Pirates!

"Yarr, matey!"

You can always count on Sid Meier to make a fantastic game. Pirates! is a pretty old title, and a lot of the things it did were really revolutionary.

A lot of people praise the Grand Theft Auto series for it's open-ended style of gameplay. This game did it first. You're essentially dropped in the middle of the ocean with a boat and a small crew, and then you do whatever you want. The game never tells you that you have to do something.

The main idea is to amass gold. You do this buy raiding towns. Raiding a town consists of sailing your ship towards the town, avoiding cannon fire, then engaging in a sword fight with the town's commander. Apparently, even if the town's soldiers outnumber you greatly, you still win if you kill the commander. Makes sense to me!

You can also visit bars to find crew members or information. You can shop for goods, attack boats, search for hidden treasure...you can even be a good guy and rescue hostages or hunt other pirates.

Over the course of the game, you acquire wealth, fame, land, and if your lucky, even a wife. Pirates! doesn't really have an end. It ends when you feel you've had enough, and you're satisfied with your plunder. When this happens you simply select “Divide up the plunder” and the game tells you whether or not you did a good job as a pirate.

There's so much you can do in this game, it's really quite astonishing. It's only pitfall is that it's really slow. Sailing is slow, battles are slow, everything is slow. One might say it's realistic in this sense, as most all seafaring is very slow, especially sea battles, but it's just not the most fun thing in the world. At the very least, you could say it's relaxing, and that fits in well with the game's free nature.

The controls are very intuitive, especially considering all the different scenarios contained within the game.

The graphics and sound are pretty abysmal. The entire game is black and white, with little detail put into anything. The sound is practically non-existant too, with little beeps here and there.

Overall, the game really seems ahead of it's time in the gameplay department...and perhaps a little lacking in the technical department. It's the original sandbox game.

The Good:
-Open-ended gameplay

The Bad:
-Awful graphics and sound (yes, even for it's time)
-The entire game is way too slow

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/06/06