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Sid Meier's Pirates! Review (continued)
More User Submitted Sid Meier's Pirates! Reviews
Date: 2006-11-09
A modernized classic.
While there should be little doubt that this game is a reissue of the original pirates game of the 80's, and some parts seem dated at best, it is still hours of fun. The drawbacks of the game are dated graphics, some repetitious fight scenes, and rather generic quests but there is just something about Pirates! that is somehow addicting. Hardcore strategy buffs might not care for the game due to its limited choices and micromanagement but for those of us who grew up with the original, it is a wonderful re-release of a classic, and a more than a fair gaming value.
Date: 2006-10-29
Fun For All Ages
This game is a great strategy/action game. It is fun for everyone from 8 to 80. Be a pirate, swash buckle, dance with the governor's daughter to get great items to help you plunder. Talk to the characters at the tavern for information and most importantly blow up ships and build your fleet!
Date: 2006-09-25
A Pirate's Life For You
There's a LOT of game in this box.
There are enough delightful aspects to make it worth a geezer gamer's time and enough light-hearted and simple action to be fun for any kid old enough to enjoy _Treasure Island_. For the hardcore I imagine it's just a romp.
Pirates! is a beautifully-rendered set of minigames stitched together as a story-construction kit packed with yer basic pirate tall-tale elements, plus an extra or two just for fun.
We got the swordfighting part, the ship-jacking part, the town-pillaging part, the pirate-treasure part (complete with fragmentary clues).
We got ripe chaos in the colonies, bad men, good women, and you.
Oh. Did I mention there's dancing?
The action is in sailing, sea battles, sword fights and dancing. The controls in all of them are simple enough that the games are almost instantly immersive, and the acting is never bad, sometimes outstanding, with a lot of rewarding attention to detail. I'll mention the tavern maid after she whacks a lout with a bottle and the exulting Spaniard captain.
The pace is fast enough that you start out busy trying to keep up, the controls simple enough that you can definitely learn how, and about the time you do learn, the depth and detail of the game starts seeping in around the edges.
The Caribbean political and economic situation is constantly changing. Everything about a colony except its existence depends on what comes in or out, by sea. The ships in the game are merchants and smugglers and immigrants and invasion fleets and raiders and garrison troops and couriers. And pirates, of course. You can, ahhh, interfere with this traffic, with consequences.
Another major story element available is getting yourself hooked in to the Caribbean-wide gossip networks of Governor's daughters, tavern maids and mysterious travelers. The latter two will chat with anyone, but the Governors' daughters are choosy about who they'll talk to. Who wants to talk to a pirate that lacks charm? Dance with the ladies, Cap'n.
Dancing, like swordfighting, has a definite rhythm and depends on paying very close attention to your partner. You get better -- there's a basic common repertoire of simple four-step sequences that you soon learn to recognize -- but the variations as you climb the social ladder (did I mention that aspect of the game?) get increasingly complex and the timing and cues subtler and more varied. Swordfighting is child's play compared to the dances women invent.
I've only mentioned some major and minor parts -- sea battles? assaulting cities? (that one's not an action game)? marriage? climbing the social ladder? -- and there are lots of details I won't mention at all. I'll summarize them all this way: they fit.
There's nothing like it. If the minigames themselves were deeper, I suspect you could completely lose yourself in its world. As it stands, it's just a gloriously good game.
I played this on a machine with a (low-end) Radeon X200, a gig of RAM and an Athlon 3500+. I had to crank all the graphics options down to the minimum (although I can run 800x600 rather than 640x480, which matters), set the power-saving CPU speed option to "Always On", and go into the advanced display settings to keep it from forcing e.g. antialiasing. I'm pretty sure the real bottleneck is the graphics card, and that if you've got even the least of the gamer graphics cards you've got nothing to worry about; this one is great up to the low-end 3D stuff but quickly runs out of steam after that.
Date: 2006-08-31
Arrrrr!!!
If ye' be wantin' adventurous fun, this be it, lads. Treasure ships and Trade Galleons will fear your name in this incredible game by Sid Meier. My only problem is how little there really is to do, great replay value though!
Date: 2006-08-10
This is the type of game that is just fun to play
In today's gaming world so much time is spent on nitpicking pixels to death that so often we overlook the basic concept of games: fun. This game takes the romanticized ideal of a pirate slaps in some historical surroundings and characters and is just fun to play. Definitely recommend it to everyone.
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