I'm a big fan of the XBLA and a PSN titles that are floating about all over the place, unfortunately this makes it fairly hard to distinguish the quality titles from the riffraff, thankfully both the XBL Marketplace and the PS Store feature user ratings now.

Age of Booty is what you might call a Real Time Strategy. (RTS) You basically command one ship, which has upgradable sails, cannons and armour plating. The game can have a total of 8 ships on the map at one time. (minus neutral ships)

The single player mode can be frustrating, in the campaign, you face alarming odds, and if you do happen to have any AI allies, they don't help you much, they have little idea of how to help you. Basically they're programmed to collect crates, drive straight to the enemy and die. Thus the offline mode is far better played with friends or at least playing with fair odds.

The deathmatches are far better than the campaign mode thankfully. Offline you can have up to 4 human players in a match, plus 4 AI. Which can make for some nice 2vs2vs2vs2, 4vs4 or Free For All action. There is a fairly decent amount of maps available to start you off with, as well as some free downloadable maps, you can also download maps off players that you play with online. As well as make your own maps in the games map editor.

All this talk and i forgot to tell you what you actually do in the game! Basically the objective is to either capture a certain amount of towns, or own the most towns when the time runs out. All towns start off neutral, usually with basic defenses, a single slightly upgraded ship could take them down without much trouble, after the town has been defeated, you will begin capturing it, if an enemy ship approaches the town, you will stop the capturing procedure and will have to sink the enemy ship to continue with the process.

Towns aren't just objects that you need to control in order to win the game, they also supply you (or your team) with vital resources, which you can use to upgrade town defenses or your ships. Owning the key towns on a map can decide who wins the game. Only three resources are present in the game: Rum, Gold and Wood. Rum and Wood are required for ship upgrades, while Gold and Wood are required for Town upgrades.

Because the game is won by owning 'control points' as you might call them in the FPS's nowadays, it can make for some craziness when your doing an 8 player free for all.

Imagine a map with 10 towns, 8 players all fighting each other, and you need 3 towns in order to win the game? Sounds nearly impossible doesnt it? Trust me it gives you a massive headache trying to use your single ship to protect all 3 of your towns, especially when there are ships swarming all over them. Game's like these can last for ages, im talking close to an hour if the players are evenly matched. The best strategy in a situation like that, is to try and save up and give your towns the best upgrades possible, this will mean that they can fend off a single ship on its own, but if it gets overun by several ships firing at it at once, no amount of upgrades will protect it.

The game didn't receive the best of ratings on the PS Store or the XBL Marketplace, but i still think its ranked near the top of my list for the best arcade game. On the XBL Marketplace it costs a mere 400 MSP (£3.60) on the PS Store it costs a hefty £7.99, the XBL price is certainly worth it, however i bought my version on the PS Store when they had it on a sale for £3.99, if you want this game, wait for it to go on sale again or just buy it on the Xbox.

Oh and i forgot to mention, the game also supports guests in online play, which means you and 3 of your friends can take on the world!