Sid Meier's Pirates!

"Excellent port of an updated classic"

The original "Pirates!" was a 1987 game for the Commodore 64. It was quite popular, and I remember playing it a lot at the time. It was later ported to various other platforms, although pretty much just computers. Then, in the early 90s, it got something of a makeover, and released as "Pirates! Gold" for the PC and I think the Sega Genesis. That was pretty much just a face lift in graphics. Then just a couple years ago, a whole new remake was released for the PC, "Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life", which basically brought the game into 3D and added a few more action segments. This was later ported to the Xbox, and now finally in 2007, appears on the PSP.

Since it's basically an old school C-64 game at heart, it's somewhat hard to describe in today's modern genres and terminology. Action-Strategy? A collection of minigames? Something along those lines.

Essentially you control a tiny ship on the screen, and sail around the Caribbean, attack other ships, visiting ports (and possibly attacking them), searching for lost cities and buried treasure. The goal in the original game was to just make money and marry a beautiful lady, but revenge has been added to those goals, giving the game a bit more linear and streamlined feel to appeal to modern games.

As you move your little ship around the map, what you do will often launch a little mini-game or action scene. There are ones if you attack a ship, one if you attack a town, another if you search for treasure. Visiting ports is generally easy, but there is sort of a pac-man like game if you want to sneak into an unfriendly town, or a dancing game if you want to court the daughter of the local governor.

Attacking other ships is pretty simple. You control one ship, the computer controls the enemy ship. You move around trying to fire your cannons at the enemy, and they do the same. You have 3 different types of shot you can use, one general purpose shot (which has the longest range), one which knocks out sails, and one that kills the crew. If you simply want to plunder, it's generally best to knock the enemy ship down to 1 crew member, so they surrender as you get close. On the other hand, if you want to capture the ship, you might want to close as quickly as possible, where you will enter a swordfight with the enemy captain. If you win, you can capture the ship in good condition and possibly win over some of his crew members.

The swordfighting is both complex and easy. It's complicated in that there are a number of different moves you can do, but generally speaking, all you need to do is block and attack. In fact, you really generally need to just wait for your opponent to begin to attack, then hit him with a quick thrust (some attacks are slower or faster than others).

Attacking an unfriendly town is a very simple turn based wargame. It takes place on a small-ish map divided up into squares, not unlike a chess board, only with terrain (trees, rocks, hills, etc) on it in some places. You generally control about 3-4 units, which seems to be your total crew divided up somewhat randomly into Officers (good at melee combat), Buccaneers (guys with guns) and Pirates (who are okay at melee). The more men in the unit, obviously the stronger they are. The defenders of the town basically get the same treatment, only they have a couple more unit types, including Cavalry in some towns.

You get a turn to move your units (you get 2 moves per unit, which can be either move or attack), then the enemy goes. Usually you start fairly close to each other, so the whole combat only lasts about 3-5 turns at most. It's not really hard, the key is to really take advantage of the terrain by putting your guys with guns on a hill, and to have your other guys hide in the woods to attack from a flank when the enemy passes by.

Friendly towns are just navigated by a menu. You can visit a tavern, visit a shipwright, visit a merchant, and visit the governor. In the tavern, you can recruit more sailors (sadly, not by singing a Village People song), talk to a waitress, the bartender, or a mysterious stranger. The former just generally give you information, while the latter will usually try to sell you something that can improve your abilities (either do something better, or live longer). Visiting the governor is how you get promoted, and if you have a high enough rank, you can get invited to the dance by his daughter. Which is another mini game.

Basically you do a ballroom dance which requires you to press the correct button when she gives a hand signal. In the PC version, I found this to be almost impossible, because her signal is hard to notice, but the developers of this made it easier by telling you what button to press. You still don't have much time to do so, but it's definitely doable, unlike the PC version.

You pretty much keep sailing around, doing the same things over, until your character's health deteriorates and you have to retire. This can be somewhat repetitive, but the game generally only lasts maybe 10-15 hours. It's not something you are supposed to play over and over, but something you come back and play whenever you want. There is also a shift in how you play as you career progresses - first off, as you get better, you'll probably start attacking towns rather than ships, which is much more profitable. And secondly, you have a quest of sorts that you have to follow, which has you doing various different tasks

The developers (Full Fat) really did a great job porting it to the PSP from the PC. Not only does it play pretty much exactly the same, with no slowdown, the graphics are quite good. Maybe a little sparse at times, but it runs really well and the loading times are minimal (really only when you visit the governor or go into a swordfight, and even then, it's only about 5-6 seconds).

Still, I think the game suffers from some problems that were intrinsic to the PC version. For instance, you really should have been able to customize your pirate in terms of appearance. Since it apparently uses an in-game engine for the cutscenes and the like, it would only have taken minimal effort to have different faces or skin tones. I can't really blame the developers of this version for not adding those features, but the problems are still there. So it's not a perfect game. A very good one, though. I would probably give it an 8.5 if I could, but I can't, so I'm giving it an 8.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/07