There must be a bored (desperate) psychology student somewhere that can delve into the depths to figure out our obsession with zombies, nazis and pirates. Each one is a go-to player in game design and each one, in real life, offers plenty of reason why they shouldn't be. Pirates, for example, have been known to slaughter innocent people while stealing whatever they can and burning whatever they can't. Regardless, the life of a pirate is always more attractive than yours, and Age of Booty is further proof.
In Age of Booty, your goal is to capture more cities than the other pirates. You can either race to control a certain number of towns or under a time limit. All you have to do to take over said towns is drive up next to one like it's a Caribbean Sonic. The fight starts automatically - your ship's cannon against the town's. You can upgrade the defenses and cannon of your ships and towns, and you obviously pick where to go next, but that's the basics and it's as easy to get started playing as any game we've seen in a long time.
The upgrades you'll need are paid for in the form of wood, rum and gold, which are produced by your captured towns, by finding crates floating in the ocean or by taking the goodies from merchant ships. Those merchants also bestow powerful toys like bombs that clean up tiles and whirlpools that can transport your ship across the map.
The computer-controlled opponents (and allies) do a lot of dumb stuff, so the strategy involved in capturing towns often boils down to exploiting their tendencies. But against real people the intended strategies of the game take a more logical shape. And with up to four players in the room or eight online, 30 maps and a map editor that's extremely easy to use, there's a lot of potential for chess matches.
Ideally, games wouldn't stand out for getting the things right that Age of Booty gets right - like allowing live players in the same room to play on the same TV. But a lot of XBL games assume you only want to play online. If video games are going to replace the board games of the past (and really, they should), things like that have to be the norm. Age of Booty gets huge points for common sense multi-player options and for being an entertaining, polished strategy game that's perfect for a quick or medium length game fix for small groups.
