Galleon (Xbox)

When you're speeding along wooden bridges jutting out of the sheer rock, leaping and swinging from precariously placed beams and struts, the wind rippling your hair and flapping your coat tails, the sense of exhilaration is unlike almost anything else you've felt in an action game. Quite some feat for an adventure that was originally destined for creaky old (and now defunct!) Dreamcast hardware.

P-P-P-PIRATE POWER!
Now on Xbox, it's hard to imagine any other machine mighty enough to power the spectacularly smooth and fast game engine. You thought levels in Mario Sunshine and Prince Of Persia scaled mental heights? Galleon raises the bar into the stratosphere. Literally.

Then there's the character animation and the voice acting that are so incredibly believable you'll swear you're watching a Pixar movie. Or the story, that's as gripping and full of romance and intrigue as Pirates Of The Caribbean. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Forgive me, but I'm just so excited that something that has taken so long to put together has turned out to be such a gem.

Captain Rhama is the hero of the hour, and it's clear from his chunky jawline, pasty moonface and oddly proportioned limbs that he has been designed by the creator of Lara Croft.

The story too has a whiff of Tomb Raider about it. Rhama is sucked into a web of intrigue as he explores the islands of the Forbidden Sea, tracking a mysterious stolen galleon, and the hidden powers and secrets it holds, negotiating catacombs and ancient towering settlements along the way.

But the similarities to Tomb Raider end there. While Core Design seems to have been content with churning out the same old Lara game year after year, then spectacularly fouling it up with the PlayStation 2 version, Confounding Factor has taken everything that was good about Lara's adventures, and overhauled it all for the next generation - almost beyond all recognition.

Like, for instance, the way your heroes move. Every step, hop and run of each of the game's characters, like Rhama, love interest Faith or dirty sea dog Jabez is animated with delicate movements that perfectly suit each character's personality. Rhama stands proud, chest out, grabbing ledges and swinging swords with all the confidence of a veteran of the seas. Faith is timid and hesitant, Jabez is stealthy and slinky.

ONLY LOSERS FIGHT SOLO
Control too is sublime, though unusual. You control the camera rather than Rhama and he'll follow where you point him. Most of the time it amounts to the same thing as controlling Rhama himself, but really comes into its own when navigating tight areas: as long as you're gentle with the stick and point in the general direction you want to end up in, Rhama will obey.

Better yet, it means when Rhama's dashing at a full, dizzying sprint, he'll automatically scamper across small obstacles or roll under gaps without you having to worry about timing any button presses or slowing down your gallop.

As soon as you recruit new characters during your quest, you can issue them commands using the intuitive inventory system. Using the right stick to cycle through options while still playing the game with the left stick if you want to, you can get Faith to heal Rhama or others, or get help negotiating puzzles. It's dead clever, and the witty way the heroes chat to each other while co-operating is perfectly in keeping with the strong story and character-driven gameplay (see Do As I Say Bee-Yatch, boxout).

The puzzles themselves are as varied and imaginative as any found in The Wind Waker, and perhaps even more acrobatically demanding than the leaping and spinning of Prince Of Persia. They're totally logical too. At one point Rhama needs to fix a broken lift. There's no battery handily lying around, though. Instead, you need to find a peg to attach the lift car to the pulley, but when you find it the peg is bent out of shape.

It's up to you to find a fiery room where the boat-makers forge their metal and bend the peg back into shape. To do this though, you need to first find a hammer with which to mould the peg back into shape and some water to cool the whole thing down afterwards. It's entertaining, engaging and a totally believable way to fix the problem you've encountered.

There's usually more than one way to tackle the platform puzzles too and replaying sections you've previously struggled with to find new routes, new ways of winning and exciting secret treasures only adds to the pure 100 per cent proof feeling of joy you get from playing.

LOVING THE MAIN SAIL

Galleon's an awesome game, but it's hard to appreciate just how spectacular it is without seeing the thing in motion. When you see the intricacies of the character animation, or witness the precise way each beam, platform and trap has been designed so it sits in the perfect place for you to negotiate, that's when you understand just how much love and craft has gone into making Galleon a golden nugget of gaming excellence.