Sid Meier's Pirates! Preview

No, I lost my eye when I tried to scratch it with the hook.

The interface is simple and informative. The top left corner contains the amount of gold and the number of sailors you have as well as the crew's general mood. Crew's mood mostly depends on the amount of gold each pirate receives (a lot of gold and few pirates means happy crew). The top right corner contains the amount of food at your disposal in relation to the time you spend at sea. This makes it easier to calculate the time you have before your sailors start eating each other. Wind speed and direction have been displayed in the lower left corner and the lower right corner contains an overview of political relations.

Ar, where be them scurvy dogs!

Man, I can't remember how many times I plundered Santiago in the original game.

One of the options in the game is to start looking for the long lost members of your family separated by your evil archenemy. All these activities will influence your final score. Just like in Civilization, you will be ranked according to a number of points you acquired - which in turn depends on amount of amassed gold, your ranks, the number of family members saved, etc. One campaign of Pirates! can be played for until your fingers fall off. (I’d like to see that.... - Six) Speaking of which, during the creation of your character you can choose his special traits (fencing, navigation, aiming). Unfortunately you cannot choose traits like peg-leg, eye bandage, maniacal depression, or gangrene. And unfortunately, the game has no multiplayer whatsoever.

As for the looks of the game, the new Pirates! has been designed in full 3D and looks very appealing. The vividly colored characters have been beautifully and realistically animated. It is evident that the visual aspect of the game has been given the full attention. The voice-overs are good and the game characters speak "firaxian", senseless imaginary language similar to the one in The Sims. Other sound effects like cannon fire and swords clanging also sound very good.

Pirates! demands at least 1GHz CPU, 128 Mb RAM and a GeForce 2 class video accelerator, which is fairly modest for modern games.

Finally I should state that the Pirates! is not a historical game. As Firaxis founder Jeff Briggs noted:

Pirate life was hard, brutal and disturbingly short;
Most pirates were ordinary scum and criminals, and some even completely insane;
Sea voyage was arduous, boring, uncomfortable and dangerous, and you had to spend months of it eating only rotten meat and stale biscuits;
In the 17th century no one had all the teeth;

Pirates! is none of this. It is just plain fun.