For this review I’ve decided to set myself a challenge, it will be difficult, quite demanding and require reviewing skills I’ve never had to call upon before. With God as my witness I shall not use any piraty words or sayings. Such phrases as, “yar scurvey dogs”, and, “swash buckling”, have now been sent to "Davy Jones' Locker", mainly because I have no sodding idea what they mean anyway and don’t pretend you do either. Right let’s get started.
As you probably know Sid Meier’s Pirates is by that guy most famous for Sid Meier’s Civilization, what’s his name, Bob Dyer…..? Anywoo games like Sid Meier’s Civilization and many similar strategy type creations, are either pure digital crack or they are cut with a little bit too much talc and powdered glass to really keep you hooked into the small hours. For me at least, Sim City 2000, Transport Tycoon, Syndicate and Sid Meier's Civilization, were all the finest high grade yayo but pirates doesn’t seem to be 100% pure Colombian I had hoped for.
Maybe it’s because Sid Meier's Pirates is actually an upgrade of the Pirates game that Shamus McAier made back in 1987 for the C64. Back then you where a bit limited by what you could get to run, that's probably why it's not really a pure strategy game. It’s more an odd mix of sailing, mini games and bit of strategy thrown in for good measure. You start out during the 1600s as Jimmy (if you like) the young privateer on a quest to find your lost family who have been scattered throughout the Caribbean. First of all you have to choose a few basic attributes for your character. Main skills consisting of Gunnery, Swords Man, Charm (Ponce) or Medicine. Then you have to align with one of the four main nationalities which have decided to try and bring slavery, repression and smallpox to the natives. You have English, French, Dutch, Spanish but - sadly for me - no Welsh. After choosing the difficulty you then take command of your ship and are off to the high seas in search of fame, fortune, scurvy and a lost family.
If you choose not to get rapped up in just searching for dozy relatives this game has a hell of a lot for you. All these choices have varying effects on your options later and your success throughout the game. These include mainly, but by no means exclusively, sailing about in your little boat blowing up other ships, then docking at a port to chat to the locals, hiring sailors, selling goods, repairing or upgrading your ship. You can also get info on where to go next to pilfer loot, dig for treasure, capture evil nasty pirates or blow more ships out of the water. Locals mainly consist of barmaids with info and tips, bartenders with the same or some guy in the back to beat up and mysterious strangers selling treasure maps and other useful bits. More often than not I just kept employing sailors, selling stuff and repairing the ship but it really depends on how you want to play. I also found the barmaid most useless but she did have cleavage you could hide a small parrot in. Somehow I spoke to her quite often.
In the above activities you'll find the most enjoyment. - But there's more! When you're sailing about you need to keep an eye on the happiness of your crew who too long at sea will all get brassed off with all the male companionship they have had with each other. Not having enough plunder to spend on ladies of the night when they eventually dock will miff them off a bit too, oh and they also need feeding. There is a popularity system that keeps track of how chuffed each nation is with you. Attacking a nation that another is at war with will please the latter and attacking natives and pirates will please them all. It's worth keeping in mind who everyone is at war with too because for certain objectives on the path of revenge you'll need to get a promotion from a particular nation then later perhaps one from another. It's also worth noting that you can't dance with the governor's prettiest daughter unless you have a sufficient rank and the dancing is worth doing as they have a lot more for you than somewhere to hide your parrot.
These tasks work perfectly with each other and create a great adventure/strategy experience with just one part holding this all together which fails deliver and ends up putting way too much grind into the works. And that would be the sailing which, unfortunately, is what you'll spend most of your time doing and is one of the most irritating parts of the game. You control your mighty vessel with a top down view, steering left and right, down to hoist sails or unhoist them. Again, fine, but the problem is that Sam Ivor has decided to factor in the wind. So if you sail away from it, you'll zoom off like Speedy Gonzales shitting out a Vindaloo. Sailing towards the wind is as much fun as pissing into it. This is made more irritating by the wind always coming from the same direction, which I guess maybe it does over there but if I wanted that kind of brutal realism I’d expect the game to come with an eye patch and a packet of typhus. The problems with sailing are then only exacerbated by the navigation. You press start for the map which gives you your location, then you have to guess the right angle to point your boat in. So you can either try and point it the right way and pray to God you need to go west or if you have to go east you can gain some speed by zig zagging up and down the map making the most of the wind and getting hopelessly lost. This could easily have been solved by letting you put a marker on the map and having some sort of radar pointer which would make the whole experience much more enjoyable. However, due to all the complexities with sailing I found I kept forgetting where I was supposed to be going or what my main objective was mainly by getting distracted with other ships passing, getting into fights, stopping off at the closest port for repairs or more sailors, chatting to locals, and picking up more missions but only doing half those - and repeating this over and over again until I went a bit loopy and started looking at everything with one eye closed calling myself Jim Bob the Bloody.
Everything else you do basically involves a mini game of some sort which are simple but quite fun: fencing another captain (Mini Tekken), taking a town (mini C&C), sneaking into a town (mini Metal Gear Solid), dancing to woe the Governor's daughter (umm, mini Dance Revolution?). There are a lot of animations that liven this up and they are pretty humorous but you end up seeing them so often that the effects wear off pretty quickly. These parts can also sadly become tedious due to some strangely long load times for what you're getting to see. They're not really that long but when your repeating the same sequences this often it does grate a bit. Plus I couldn't really see what it was spending it's time doing as the graphics are not the hottest by any means.
