they're easy to pick up and decent fun to play.

This is a good-looking game, too. It's not technologically impressive but it runs smoothly and really captures the distinctive look of the "One Piece" characters, albeit in super-deformed style.There's lots of nifty voice-acting and situation-specific dialogue, too, which fans should appreciate.

Unfortunately, load times put a bit of a damper on the action; the game is constantly pausing to load voice conversations, mini-games, and unskippable instruction screens.

More info

GenreFamily
DescriptionTake one whacked-out anime series, add in a pirates' chest of minigames and mix well. Pour onto an Othello board.
Platform"PS2","GameCube"
US censor rating"Rating Pending","Rating Pending"
UK censor rating"",""
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