Pirates!

[FreelancePolice]

So who has played it then? I'm thinking of getting it on the way home from uni (loads of work to do though so may wait)

I've played the original (not when it came out though) and am very interested in how this turns out. Seems to have picked up average reviews of about 91%

[Ang?l21]

Just a quick note to say I bought this tonight after loving the original on my amiga and this version is so faithful - it's brilliant so far - just managed to capture three ships and been promoted twice, off to look for some treasure tomorrow!!

Would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoyed pirates! all those years ago!

[androo]

Yep its a fantastically simple yet addictive game. Just like the original was waaay back when I played it on the Amiga.

Gotta love the sound effects in the game too.

Oh and im a shocking dancer!

[FreelancePolice]

it all seemed quite easy when i tried it am i doing something wrong

[Zapp$ter]

it all seemed quite easy when i tried it am i doing something wrong

Apparently the game starts off in a very easy mode. Once you've finished it or something you get the option to increase the difficulty. I haven't played it myself but this is what I've read IIRC.

[JRMacumber]

One of my first gaming loves was Pirates!, played way back when on my Tandy 1000 SX. It was a brilliant little gem of a game featuring so much bang for the buck that I could literally lose hours of my life to it at a time. As time marched on and new games and technologies came out, my love affair with it remained until that tragic day when I accidentally ruined the floppies. The game was no longer made at that time, and it was a dark period until I stumbled across a new release of the game called Pirates! Gold. My love was back, but for whatever reason it didn't have the same shine as the original. Looking back on it I can't quite remember what it was that had caused the game to lose some of its luster, but it did, and eventually I fell out of computer gaming all together.

Now, over a decade later, I have that love back again, and let me tell you, this baby shines so damn bright that I almost weep. Everything I loved about the original game is back, all with new graphics and sound, with all sorts of new doodads added on to sweaten the deal. My inner reaver has been let loose, and I love it. Thank you, Sid and Firaxis!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Pirates! is a game in which you play, well, a Pirate on the high and dangerous seas of the Caribbean. When you start the game you learn that as a child your character's family was ruined by a dastardly villain, and only you could escape their fate. A decade later, aged and raring for revenge, you are set to take to the ocean and avenge them, perhaps save them, all while making a name for yourself and building your own legend. Whom will you serve? The English, the Dutch, the Spanish, the French, none of them, or any combination thereof? Will you stick to trading? Will you become a pirate hunter, or a pirate yourself? All of that is for you to decide. During the game you will pilot your ship(s) across the Spanish Main of the Caribbean and engage in ship-to-ship battles, sword fights, siege towns, court beautiful governors' daughters, buy and sell goods, dig for buried treasure, find lost Incan cities, search out lost realtives, get married, and more besides. It is just a blast. Completely open ended, think of it as Grand Theft Frigate: Caribbean Sea. Your fate and actions are totally yours to decide, and the legend you carve out can be what you make it to be.

Anyway, this is out on PC right now, with an Xbox version due out in a few months or so. I'll probably end up with both, but for now the PC game is just swallowing me up. I bought it Sunday, and so far I've damn near put my sailor, Jonathon Sterling (English Duke) through almost 20 years of warfare and love. Everytime I sit down to play I say to myself, "Okay, just fifteen minutes, and then I'm done." Three hours later and I'm all, "Okay, just one more town, one more ship, one more quest..." It's awful, but I can't stop and don't want to. I've been waiting for this for years, and it's be worth it. Fantastic job.

My rating: 9/10

[Ersatz Nihilist]

After reading that, I've decided to make Pirates my 'leading up to Christmas' game. I played the original for ages on the Amiga, and although I could get to grips with the mechanics (apart from the land battles), I think I was too young and a lot of the subtleties (sp?) escaped me.

This might be an excellent oppertunity to catch up.

[Magnakai]

Arrrghhh!
How can they release so many quality titles? It's not fair! I have no chance whatsoever of affording the money, let alone the time, for them all.

[hankwangford]

This is brilliant, TRUFAX.

I enjoyed the original Pirates, for sure, but it had so many niggly things. Sailing from left to right took all frigging year, your crew quickly got disheartened and there was no way of tracking your ongoing quests other than having a notepad outside of the game - but through all of this it managed to keep me hooked back in the Amiga days.

To think that this fixes all of those problems and adds a proverbial ****SACK of new gameplay to the mainframe just boggles the mind. Even though all of the new action sequences are heavily scripted, I really like the whole mechanic of them; the almost rock-paper-scissors attitude of the swordfighting, the MAX300 difficulty level of the dancing (well, for beginners anyway), the ****ing excellent tactics game for invading and sacking a town. All of it just smells brilliant and makes me foam at the mouth.

Since Saturday, when I bought it, I've been up until at least 2am playing it (although Paper Mario 2 hasn't helped either). It's the mark of a great game when you actually feel what you're doing - and I really feel like a pirate when I'm in command of my ship.

10/10, easy.

[hankwangford]

Apparently the game starts off in a very easy mode. Once you've finished it or something you get the option to increase the difficulty. I haven't played it myself but this is what I've read IIRC.

Yeah, this is true. Basically on first play the game dumps you in the best period for piracy (1660, the Buccaneer Heroes age) on the Apprentice difficulty and lets you get on with it. When you divide the plunder for the first time (which is a regularly reoccuring theme in Pirates) then you get the option to pump up the volume. If you truly want to succeed then you need to hit the higher difficulty levels ASAP, as the money you get on Apprentice (which contributes to your final end of game ranking) is pifflingly ****.

When you start another game from the main menu you get to choose a different period of time too, instead of being stuck with 1660.