Developer: Firaxis Games
Producer: Atari
Sid Meier’s Pirates! – Live the Life!
When Pirates! debuted on the Commodore 64 in 1987, it became one of
the most critically acclaimed games of all time and was the benchmark for
swashbuckling adventure. It was so good that 17 years later people were still
hanging on to their old C64’s or using various software emulators just to play
the original game (my preference was the Amiga version). For years fans have
asked--even begged--for a new update to this true gaming classic. Well, it’s
the year 2004 and Sid Meier’s Pirates! (the remake) has finally set
sail. The new version stays very faithful to the original’s open ended,
addictive design and fans of Pirates! will literally be able to set sail
without even cracking opening the manual. However, even though it plays like
the classic game, the new Pirates! contains many innovative additions and
gameplay elements so that even old fans will find lots to do in this new (old)
world.
Pirates! takes a light-hearted, whimsical look at an era and lifestyle that
were anything but enjoyable. While the setting is based on the actual
locations and nationalities of the period, the game itself is more Hollywood
than historical. Your character looks like he came from a Disney animation
studio. There is no blood, no gritty scenes of death or torture. Swordfights
usually end with someone getting dunked in the briny sea. And everyone in the
game has teeth! It’s all about fantasy, adventure, and just having some
fun. This may turn off the so-called ‘hard core’ gamer who is looking for
ultra realism. While there is violence (sword fights, ship and land battles)
the games ‘E’ rating assures it’s all done in the name of good clean fun.
Gameplay is vintage Pirates! You start out by selecting a suitable
pirate name (like Captain Bloody Hell), one of 5 difficulty levels, a
particular skill you excel at (fencing, sailing, navigation, medicine, or
charm), a starting era and lastly the nationality you will be representing.
You can play almost exclusively from the numeric keypad and onscreen icons
show you the key commands during the various action sequences. Entering a town
and dealing with governors, taverns, merchants, etc. is all handled through
the familiar text-based menu system of choices and actions. You begin with a
small ship and crew, a little gold, and the whole Caribbean to explore and
conquer.
Your main goal is to find members of your family who were kidnapped when
you were a young boy and avenge them against the evil Marquis Montalban. How
you accomplish this is up to you and your career can take many different paths
along the way. Pirates! contains a multitude of quests and goals,
so many that
you may not complete them all in one career outing. You’ll encounter famous
pirates like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. Defeating them will not only
make you more famous, they usually carry a lot of gold on board. These pirates
also have buried treasure which you locate by acquiring treasure maps and then
doing a little land-based treasure hunting. There are lost cities of gold to
find and villains to capture and return for rewards. You can upgrade your ship
with better sails and cannons, or add specialists to keep your crew happy or
perform repairs at sea. Special items like balanced swords, puffy ‘Seinfeld’
shirts, spyglasses, and medicine provide enhanced capabilities to your
character. Of course, you’ll also want to get married, get promoted to Duke in
all 4 countries, amass a fortune in gold, acres of land, and retire as the
number one pirate in the game. Yes, a pirate’s life is a busy one!
Adding to the challenge your time is limited by the advancement of old age.
This keeps the pace of the game constantly moving, because as you get older,
your skills will start to erode making everything more difficult. Some of the
special items will counteract the aging process but only for so long.
The world of Pirates! is alive and full of atmosphere. The graphics as you
sail the Caribbean present a lush and serene tropical setting. You’ll
see and hear waves crashing against the rocks (notice the shipwrecks from
those who got too close to the shallows!). A school of dolphins may frolic in
your wake. Violent storms, the creaking sounds of your wooden hull, the
flapping of sails, all bring the game to life. The sea lanes are crowded with
ships of the 4 nationalities and of course, other pirates. Every ship in the
game is actively on its own mission to deliver goods, immigrants, soldiers, or
peace offerings. You can somewhat affect the economy and politics of the area
by preventing a new governor from reaching a town or attacking a military
payroll ship. You may be asked to escort a governor or deliver a peace treaty.
And you’re not the only one doing the fighting, you’ll run into pirates and
privateers who are actively attacking shipping and ports. It’s sometimes just
fun watching all this action going on around you. The major historical ports
of the time are represented in more or less their accurate locations. Random
smaller settlements, pirate havens, and Indian villages are included and can
be used to direct pirate or Indian attacks against fortified towns you want to
soften up before you move in to take the town yourself.
Besides new features like dancing and sneaking through town, the basics of
ship battles, fencing and land warfare have been updated and in the case of
land battles, revamped entirely.
Is it me or does the Dutch guy look like the
Fonz? |
Alone again, naturally.
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Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned....
|
Sorry, this kind of action is cut scene only |
.
SEA BATTLES - Ship battles in Pirates! are better than ever. The
controls are simple and intuitive. The details of the many ships in the game
are excellent, while in battle you can see the crew swarming on the decks.
Deliver a well placed broadside, and pieces of cannons, goods and crew will
fly overboard. You now have a choice of either standard cannon balls, grape
shot to whittle down the crew, or chain shot to rip sails to shreds. The wind
must also be taken into account, especially at the higher difficulty levels.
You don’t want to miss stays and be stuck dead in the water as a frigate fires a full
broadside at your small sloop. Pirates! does not have a first-person
perspective as was found in Sea Dogs and Pirates of the Caribbean, all
maneuvering and battle take place from an overhead third person view. Despite the fact that it’s often a detriment to
damage a ship (hurts your resale value), it’s so much fun that you’ll do it
anyway.
