Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet

It's not often that I fall in love with a video game character from the very first word, but that's exactly what happened when I met Nelly Cootalot. From the moment she popped up with her strawberry hair and happy-go-lucky attitude, I knew there was something special about this wannabe pirate. She was funny without being sarcastic, endlessly eager instead of being cynical. It almost didn't matter if her adventure was any good, because all I wanted to do was spend time listening to Nelly talk about pirating.

Thankfully, the adventure is nearly as strong as our unlikely hero. Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a hilarious new point and click adventure game from comedian Alasdair Beckett-King. It stars a young woman pining to become a fearsome pirate captain, but instead of getting into battles on the high sea, she's stuck working the mailroom of the M.S. Undeliverable. But when her mentor, the ghost of William Bloodbeard, shows up and talks of birds perishing, the redheaded sailor leaps into action and gets herself mixed up in a life and death struggle of comedic proportions.

As it turns out, Baron Widebeard has used The Treasure of the Seventh Sea to cast a spell and turn the world's bird population into an unstoppable fighting force. This sends Nelly on an adventure that will involve a lot of talking to random strangers, picking up weird items, solving puzzle and maybe, if you're lucky, some swashbuckling pirate action.

For better or worse, this is a very traditional point and click adventure game. This isn't cinematic like Telltale's The Walking Dead, but rather plays out like the hits from the 1980s and 90s. It's a game built around having lengthy conversations and using questionable puzzle logic to get past the many silly challenges. If you're not into games like The Secret of Monkey Island or Full Throttle, then you probably won't get much out of The Fowl Fleet. No matter how loveable Nelly Cootalot is.

Although she starts out in the mailroom, the spunky hero quickly finds a way off of the boat and onto dry land. She'll spend most of her time poking around The Guttering Howls, a seaside community with a thriving commercial district, a race track for gambling, a folk singer and plenty of lazy puns in the Chinatown district. Each of these areas is populated with colorful characters and a lot of funny dialog options.

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It won't take long for Nelly to get caught up in the city's inner politics. It seems like everybody is at each other's throats and people are on edge after a spate of burglaries. If Nelly is going to track down and stop Baron Widebeard, then she's going to need to run a bunch of errands and solve the local problems.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet suffers from a lot of problems that have long plagued the point and click adventure game genre. For starters, the game tends to get bogged down in one large location instead of shuffling off from area to area. And while the pirate pirating stuff eventually happens, it comes after a lengthy detour in The Guttering Howls. More than anything else, this brought the snappy pacing to a grinding halt.

The game also suffers from some bafflingly nonsensical puzzle logic. Even as a seasoned pro of this style of graphic adventure, I still found myself stuck in too many trial and error scenarios. Often the problem will come down to not talking to people in the right order, something that stalled my progress for longer than I would care to admit. Of course, this is no different from any point and click adventure game, but it still left me walking around in circles looking for the right answer.

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The good news is that even when you're stuck, you'll still run into plenty of funny conversations and pirate jokes. I couldn't wait to talk to every person in town, and I was rarely let down by the interaction. Everybody has a funny story to tell or something that makes them truly unique. There's the sailor who is self-conscious about his lack of chest hair, a curmudgeonly harbor master who cheats at board games, a very angry chef making junk food in Chinatown and an hipster teen ready to find the next hot musician. And best of all, Sebastian, Nelly's talking bird friend, weighs in on each and every one of these oddballs.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is the very definition of charming. From the beautiful hand-drawn graphics to the hilarious voice acting, every inch of this game is brimming with style. Unfortunately, that may not be enough for people who aren't already into point and click adventure games, but fans of the genre are in for a real treat. I can only hope there are many more high sea adventures in Nelly's future.