Sid Meier's Pirates! reviews

As this is supposed to be an update of an old classic, I had expected it to be, well, up to date. But alas, I was to be bitterly dissapointed.

The music and sound FX are terrible, the graphics mediocre – a poor showing considering the power of modern machinery.

The game play isn't bad, but it's extremely limited. Despite the open endedness of the environment and variety of mission types (ship vs ship, turn based strategy land attacks, sneaking into towns, duelling etc), i found myself quickly bored by this game's repeti­tiveness. For example, there are only a handful of animations which are used to show the outcome of actions (sword strokes in combat, NPC encounters etc), and I got sick of seeing the same ones fifty times an hour.

In short, this game is pretty fun at first, but it wears pretty thin pretty quickly

Pirates makes a nice change in my library FPS, Drive Sim, and RPG games.

You take the role as captain of a ship during one of four selectable eras ranging from 1600–1680 The main story sees you chasing information for your lost family members and eventually the whereabouts of Evil Marquis De la Montalban. However there is so much in the game you may find yourself setting your own goals and totally ignoring the main plot.

Essentially, Pirates combines a series of mini-games, ranging from swordplay to dancing and attacking towns to ship combat to form a fun and entertaining game as a whole.

The graphics are bright and colourful and the characters seem to be larger than life. Sneaking through a stream of FPS and Driving Sims, Pirates is a light-hearted romp that hides many challenges, creating great replay value.