FENCING - In many ways this is easier than in the original game. You have 3
offensive and 3 defensive moves as well as a couple ‘special’ moves, like kicking
a nearby bucket at your opponent. Your speed and reaction time depends on
skill level, attributes, age and any special items to enhance your abilities
(you can acquire a Seinfeld ‘puffy’ shirt!). The moves are exaggerated, so
it’s fairly easy to anticipate what attack is coming and how to counter. Some
of your opponents have enough skill to keep you fencing for several minutes. The
endings are scripted to a just a few different conclusions but are very well done
and entertaining to watch.
LAND
BATTLES - Land battles are now a turn-based affair, a cross between
Civ3 and Sid Meier’s Gettysburg. Using the terrain, cover, and attack/defend
attributes of your units, you fight in a chess-like style as you try to destroy the defending
army and/or move one or more units to the gates of the town. Ingredients such
as unit morale and attacking exposed flanks are included. Completely overwhelm the attacking
force and you can install a new governor of your choice. If you have a slower
machine, it can take some time as you wait for all the units to finish moving,
a feature to turn off the animations like in Civ3 would have helped here.
However, if you have the patience, land battles are one of the more
challenging parts of the game and provide an interesting change of pace.
SNEAKING
INTO TOWN - In the original, if you needed to do business in a town
that that is hostile to you, you just clicked on the ‘Sneak into Town’ option
and the game decided if you were successful or not. Now, you have to actually
do it. You quietly try to make your way to either the Governors mansion or the
tavern while avoiding guards with searchlights who will toss you in jail if
you slip up and get caught. You can sneak quietly, run which creates noise and
attracts attention, jump walls and hide behind bails of hay. Basically, it’s a
simple maze game (Pacman?), and while fun the first couple times, it’s the
least interesting of the new additions. I still like to do it on occasion for
a change of pace but since there are other ways to get back in favor with a
town, sneaking is not a necessity and can be avoided if you don’t want to deal
with the time it takes to accomplish.
DANCING - Oh yeah,
mate--dancing. Not only does this game give you a chance to search for booty,
you get to shake your booty. Probably the most talk on the fan sites involves
dancing. It’s either loved or hated, and probably the hardest part of the game
to master. To be successful requires good hand/eye coordination, nimble
fingers on the keypad, and at least a decent sense of rhythm. If you’re really
‘in the groove’, you can woo her with several flourishes, which can help
cancel out any missteps you take. Bottom line, if you want to marry the pretty
governor’s daughter and get a bunch of free items like balanced swords and
other items, then you gotta learn to dance. It’s really not that bad, as every
dance is just a series of combinations that you’ll start to figure out the
more you do it. But it does require more concentration than any other part of
the game.
Adding to the already good looking graphics, the music score and sound
effects are very well done. Instead of individual language tracks, Pirates
uses a ‘Sims’ like generic slang which has been dubbed ‘Firaxian’ speak. Each
nation has its own theme that plays when you enter ports. Your crew merrily
sings pirate songs after a successful plunder, the pounding of drums sounds as
pirate hunters chase you, and other music and sound queues keep you informed
on what is happening and add to the immersion.
Out of the box, Pirates! is one of the
most problem free games I’ve played
in years. After nearly three weeks of constant play (and I mean constant!),
I’ve not experienced one lockup or system crash. Nearly everything works as it
should but there are a few things worth noting. The spiral bound manual,
while very well done, is missing some information and game controls that have
caused some confusion among players. For example, some new players may think
the wind is be ‘broken’ because it’s always blowing from the east. The manual
omits the informative section of the original that explains the trade winds
in that part of the world. At the advanced realism settings the wind speed and
direction has a greater degree of variation. Also the keyboard reference section doesn’t include
the commands for sneaking through town, leaving players wondering how to get
your character to run (it’s the Shift key). There have also been reports of
problems getting the game to properly work with laptop keyboards. Also
note--Pirates! is a single-player only game.
The opened-ended nature of a game like this sometimes produces interesting
results that may not always make sense. The governor/country AI works in such
a way that it seems like they never get that angry at you no matter how bad
you mistreat them. Actually what’s happening is that they will become hostile
to you if you constantly attack their ships and towns. But, as long as you’re
also attacking their enemies, like nations they’re at war with or other
pirates, then any bad attitudes your attacks caused kind of cancel out. This
makes it too easy to get promoted by the same people you’ve just plundered.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a particular town’s attitude toward you
will not always be the same as their country's overall attitude. Finally, it
seems you can travel for a quite a while without any food on board, maybe
they’re fishing?
As a remake,
Sid Meier’s Pirates! is outstanding. It completely captures
the spirit and highly addictive gameplay of the original. The pace is such
that you are always within reach of something, a new piece of a treasure map,
the location of Blackbeard, rescuing that last family member. You’ll find
yourself saying ‘Ok, I’m going to do just one more thing’. The next thing you
know, a couple hours have blown by. It may not appeal to the hard core gamer,
who might find it simple and repetitive, and in some ways it is. But without a
doubt, the game is just plain fun. It’s the kind of easy going, relaxing good
time that will give this game a long life. You may put it down for a while and
go on to other interests, but like the original, Pirates! will keep you coming
back for ‘Just one more voyage’.
Also see:
SUBSIM.COM'S
Pirates! forum
Addicted to Pirates "Talking Parrot forum"
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