Any gamer that knows the history of videogaming knows the name Sid Meier. His games have literally changed the face of gaming. The original Pirates game, released decades ago, has been a favorite of gamers around the world. Recently the game was updated and was an enjoyable (and now pretty hard to find) original Xbox game (which does work on a 360).
When it was announced that the game was going to make it over to the PSP, I was somewhat skeptical that the game would be as good as I remember. Fortunately for everyone the game is a lot of fun and now adds an interesting ad-hoc multiplayer option.
In Pirates, you play the role of….wait for it…a pirate! You pretty much can do whatever you want whenever you want in the game. First, you see a nice little introduction of why you’re where you are. Basically you lived well until the Marquis took everything. Now you are attempting to reclaim what is due you.
You sign up for the boat crew. You choose your name, and what your main skill is. This skill helps you in the future a fencing skill helps you in hand to hand combat, the medicine skill helps you ward off old age. You only get one crack at it , so choose wisely! You then choose who you’ll sign up with: French, English, Dutch or Spanish. Spanish is pretty much the hardest, while English is pretty easy.
Once you become part of the crew, they mutiny and you take over the ship (pretty helpful plot line, no?) Now it’s all on you – you do whatever you’d like…sail to ports of call, attack other ships, and so forth. It sounds pretty easy, and you’d think that doing the same things over and over again would be mundane, but this game is extraordinary in that the game is never boring.
As you would probably guess, the best part of the game is the ship to ship combat. You’ll use your cannons to attack ships which vary in class from a merchant class war canoe to a warship class large frigate. Obviously the war canoe is just a tad bit easier to overtake. Once you have created enough damage to the ship, you can take it over and decide whether or not to take the ship or sink it (but not before pillaging food and other items on board). The more damage you’ve hit the ship with, the less valuable it is, so strategy is a huge part of the game.
Of course, you could just go aboard the ship and engage in a fencing duel with the captain, but hand to hand combat can be rather difficult. The manual does a good job in explaining how to play; however I found that button mashing to win seems to work fine.
You are able to build quite a fleet of ships just by attacking them. Of course, make sure you check out the nationality of the ship—you don’t want to attack your allies! You can also get promotions faster in the game by destroying your enemies.
