Galleon

High jinks on the high seas breeds high expectations...

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Ahoy there land-lubbers, avast me hearties, and other sea-faring clichéd greetings to you all. If you're still here that is. Patience may be a virtue, but four years is surely a time frame long enough to test the attention span of angels. I was a fresh faced stroppy fourteen year old when development started on this game a hefty seven years ago, and it's not just me that's experienced a wealth of changes - back then, the PSone reigned supreme, football games still featured far too brightly coloured box-men, and Lara Croft was every bloke's favourite drool tool. Now, with ultra-realistic graphics taking their place as a stable requirement for most games, new consoles more impressive than the best PC back then, and a wealth of digitally enhanced silicone beauties populating nearly every in-game environment, can a game created with the objective to be better than the original Tomb Raider really stand out as anything remarkable in today's market?

Enter Galleon like the late-comer into an important meeting. Such situations usually take one of two routes depending on who the tardy employee is. If he's the young rising star of the company, it's probable that he'll enter with a great deal of crashing and fuss, only to reveal his fantastic ideas and ingenuity, dominating the remaining minutes and emerging as the hero of the hour; however, if he's the ageing middle management, he'll slink in, sit partially obscured in the corner, and probably speak too quietly for anyone to hear him, which is just as well, because no-one cares about what he has to say in any case. Which is Galleon to be? A couple of years ago, there'd have been no doubt in our minds that the game was to be the decisive and exciting new ground-breaker - the paragon of all future games: Galleon would (eventually) speak, and we'd all listen. And we'd have been fools not to: Toby Gard's vision promised exquisite graphics of a standard never seen before, an absorbing blockbuster plot, dynamic action and a superb control system. It was everything we loved about Lara's adventures, but in a fresher and improved mode, with a ton of other surprises to delight us. But now, the young go-getter isn't quite so young, and his ideas seem more like ideals. Galleon arrives, and we don't know whether to look up, or just spare it the embarrassment of high expectations and a front row seat and quietly let it settle into its place among the others.

I must admit, I brought all this baggage to the game. Trying to be impartial, but failing miserably, I couldn't help but have great expectations of this self-professed classic. And, do you know what? Some of them weren't even disappointed.

Because Galleon really is a classic is the best sense of the word. The plot, for example, is nothing short of marvellous, and if anything is going to keep you playing, it's this element of the game. Set back in the good old days when men were Men, and women wore corsets for everyday activities like cooking, cleaning, and kicking-ass Ninja style, Captain Rhama, the hero with the squarest jaw on the seven seas, arrives with his crew to an intriguing island, drawn by a mysterious letter from a wealthy healer requesting his help. What follows is part Shakespearean and part vintage Hollywood; the old healer Areliano turns out to be a budding Prospero complete with magic staff and an impossibly breasted, sheltered daughter, Faith, who's even more impressed by swaggering newcomer Rhama than we are (which admittedly takes some doing). Jabez, the evil apprentice, is a mixture of Othello's Iago and Aladdin's Jafar - leching over Faith and generally oozing malcontent with a charismatic flair. His band of intellectually-challenged henchmen, who incidentally all look the same, help him to steal the mysterious ship that Rhama has been invited to look at, killing Areliano in the process. The scenes that lead up to this point have all been in-game integrated training, delivered interestingly in a satisfying way that running around the grounds of Lara's mansion fell short of.

All of these characters, and eventually a few more (such as the beautiful but deadly freed slave and martial arts master, Mihoko, with whom our captain also engages in a romantic liaison) , have well developed personal motivation, and the voice acting for each is superb, a rarity in games even today. The lip synching is also very impressive, making somewhat stylised skinny-legged characters seem much more human. But it's our hero who steals the show on the character front; Rhama exudes the kind of arrogant charisma suited to a pirate that Errol Flynn made famous in Captain Blood. And his charms don't end there. Gamers will be pleased to find him worthy of his arrogance: the man can jump forty feet from a small run up, scale incredible heights, swim like a dolphin (albeit a drunken one when controlled by me due to the frustration of the camera angles, but I'll come back to that), and dispatch at least five bad guys in one swift round-house Kung-fu kick. He's Errol Flynn, Bruce Willis, James Bond and Bruce Lee, which takes some doing.