Sid Meier's Pirates!

What shall we do with Sid Meier's pirates..?

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My mobile phone ringtone is a somewhat lacklustre version of 'What do you do with a drunken sailor?' Downloaded around the time of that revivalist phenomenon that is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, it's long been a favourite ditty of mine since one of the villains in an episode of Airwolf sang it during his air battles with Stringfellow Hawk. Which is a fairly piraty kind of name that wouldn't look out of place in this passionate updating of an 8-bit classic. Once again under the direction of its original designer, Sid Meir's Pirates! takes the basic yet engrossing gameplay of the original game and douses it with gallons of 21st century spit and polish.

Unlike the original you get your own ship right from the very start. And while it's a tiny sloop it's more than enough to get you started on whatever career path you choose. Do you want to be a simple trader, coasting from port to port, listening out for commodity price information from sailors in the tavern? How about acting as a privateer for one, or more than one, of the four countries, capturing enemy ports and sinking their shipping? Maybe you fancy the life of a pure pirate, digging up buried treasure and acting as a scourge across the entire Caribbean, sneaking into hostile towns and stealing the governor's daughter right out from under his pointy nose? Or maybe you like to mix and match your styles, transporting huge stashes of cargo in your captured Spanish treasure galleons. On top of that there are quests to kill your way to the peak of the Top 10 pirates list, romantic and villain quests and even an objective for the hoarder in you; collecting all 34 of the unique items that are up for grabs. Pirates! gives you an expansive game world and the tools with which to let you explore and exploit that world and lets you get on with it. The only kind of compelling missions are those to find your lost relatives and hopefully restore the honour of your besmirched family name, yet even these are pretty much optional with the game only pressing you in that direction by mentioning the whereabouts of the relevant villains every once in a while.

A quick peek at the screenshots will showcase the spirited look of the update. Set amongst the waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, Pirates! takes place across a good chunk of what was the known world at the time, 1600 onwards. Play begins in one of the ports of the player's chosen country, either Spain, England, Holland or France. You can sail from one port to another, trading goods and fishing for information at the tavern. You could decide to embark on a career of piracy, or maybe you'd prefer to advance the cause of your host nation while taking out the buccaneers who prey on their shipping. There is a plot about restoring the honour of your family and tracking down the villain who brought them down in the first place. A very open game, Pirates! leaves most of the decision making up to the gamer while managing to provide enough structure to keep things from becoming an ungovernable mess.

The meat of the game, however, is in the sea combat. Close into firing range of a vessel on the main screen, select attack and then the fun starts. As in the main screen, wind-speed and direction plays an important part. If you find yourself going into the wind at the wrong moment there's a good chance your ship will suffer badly from an enemy broadside. Captains have up to three types of shot at their disposal; round cannonballs will eventually blow a ship to pieces, chain shot will soon tear away all sails and leave the target floundering while grape shot will chip away at the enemy vessel's crew. The sea battles are great fun and well presented with ships becoming progressively more damaged and difficult to control. While an overly limited affair on the easier difficulty levels, from the mid-difficulties up this is actually one of the better implementations of naval combat that I've witnessed in any game; you can even pick up the crew and cargo that is blown overboard and make them your own. However, the game wouldn't have suffered from an ability to fast forward the sea battles. On a number of occasions both my foe and I had blown each other's sails clean off which made for a frustrating wait as the ships closed in on each other at the amazing speed of a single knot.