Sid Meier's Pirates! review (Xbox)

When your ship engages in battle, the game zooms in on that specific patch of ocean (including any nearby landmasses, rocks, and shoals), and you have to maneuver into position and then fire broadsides at the enemy. These battles last only a couple of minutes at the most, but there's a great deal of tactical depth to them, particularly at the harder difficulty levels. The enemy is more cunning at harder levels, plus you have to factor in the constantly shifting wind, which affects your ship's maneuverability. Ideally, if you're upwind of an opponent (which is called "having the weather gauge"), you can control the battle. And to capture a ship, you must use different ammunition, including a medium-range chain shot to destroy sails and rigging a short-range grape shot to whittle down the opposing ship's crew. That last one is the most important, because if you try to board a ship there's a chance you'll have to fight its captain in a duel, triggering the swordfighting minigame. If you defeat the captain, you can capture the ship and sail it into the nearest port, where you can sell it and its cargo for a profit and then pay a visit to the governor for your reward. You may also have the opportunity to dance with the governor's daughter, and if you charm her, she may reward you with a valuable piece of information. You'll then go out to sea to repeat the cycle all over again.

Perhaps the most difficult minigames involve swordfighting and dancing, due to the fact that they rely on fast reflexes. To keep things simple, swordfights are highly scripted in that they all unfold the same way. During a bar fight, for instance, if you're winning, you'll always knock your opponent off the balcony; if you're losing, he'll always chase you back up the stairs. Push him back far enough and the barmaid will break a bottle over his head, knocking him out. The only thing you have to worry about is timing the right swing at the right moment, and parrying or dodging your opponent's swings. Meanwhile, during a dance, you have to quickly respond to the dance cues that your partner gives you, or else you'll stumble and mess up. While both swordfighting and dancing can be difficult at first, they get much easier once you learn to recognize the patterns. Plus, you can purchase or acquire special items to make both minigames easier, such as a superbly balanced sword that lets you swing faster, or dancing slippers that give you more time to react to a cue. Unfortunately, the Xbox version suffers from some inexplicable frame rate issues when it comes to dancing, and this can make an already-daunting task even more difficult when you're trying to keep rhythm.

When you need to infiltrate a hostile port, you'll encounter the sneaking minigame, which is sort of Pac-Man in reverse. And the big news for the Xbox version is that the perspective has changed from a top-down, rat-in-a-maze-like experience to a behind-the-back, third-person perspective, which makes it more challenging, as you can only see what's directly in front of you. Your goal is to skulk around the mazelike streets of a town, avoiding the town watch. If captured, you'll be thrown into jail, where you'll rot for a few months before they let you go. At the easier difficultly levels, dodging the guards is incredibly easy. But at the harder levels, it's a lot tougher. Thankfully, you have a few moves at your disposal, such as the ability to scale walls, knock out guards from behind, and duck behind bales of hay to hide. The suspense can be high at times, especially when you narrowly weave between several guards.

Then there are the turn-based land battles that occur when you try to raid an enemy port or face off against the main bad guy at the end of the rescue-your-family storyline. In these, you have three kinds of units at your command: officers, sailors, and buccaneers. Officers and sailors are melee units, while buccaneers are armed with muskets. In battles, you have to maneuver your units to take advantage of the terrain and try to destroy or demoralize the enemy. You can flank enemies or use the jungle as cover. Win the battle, and you will not only plunder the town, but you'll also have the ability to switch its allegiance, thus earning you points with a particular faction. Surprisingly, Firaxis removed the treasure hunt minigame from the Xbox version. In the PC version, when you got a treasure map, you sailed to the area in question, disembarked, and then explored the landscape, trying to match up terrain features to locate the buried stash. However, in the Xbox version, all you need to do is simply make landfall at the general location, and you will automatically recover the treasure if you landed close enough. You'll come up empty, though, if you didn't land in the right spot.

The Caribbean of Sid Meier's Pirates! is a colorful place, and the game approaches the subject matter with a light touch. The pirates are charming rogues who like to sing drinking songs, the stuffy army officers are bombastic buffoons, and the ladies are all lovely. In other words, these are the sorts of characters who would feel at home in an Errol Flynn movie or Pirates of the Caribbean. The game has a beautiful art style that's simple, clean, and packed with all sorts of graphical frills. The cotton sails on your ship softly glow in the warm sun, and beneath the glittery ocean water you can see dolphins and porpoises swimming in your ship's wake. The game's audio effects are also lighthearted and soothing, from the sound of water lapping against wooden hulls to the distant crack of cannons firing. Above it all is the wonderful soundtrack, which mixes historical tunes with memorable original themes. It also helps that the characters in Sid Meier's Pirates! speak in a sort of The Sims-like gibberish, which adds to the game's overall charm.

Unlike the PC version, the Xbox version does have some multiplayer in it as well, in the form of up to four-player ship battles that play a lot better than expected. Basically a fast-paced party game, multiplayer lets you and your friends each control a ship as you all battle it out (you can also let the CPU jump into any of the slots). There are only a small number of maps, but in general they're well designed and create the insane type of game in which you're trying to desperately maneuver around a tiny area while dodging cannon fire left and right. You can only play the head-to-head mode on a single Xbox, since the game is only Xbox Live-aware, so the online component is limited to only downloadable content and leaderboards. Nevertheless, this is still a completely engrossing strategy game that will easily consume countless hours. While the average pirate career might last only about 5 to 10 hours, the game offers tons of replay value, as you can play on harder difficulty levels, try out different approaches, and check out different sailing eras. With its engrossing gameplay, impeccable pacing, and charming presentation, Sid Meier's Pirates! has a lot of great things going for it.