Sid Meier's Pirates is a 2004 Adventure game created by Firaxis Games, and released by Atari and 2K Games. The 2004 game is a remake of the 1987 game of a same name. The original game was originally released for Commodore 64 but was widely ported to other platforms.
To tell you the truth I didn't even hear about the game until I saw the announcement for the remake in my favorite game magazine.

The game gives you a chance to live a life of a pirate. A lot of people dreamed about this, and since the release of the popular Pirates of The Caribbean, the game seems even more appealing. Especially after watching the motion picture on DVD.
The game begins with an intro movie. In short, an evil Spanish nobleman Marquis de Montalban enslaved the hero's (yours) family members, because of a debt while the hero was still a child. Now, when the hero has grown up he decides to get revenge, and to find his lost family members. Then the player gets to choose where to start the game (with English, Spanish, French or Dutch). After some time spent on board the crew mutinies and selects the hero as their new captain.

During the game, you'll receive parts of the maps which tell you the locations of your family members. I don't consider looking for family members that important since they're just sitting inside an unguarded cottage. If they're stupid enough not to escape, then they don't deserve to be saved.
So while you're sailing the Spanish Main, you will encounter numerous ship for all four different nations. You can either decide to live as an honest sailor, to have favorite nation and to destroy ships of other three nations (check term privateer in Wikipedia), or my favorite to become a pirate and plunder everything that gets in your way.
Besides attacking ships, you can also engage in other activities, like going to a ballroom dance with daughters of town governors. Of course, you'll need a rank higher than captains if you want to take them to a dance. The dancing by itself is not that hard. It can be tricky if you're new to the game, but you'll figure it out soon. All the moves come in groups of four. And if you are playing on a lower difficulty level, the keys that you have to press will flash on the screen. If you performed well on the dance, she'll give you a gift, or some sort of information.
Other activities include searching for lost cities (Chichen Itza looking cities), look for hidden pirate treasure, escort governors ships and other stuff.
Another important place in the town is the tavern. That's where sailors drink rum, and you seek for information from various people. You can also buy some items from mysterious travelers or hire more sailors for your crew.

You will also encounter nine real-life pirates who brought noting but fear and terror to the Caribbean. They're Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Stede Bonnet, Captain Kidd, Jean Lafitte, Francois l'Ollonasis, Roche Brasiliano, Bart Roberts and Jack Rackham.

Another fun thing, what you might call an easter egg is the fact that the game honors the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If your computer calendar is set to the 19th of September, the game dialogue will change. For example, instead of the message on the map that says "You are here!", there will be a message saying "Ye be here!".

All in all this is a very fun and addictive game. Graphics are very nice, especially the water and cloud effects. The music really fits the era, and the vast amount of mini-games will keep you busy for a longer period of time. It's one of my favorite games.

Review by: Mario User Rating: 5/5
Reads: 191
Added on Sep, 26th 2007 04:00 PM (16:00)