This game sucks , don’t even bother with the trial.

The End.

Wouldn’t it have been great if that was all I said?

It would be funny, but I figure I should at least tell you why to avoid this game like the plague.

Yo-Ho Kablammo is a pirate-themed shooter that pits your ship against up to 3 others.

There are 2 separate goals, depending on which game mode you are playing.

Either you need to have the most points at the end of the time limit, or you need to destroy all the other ships.

The game by default controls like an old-school GTA game. You automatically move forward, and pushing the stick to the left turns your ship to the left, and pushing right turns your ship to your right.

Thankfully, you can change the control scheme to allow movement similar to what you find in Geometry Wars – Move the stick in the direction you want to go.

Now here’s where things get really annoying. Your ship is equipped with cannons. Some on the left and some on the right. To fire the cannons on the left, you pull the left trigger. To fire the cannons on the right, you have to pull the right trigger.

The cannons fire straight out from the sides. Not forward or backward – straight out. So if your ship is moving straight up, pulling the left trigger would cause cannons to shoot out toward the left side of the screen.

In the heat of battle, you can easily become confused by which side of the ship is the “left” side, so you will more than likely end up missing because you pulled the wrong trigger.

And yes, I realize that this setup is more historically accurate. But that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

In addition to your cannons, there will be a literal shit-ton of mines on the map. They initially start out grey, which means they are neutral. Sail over a neutral mine to make it yours, and the color will change to match that of your ship. Again, not so bad an idea on paper, but there get to be so many mines that you literally will not be able to dodge them after a while.

There are also crates littering the water. These crates contain powerups that you can use against your opponents. There’s one that shoots your ship very fast in a straight line – to be used to ram an opponent, and there are also some more unconventional ones – such as one that cause all the ships to gain balloons which lift them out of the water so you can fly. The problem with these powerups is balance. For example, the ramming ability moves you very fast, and covers a fairly large distance. If you were to have to respawn, the ram could be used from across the map to take you out while you are still trying to get going. I fell victim to this many times – and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Graphically, the game looks like it was originally designed for a Nintendo 64. It uses a psuedo cell shaded look in conjunction with a very uninspired design. I’ve seen better looking flash games.

The audio is repetitive and boring. The main theme song is about 8 seconds long – but it loops indefinitely. The same goes for the music you hear while playing. Short clips looped over and over gain.

I wanted to try and test out the multiplayer – but I couldn’t find any games. Checking the overall leaderboards, I found a mere 244 entries. A total of 244 people have played this game online – most of which were probably other reviewers.

Do yourself a favor – ignore this game. It’s not fun, it’s not entertaining, it’s not worthy of your money.

Pros:

Umm….

It has pirates?

Cons:

Terrible default controls

Terrible gameplay

Terrible graphics

Terrible sound

Yo-Ho Kablammo is a pathetic excuse of a game. This might have been able to stay afloat at the Arcade’s infancy, but now that developers have proven that you can actually make a decent arcade game, it’s about as buoyant as a block of lead.

Save your 800 space points and get Shadow Complex if you haven’t already.

Rating:

Tags: XBLA, Xbox live, Xbox Live Arcade, Yo-Ho Kablammo, Yo-Ho Kablammo Review

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