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Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life

Score: 75%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Take - Two Interactive
Developer: Apus Software
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1 - 4
Genre: Action/ Turn-Based Strategy/ Online

Graphics & Sound:

Set sail for the open seas in Sid Meier’s Pirates! Live the Life where sword fighting, pirate’s booty, and another kind of booty await. Everything within the game is picture perfect, with a cartoonish style that features plenty of detail. Player models are defined exquisitely, and are complimented with a range of animations. Things look just as good when you’re looking at the world from a bird’s eye view above the ocean. You can clearly see a difference between ships, and the ocean looks beautiful. I hate to use the word letdown, but the only graphical thing I was disappointed with was the graphics during the ground battles.

Even more of a letdown, however, was the non-use of the English language. This is my first Sid Meier game, so maybe this is a constant, but I wasn’t impressed with Pirates! use of Adam Sandler gibberish for dialogue. Conversations consist of grunts and the text of the conversation written on the screen. I don’t mind text, but I would have liked to have heard some voices that I could understand.

Meantime, the musical score fits the game very well. You’ll feel the threat of an attack and feel victorious following a sword fight. The sound effects are top notch as well, which makes the atmosphere of Pirates! authentic.


Gameplay:

Sid Meier’s Pirates! Live the Life advertises itself as a game where you get to “live the life” of a pirate (duh). While swashbuckling and courting governors’ daughters sounds fun in the beginning, I actually found myself getting bored living the life of a pirate. Here’s the story: your family is kidnapped when you’re a child, and you make it your life’s mission to find your family. Along the way, you get to do some pirating which includes ship battles, treasure maps, and fulfilling quests for you or your loved ones. Again, this all sounds good on paper, but once you get going in Pirates!, it almost seems like you’re doing the same things from port to port. There are almost too many sword fights, not enough land battles, and I hate to be a sexist pig, but your romances take forever to develop!

If you can get past the monotony of Sid Meier’s Pirates!, you’ll find there are some things you have to worry about. Namely, your crew. If you go from port to port attacking other ships and stealing their plunder, your crew tends to get antsy. Apparently, they just want their cut and are willing to take off (if you have a second or third boat) if you don’t dock soon and divvy up the goods.

Another thing worth mentioning is ship upgrades. Every ship in the game can be upgraded with the same equipment, although the different types of ships vary. You may have a large-and-in-charge behemoth along with a tiny speedster. You can get other ships by defeating an opponent in a ship battle. Just make sure not to wreck it too much. Otherwise it may cost a little more to repair.

Of course the other item to mention is the fact that you can move your way up the pirate top ten list. Nine other scoundrels scour the seas, and it’s up to you to beat them at their own game. Some may just have lots of goods, while others may have information leading to your family.


Difficulty:

Sid Meier’s Pirates! offers up five difficulty levels, which helps beginners find a good comfort level early on. Other things that determine your difficulty during your pirate career include the time in history in which you play, and which country you show a loyalty to. For example, some time periods offer fewer opportunities for attacking other ships, while being loyal to certain countries may mean you have more or fewer allies in the water and at ports.

Game Mechanics:

There isn’t a whole lot to the controller configuration in Pirates!. Things are very easy to learn, and the instruction manual does an excellent job of explaining things you may have questions about. Probably the toughest (and I use that word loosely) part is during dances. You’ll court governors’ daughters by dancing with them in a PaRappa the Rapper style. However, it’s more about hitting the right button at the proper time in the music, and not so much about following a series of patterns. You just have to follow her lead and press a button for the right direction. If you’re Fred Astaire, she’ll fall for you. If you’ve got two left feet, better look for love in another port.

You can also “live the life” over the internet through Xbox Live and play up to three different people. I wasn’t able to do this myself because I don’t have Xbox Live, but then again, I’m not sure I’d want to play this game against three other people.

It’s not that Sid Meier’s Pirates! Live the Life is a bad game. It’s just that it’s the same thing after a while. I recommend giving this one a rent first.


-Red Dawg, GameVortex Communications
AKA Alex Redmann

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