Wild Seas Xbox Series X Review – Will our review smile at a crocodile? 

The premise is that you play a friendly crocodile, the guardian of a mighty jewel that protects four nearby islands. However, evil pirates are now sailing towards the islands and covet that jewel. Your job is to protect it. Your first port of call should be the Tutorial, which explains the basics of the gameplay.

Your crocodile is armed with a club that can hit enemies, deflect their projectiles, and break open crates or smash down foliage. Moving the right analogue stick changes your aim. There are also treasure chests to be opened. Most of these contain gold coins that are spent on buying new turrets. There are six different types, with the more expensive turrets being more accurate and powerful. One important lesson not clearly explained in the tutorial is the Curator turret – this fires healing bullets at the crocodile. Once you have placed a turret, you might also find a spanner by opening a treasure chest; standing next to a turret and pressing A while holding a spanner will upgrade and strengthen the turret. However, if you are carrying a turret or landmine – yet another object that can be found in chests and placed to hurt enemies – you cannot use your staff or perform a Dash. The Dash is on the left trigger and helps you move faster with a short burst of speed.

To complete the tutorial, you must defeat the dummies and collect enough coins from the treasure chests left behind. Then you can move onto the ship and sail off to the main game. Here you reach the first of the four islands to protect. The large jewel is placed on the island playing field, near the shop that stocks the all-important turrets. You have a brief time before each wave to PREPARE by opening chests and smashing crates, purchasing turrets to defend the jewel. Then the first wave attacks, firing guns at you or waving swords. Time the swing of your staff right and you can knock their projectiles back at them to cause damage. The enemies aim to destroy the jewel, so place your turrets and landmines to protect the approach to the jewel. As you defeat enemies, they will drop more coins and occasionally fruit that is eaten to replenish your energy bar (shown top left). If you run out of energy, you must start again at the first wave of the island. Survive through all the waves, with more preparation time between each one, and defeat the boss to move on to the next island.

The pixel art style is chunky but simplistic. Most objects are clear to understand, and it is not taxing the console. Sound and music are humdrum and routine. There are two main drawbacks with Wild Seas. The first is that there are only four islands, making it a short game. But the consequence is that even the first island is tough to master until you learn to use a Curator turret to heal yourself. Unfortunately, the action soon becomes repetitive.

One other key thing to mention is the Achievements. This is one of several games from Afil Games that underwent a rapid Title Update, adding extra Achievements (17 for the base game and 6 for the update, totalling 2000 points). This is then seen as a good and cheap way to boost Gamerscore, rightly or wrongly. This also gives unusual amounts of Gamerscore, with multiple 58s and a harder-to-achieve 72.

Wild Seas Xbox Series X Review Summary:

Wild Seas is a basic and repetitive tower defence game that can be criticised for its design and attitude to Achievements. The combination of high difficulty and a limited number of levels makes it ultimately unsatisfying for most players. It is the definition of cheap and cheerful.