Pirates! Review

Pirates is a game that gives a you a tall ship and sets you loose to pillage, plunder, or defend the 17th Century Caribbean – the path that you follow is entirely up to you. This type of open-ended gameplay is more common in PC games than on consoles, so it’s not too surprising that Pirates is actually a PC game that has made its way to the Xbox. Luckily for Xbox gamers, it also happens to be a quite good PC game that has made its way to the Xbox. So is the pirate’s life for you? Read on matey, says I…

Every game of Pirates begins in the same way. Your family’s fortunes sink with a ship in a storm and they are left unable to pay their debts to the nasty Marquis de la Montalban. Everything they own is seized and they are all forced into servitude – except for you that is. You manage to escape into the night and vow to one day free your family and exact your revenge. When you come of age you sign up with a sailing crew to make your way to the New World, only to find that you’ve hitched on with a cruel and sadistic captain. The crew is pushed to its breaking point and mutiny erupts. The mutiny fails and you are hung, at which point the game ends. Just kidding. The mutiny succeeds and you suddenly find yourself captain of the ship, and from here your life on the main begins.

The first choice that you make in the game is which of the four Caribbean powers you will sign on with: Spain, England, Holland, or France. Yeah, France could actually fight back then. Your choice affects which ports are initially free and open to you, and also how you’re viewed by the other powers. There is a constant power struggle in the Caribbean, and the nations move from alliance to war just about every time the wind changes direction. One constant is that everyone is pretty much always at war with Spain as they have far too much gold to be allowed to keep hold of it all. This means that if you sign on with Spain, initially pretty much everyone else will be gunning for you. I say “initially” because things do not have to stay that way. That’s the beauty of the situation in the Caribbean in the time; it’s almost a free-for-all and there are fortunes to be made for enterprising captains. Just because you sail for Spain it does not mean that you can’t try to get a hold of an occasional treasure galleon and then use your plunder to score points with the English. You’re free to make your own allegiances even if they are just to yourself. Of course, if you anger everyone life will not be easy for you…

Most of your time will be spent sailing the high seas in search of plunder. You see your ship (or ships) sailing on a 3D map of the Caribbean that you share with other sailing ships. You’ll be able to tell the nationality of a ship at a glance, but you’ll need to approach it to get a detailed description of the ship. Should you decide to attack the action moves to a smaller map and the battle begins.

The first part of a battle involves you maneuvering your ship so that you can unleash a broadside on the enemy while preventing him from getting into a position where he can fire his canon on you. Remember that these are sailing ships, so maneuvering is made a lot more complicated by the wind strength and direction. As ships take fire, the damage accumulates, leaving the ship with broken sails, dead crewmen, or a leaky hull. In addition to your standard ammo, you can choose to load your canon with special shells designed to destroy sails or kill crew. In the first case you can leave your enemy dead in the water and a sitting duck for your final blows. In the second you can whittle down the crew to make it easier to board and capture the ship. If you fail in a battle you risk losing your ship or capture by the enemy, in which case you will rot in jail for a few months. On the other hand, success can come about in a few ways. You can sink the enemy, but this is generally not a good idea as you’ll lose valuable plunder. You can pound the enemy ship into submission, forcing it to strike its colors and surrender to you. Finally, you can ram the enemy ship and send over a boarding party.

Boarding an enemy ship leads you into the game’s other common action sequence – the swordfight. As the battle rages around you, you square off against the enemy captain in a one-on-one duel. The swordfight is an exercise in timing – you can attack high, middle, and low and defend high, middle, and low as well. Watching the enemy captain will give you cues as to which attack he is about to make and you can counter with the corresponding defense. On the attack, you’ll need to mix things up so that your enemy does not anticipate and block your attack. The battle between the crews will have an effect on your duel. The amount of time you are given to dispatch the enemy captain is dependent on the degree to which your crew outnumbers the enemy or is outnumbered itself. Also, if the tide of battle is flowing against you, your reactions will be slowed making it more difficult to attack and block your enemy’s strikes. Lose the duel and you lose the battle, which leads to a few wasted months in jail. Win and the enemy ship is yours, either to keep or to plunder and sink.

Not all of your time will be sent at sea attacking other ships. Sooner or later you’ll need to put into a port to sell your plunder, repair your ships, and recruit more crew. The tavern is a great place to purchase treasure maps and hear the latest rumors as to the locations of other pirates and treasure fleets. Just as important is a visit to the local governor. If he is pleased with your exploits he will reward you with land and a promotion, and may even introduce you to his daughter. If his daughter is taken with you, she will invite you to a ball which starts the game’s dancing mini game. Dances of this time period were highly choreographed affairs, so busting some moves on your own is decidedly frowned upon. The dancing game is simply a matter of pushing the right button at the right time so that you perform the right move. This boils down to pushing the button that you see appear on the screen before it disappears. This part of the game is about as exciting as it sounds. Anyway, trip the light fantastic and you’ll be in like Flynn with the governor’s daughter. She’ll be a great source of information for you and may even consent to be your bride if you continue to push your buttons right.

Sometimes you’ll have the need to go into a town where you’re not so welcome. You can storm the town with your pirate crew and fight a little RTS-style battle for the town. Or you can just try and sneak your way in without raising so much attention. Your success in sneaking in will depend on your success in the game’s stealth game. Basically you must make your way through maze like streets as you avoid the attention of guards. You can employ some moves such as ducking under cover or sneaking up behind and knocking out guards, but if you get caught it will mean a few months in jail for you.

There’s a lot to do in the game and so it gives you the freedom to choose your own course. You can haul goods between ports to becoming a rich merchant in the process. You can hunt pirates for the Spanish crown. You can play the role of gun for hire and sail under the protection of a European power. You can single-mindedly track down your missing family and exact your revenge on the Marquis. You can, you can, you can … you get the idea. All of this freedom makes for a game that is remarkably replayable, and one that you will return to time and again.

Unlike its PC-based cousin, Pirates on the Xbox supports multiplayer gaming. No, you don’t get a Caribbean filled with player pirates (wouldn’t that be a great game?). Instead you can fight other players in ship battles that are more arcade-like than those appearing in the regular game, complete with power-ups. It’s a fun little diversion of a game, but nothing that you’ll spend a lot of time with. Xbox Live support comes in the form of leader boards and downloads, but there is no online gaming. As of this writing there were no downloads available, so I’m not sure what is in store for this feature.