Blood Wake offers a high variety of boats to choose from, but they’re basically 10 different weapons platforms with varying top speeds and armor. Well, maybe that’s a bit unfair. The styles range from catamarans to sampans to the Devil Boat, each including various worth depending on what you’re looking for.

The offensive weapons are varied enough to be interesting, and getting the hang of the rocket launcher is enough to make your day.

There are torpedoes, cannons, machine guns and more to learn. Each has its own use, and once you acquire a variety, you start to plan attacks on the enemy better. As you progress through the levels your skills and tactics developed with you.

Still, the bottom line is you need to go as fast as you can and shooting as much as you can. Everything else is just frosting.

Major pluses:

• Health and Ammo. It’s a lot of fun to fly around the water looking for bobbing crates of goodness — first aid and ammo — after a long battle with lots of victims. (Unfortunately there is no body count.) Zipping over the crates, in order to obtain them, as they float between rocks is a neat trick. When you don’t need the crates, they just bounce off the boat.
• Power-ups. In battle mode, the glimmering halos are frequent and useful. They’re worth cruising at top speed looking for. You can pick up such additives as speed, accuracy and firepower.
• Easy means Easy. Even the lowest levels of difficulty on a balmy day are actually easy — and fun. The higher the levels, the more difficulty, and some levels take several repeats to master, even as Ensign (which is the easiest setting). It’s hard to know where the line is between challenging and frustrating ends and begins, but this game is closer than most.
• Ramming. It’s very satisfying to ram other boats, especially after they’ve been shooting you for some time. Sometimes the boats flip around like breaching whales, and other times the craft slams into the water nose first, to totally submerge. Good fun.
• Sniping. Long-range shooting is addicting. It is incredibly satisfying to turn a long-distance target into smoking embers, then zip by and pick up the spare ammo or health.

"Your name is Shao Kai. You were formerly a lieutenant with the Northern League, but thanks to Ped Zeng, leader and warlord of the Shadow Clan, you have been rescued. Your rescue comes with a price. In exchange for your life you have been conscripted into the Shadow Clan for your skippering expertise to fight against the Shadow Clan’s enemies: the Jade Kingdom and the Iron Empire."

In story mode you move through 25 different levels, fighting on rivers, in bays, etc. The scenarios aren’t too monotonous; sometimes there are treasure chests to collect at the top of ramps, while other times you just shoot everything in sight. Actually, most of the time you just shoot everything in sight on general principle.

There were some extreme examples of dissonance, however. For a game ostensibly set in the Far East, the main character has a decidedly California surfer-dude voice. That was jarringly wrong. Similarly, the Asian voices seem stereotypically clipped and slightly stupid; turning the sound down is the easiest fix. Oddly, some of the good guys were dressed in green uniforms, closely resembling G.I. Joe, while the bad guys had classic Chinese hats on.

Truth be told, I liked playing another human in Battle Mode best. Even in choppy water under overcast skies, with untold numbers of sunken reefs and exposed rocks, it was more fun to chase a person than to outwit the computer. Multiplayer is the ol’ split screen, and goes up to four players.

Here are some of the major dislikes:

• My boat kept coming to a halt unexpectedly as my thumb tired.
• The damage physics were mercifully unrealistic; but brass casings are too quiet, as if the producers never saw The Matrix.
• With a title like Blood Wake, it’s a wonder the producers didn’t let you take the propeller to shipwreck survivors. Since there’s so little blood involved, the title seemed a stretch.
• More boats! And can we make our own?
• Press start to pause, from the same minds that gave us Start to quit.