So all in all Sid Meier’s Pirates was so close to being the digital crack I was hoping for if it hadn't have been for some odd oversights in gameplay. If I where you, I'd give it a rent yourself and take a look. Then if you have more patience to overcome it's problems than me or you have a small monkey you can train to do all the sailing bits for you, you'll be in for a swash buckling good time! Arr arr me ship maties avast me booty. Damit!
As you probably know Sid Meier’s Pirates is by that guy most famous for Sid Meier’s Civilization, what’s his name, Bob Dyer…..? Anywoo games like Sid Meier’s Civilization and many similar strategy type creations, are either pure digital crack or they are cut with a little bit too much talc and powdered glass to really keep you hooked into the small hours. For me at least, Sim City 2000, Transport Tycoon, Syndicate and Sid Meier's Civilization, were all the finest high grade yayo but pirates doesn’t seem to be 100% pure Colombian I had hoped for.
Maybe it’s because Sid Meier's Pirates is actually an upgrade of the Pirates game that Shamus McAier made back in 1987 for the C64. Back then you where a bit limited by what you could get to run, that's probably why it's not really a pure strategy game. It’s more an odd mix of sailing, mini games and bit of strategy thrown in for good measure. You start out during the 1600s as Jimmy (if you like) the young privateer on a quest to find your lost family who have been scattered throughout the Caribbean. First of all you have to choose a few basic attributes for your character. Main skills consisting of Gunnery, Swords Man, Charm (Ponce) or Medicine. Then you have to align with one of the four main nationalities which have decided to try and bring slavery, repression and smallpox to the natives. You have English, French, Dutch, Spanish but - sadly for me - no Welsh. After choosing the difficulty you then take command of your ship and are off to the high seas in search of fame, fortune, scurvy and a lost family.
If you choose not to get rapped up in just searching for dozy relatives this game has a hell of a lot for you. All these choices have varying effects on your options later and your success throughout the game. These include mainly, but by no means exclusively, sailing about in your little boat blowing up other ships, then docking at a port to chat to the locals, hiring sailors, selling goods, repairing or upgrading your ship. You can also get info on where to go next to pilfer loot, dig for treasure, capture evil nasty pirates or blow more ships out of the water. Locals mainly consist of barmaids with info and tips, bartenders with the same or some guy in the back to beat up and mysterious strangers selling treasure maps and other useful bits. More often than not I just kept employing sailors, selling stuff and repairing the ship but it really depends on how you want to play. I also found the barmaid most useless but she did have cleavage you could hide a small parrot in. Somehow I spoke to her quite often.
In the above activities you'll find the most enjoyment. - But there's more! When you're sailing about you need to keep an eye on the happiness of your crew who too long at sea will all get brassed off with all the male companionship they have had with each other. Not having enough plunder to spend on ladies of the night when they eventually dock will miff them off a bit too, oh and they also need feeding. There is a popularity system that keeps track of how chuffed each nation is with you. Attacking a nation that another is at war with will please the latter and attacking natives and pirates will please them all. It's worth keeping in mind who everyone is at war with too because for certain objectives on the path of revenge you'll need to get a promotion from a particular nation then later perhaps one from another. It's also worth noting that you can't dance with the governor's prettiest daughter unless you have a sufficient rank and the dancing is worth doing as they have a lot more for you than somewhere to hide your parrot.
These tasks work perfectly with each other and create a great adventure/strategy experience with just one part holding this all together which fails deliver and ends up putting way too much grind into the works. And that would be the sailing which, unfortunately, is what you'll spend most of your time doing and is one of the most irritating parts of the game. You control your mighty vessel with a top down view, steering left and right, down to hoist sails or unhoist them. Again, fine, but the problem is that Sam Ivor has decided to factor in the wind. So if you sail away from it, you'll zoom off like Speedy Gonzales shitting out a Vindaloo. Sailing towards the wind is as much fun as pissing into it. This is made more irritating by the wind always coming from the same direction, which I guess maybe it does over there but if I wanted that kind of brutal realism I’d expect the game to come with an eye patch and a packet of typhus. The problems with sailing are then only exacerbated by the navigation. You press start for the map which gives you your location, then you have to guess the right angle to point your boat in. So you can either try and point it the right way and pray to God you need to go west or if you have to go east you can gain some speed by zig zagging up and down the map making the most of the wind and getting hopelessly lost. This could easily have been solved by letting you put a marker on the map and having some sort of radar pointer which would make the whole experience much more enjoyable. However, due to all the complexities with sailing I found I kept forgetting where I was supposed to be going or what my main objective was mainly by getting distracted with other ships passing, getting into fights, stopping off at the closest port for repairs or more sailors, chatting to locals, and picking up more missions but only doing half those - and repeating this over and over again until I went a bit loopy and started looking at everything with one eye closed calling myself Jim Bob the Bloody.
Everything else you do basically involves a mini game of some sort which are simple but quite fun: fencing another captain (Mini Tekken), taking a town (mini C&C), sneaking into a town (mini Metal Gear Solid), dancing to woe the Governor's daughter (umm, mini Dance Revolution?). There are a lot of animations that liven this up and they are pretty humorous but you end up seeing them so often that the effects wear off pretty quickly. These parts can also sadly become tedious due to some strangely long load times for what you're getting to see. They're not really that long but when your repeating the same sequences this often it does grate a bit. Plus I couldn't really see what it was spending it's time doing as the graphics are not the hottest by any means.
So all in all Sid Meier’s Pirates was so close to being the digital crack I was hoping for if it hadn't have been for some odd oversights in gameplay. If I where you, I'd give it a rent yourself and take a look. Then if you have more patience to overcome it's problems than me or you have a small monkey you can train to do all the sailing bits for you, you'll be in for a swash buckling good time! Arr arr me ship maties avast me booty. Damit!
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