Sid Meier's Pirates! Preview

Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once: Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

"You won't believe this" says Marc Hudgins, one of the designers that work on the remake of Sid Meier's Pirates!, "But in 13 years of my work in the industry this is the best and most fun experience I ever had! For, is there anything more fun than pirates? A gamer who says that he rather wouldn't be a pirate is either a liar or fool."

Slippery when wet...

Ah, looking for that famous Panama treasure!

You may laugh at this but the fact remains that Pirates! which appeared back in 1987 was one of the games whose modern remake was highly anticipated. If we go back in time, some 17 years back, we will find ourselves looking at Sid Meier and MicroProse publishing a highly innovative game allowing a player to assume the role of a pirate captain who is roaming the shark ridden seas in search of treasure. Meier's game was an amalgam of adventure (with a lot of exploration and puzzle solving), action and RPG. Almost two decades passed since, and in the meantime, Sid Meier's new company Firaxis got the copyright on developing remakes of several MicroProse's classics, including Pirates! of course.

The story is as follows: you are a sailor on a ship traveling to the New World, trying to get away from an old enemy. After a mutiny, you somehow manage to take control of the ship and decide to sail towards the Caribbean with your newly acquired boat and rag-tag crew. The main goal of the game is to develop your avatar from an accidental pirate with huge ambitions to a powerful and notorious captain with a huge fleet and even more money. You will be able to visit many harbors and the local taverns will allow you to recruit new crew members and hear the latest gossip and news, possibly even purchase a treasure map or run a few errands for the governor.

Hide your daughters, here I come.

The first port you get to visit is the English colony Port Royal. Apart from the aforementioned tavern where you can also check your position on the ten-most-fearsome-pirates list, you can also visit the shipyard where you can repair, upgrade or sell your ships. The governor can provide you with a letter of marque which is a legal permission to attack and loot the ships and towns of enemy nations. After a couple of battles the governor will appreciate you even more, so he might even give you a rank (like captain or commander). Once you went several steps up the social ladder, you might even attract the attention or develop a relationship with a governor's daughter. You can also buy her presents or dance with her in the ballroom.

This might sound silly at first, but dancing is one of the mini-games in Pirates! which resembles dancing games on consoles (DDR to drinking songs? ROCK! - Six). The point of the game is to move your character timely and in coherence with the signals received from your partner. If you do everything right you may even perform several great dancing moves and impress the governor's daughter at least until her angry fianc'e comes in and challenges you to a duel. The main benefit of chasing governors' daughters is that they attend to give you special items as presents. But watch out. If you go after a single girl for too long you might even have to marry her. Still, this will strengthen your relationship with the nation she comes from. As there are several nations in the game, you will have a decent selection of governors' daughters at your disposal. (An entirely different definition of booty, to be sure - Six)

The most interesting aspect of the game is sailing the open seas in search of treasure, exploring the many caves and looting and pillaging enemy ships and colonies. Apart from the ships belonging to one of the four nations (English, Spanish, French and Dutch) there are also other pirate ships as well as Indian war canoes. When you commence an attack on a ship you will be able to use 3 different types of cannon load; one for the crew, one for the sails and one for the hull. You'll have to choose your attack tactics wisely because if you happen to overly damage the enemy ship you will need a lot more men to bring it to the nearest port. Also, bear in mind that the bigger the cannon, the longer it takes to load, so you better rely on smaller and easily maneuverable vessels which have less powerful weapons but are more likely to avoid enemy fire. The fights take place in full 3D surroundings and are controlled easily using the arrow keys and the mouse. I should also mention that even though you can lead up to 8 ships you can only attack with one.

If you have sufficiently damaged the ship and decimated the crew the enemy may simply surrender, in which case it will be up to you whether you want to plunder and sink it, or keep it as a part of your fleet. If you close in on a ship without killing enough of its crew they will start fighting your crew and you will have to face the enemy captain which will ultimately resolve the battle. This is another mini-game. The duels are very fast paced and all the controls come down to several keys on the keyboard and their combination. The fights can end in several ways, depending on your strategy. For instance, if you manage to parry for too long, your adversary might stumble and fall (possibly even into the fire if the ship is burning). If the duel takes place on land, your adversary may fall at the feet of the tavern keeper or the governor's daughter who can hit him on the head with the bottle thus sealing the matter. On the other hand, if you lose you will be imprisoned. Once in the dungeon, you can try to escape your malefactor as soon as the night falls. If you fail you'll have to spend at least a couple of months in prison until you get the next chance. Failing to escape several times is very bad because your character ages behind the bars and his characteristics start waning. As soon you escape, you can return to your old ways. In order to escape you have to sneak out of the enemy town in the night avoiding, or blacking out night guards.