Namco Bandai has brought many popular anime cartoon series to the interactive world of gaming consoles in the past few months. The latest addition to the collection is a party game based on the pirate themed cartoon, Shonen Jump’s One Piece. One Piece is the story of a water filled world where pirates are not so rare on the high seas. One pirate, known as Gold Roger and considered the King of the Pirates, had an immense treasure that he had collected over his travels. As he was set to be executed, he put a call to all the pirates of the land that his treasure was up for grabs and all that was needed to be done was find it. He let it be known that his treasure could indeed be found and it would be found in “One Piece”. From that day on, many pirates, including a very colorful cast of characters from all over the world have searched high and low to find it to become the king of the pirates themselves. One Piece: Pirates Carnival is not a game that tells a story of the pirates or that leads you on a search for the treasure of Gold Roger, it is a party game that lets you and up to three other friends take the role of many characters from the television show and fight it out for title of champion.

Before the game starts, up to 4 players will need to chosen to participate in the match. Players can choose from 7 available characters which include the rubber armed Luffy, the freakishly armed Robin, the orange haired Nami and the highly obnoxious Usopp. Once the characters are picked, computer or friends, the game can then start. The action takes place on a large board that is made up of 25 square tiles. Some game boards are designed in different shapes, but each is made up of square tiles with each player having a color coded base block to call their own at one side of the board. Your goal is to take over as many of the tiles on the board as possible by winning mini-games that you will be challenged to. If you win, you win the tile. If you lose, whoever challenged you takes possession and it turns their color. Sounds simple enough but it really isn’t. As you and your opponents start to take over tiles, it’s inevitable that some tiles will be surrounded by enemy colored tiles. When you have one of your tiles being touched on opposite sides by an opponent’s tiles, they will take over your tile and it will turn their color. As you start to fill in the board with many tiles getting taken over, it’s not unheard of to take over 3 or 4 opponents tiles in one shot. This can be frustrating to you but it also raises the strategy of the game and makes you think about where you should chose to take your next tile and not just pick all willy-nilly. With each tile that you pick, it will reveal a card and the card determines the outcome of the turn being played.

There are 4 types of cards that card be picked and those cards will determine what game, if any, will be played. Mini-game cards will show a pirates caricature and how much that particular space is worth. Once the card is shown, the player will have a choice of three games to play, some more difficult than others depending on your preference. Once the choice is made, all four players will play against each other to be the victor of that particular game. Captain cards are like mini-game cards except these allow the person who over turned it to become the Captain and play against the other three players in a game. For these games, the Captain usually has an advantage over the other players, but it is a three on one game so victory is not guaranteed. Event cards don’t require players to play a mini-game but can change the outcome of the game in many ways. Some event cards do nothing more than give or take berries – the One Piece form of currency – or can be a little more intervening such as making players change tile places or freezing tiles so they can’t be taken over for a turn. The last type of card is called the Davy Back card. These cards allow the player to challenge another player’s tile and fight for possession of it. If the challenger wins, he takes over the opponent’s tile and again can cause some serious headaches if it causes a takeover chain reaction with other tiles the player already owns.

Games that can be played are varied from one to the other and players will quickly find that they have their favorites and some that make them cringe. With over 30 games that are available and all that are taken from the One Piece series in one way or another, fans of the cartoon should find each game setting or objective recognizable. Some games such as the pirate concentration where players simply need to flip squares over to match the images are nothing more than a memory game, where as games like Kung Fu Jugon will have you pulling your hair out as you race back and forth trying to clear out your area of Jugons while the other players are trying to fill it. The same goes for the Captain games, where no matter which side of the fight you are on, they are entertaining as well as challenging for the most part. If you find yourself not performing to well in the mini-games, have no fear. You can also play in a Versus mode where you can choose which games you want to play from those that you have collected through playing.

The cel shaded graphics and the bobble headed characters may not be for everyone but during the scenes where the matches are being set up, the cartoon images of characters are true to the cartoon itself. Party games definitely are not for everyone and One Piece isn’t quite as in depth as some other party games out there, namely the Mario series. If you and your friends are fans of the series, as popular as it is, Pirates Carnival would be a great way to kick back and have a friendly competition with each other. Those who are not familiar with the series or are a little older may not find the premise or even the gameplay itself all that interesting and not quite the party they were expecting.