Sid Meier's Pirates! (Wii) - Review by Chris

Introduction

Sid Meier's is revered within the games industry as one of the leading designers of games, having given us the massively popular Civilization franchise. While his games have largely been seen as PC titles, there have been instances when they've managed to make their way on to home consoles and that's the case this time around as the classic Sid Meier's Pirates! gets a port to the Wii courtesy of 2K Games subsidiary, 2K Shanghai, and Firaxis. But with little in the way of new content, were the developers right to resurrect this game for another round or should it have remained a buried and beloved treasure?

Gameplay

As a 6 year old game, very little has changed from the original iteration to this Wii port. The premise remains the same as you take on the role of a young European character during the colonisation of the New World who must cross the Atlantic to rescue his family who were kidnapped 10 years prior by an evil baron for not repaying debts. The story is thrown at you in a game opening cutscene with a few lines of text giving you the details as to what is going on and after that is finished, it largely remains moot as you progress through the game with only a few references back to it now and again before you reach your inevitable conclusion.

Opting to set out and rescue your family, you have to choose to align yourself with one of 4 nations who were active during the colonisation of the New World before being able to make any attempt at helping your family. The nations you are able to choose from are: France, Spain, The Netherlands and England. Once you've chosen your nation, you'll set sail only to be put under the boot of your ship's captain and after you and your crew overthrow the captain, you take up the role of leader as you set about sailing between ports in the Caribbean looking for leads on where your family are.

As with the story, little has changed in the way of gameplay as you're main action takes the form of sailing and naval combat. You'll have to sail from port to port, hijacking and plundering enemy ships as well as fortified ports, all the time amassing a larger and larger crew and amount of gold which will help you in your ultimate goal. These areas comprise of the majority of the strategy elements you'll encounter as, while you are given specific tasks by the governors of certain ports, you are free to explore and plunder any target as you see fit, allotting the game a huge amount of variety in the way the proceedings pan out between players. Any plunder you gain from ships or ports can be put towards trading for items or for purchasing upgrade to increase the abilities of your ship, such as more cannon fire or better defensive structures, when in combat and as you plunder more and more and complete tasks, you'll rise in rank meaning trading and purchasing items becomes easier and cheaper. The main issue with the sailing sections is that while you'll encounter many ships on your travel and several ports, there really isn't much else to see or do and so these sections do become tedious and do feel dated by today's standards.

The only inclusions to the game this time around are a small selection of mini-games. These mini-games take on the form of things such as armed combat for when you board an enemy ship, lock picking or a dancing game when plundering ports. They're welcome diversions from the monotony of sailing the high seas but these in turn add little to the overall experience, with the only notable exception being the armed combat when boarding a ship as it things get a bit more exciting than simply sailing around in circles and waiting for your cannons to reload. A second player can jump in and play these sections as well, but it feels like a tacked on experience rather than one that is truly enjoyable.

The game manages to present a lengthy quest, which can be played at whatever pace or depth you want which is definitely a nice touch. But, those who've had a chance to play the original in whatever form by now will find nothing here to justify another purchase while newcomers will undoubtedly tire of the generally slow pace of the game and the dated gameplay.

Controls

Controls are very simple in the game: you use only the Wii-mote with a small helping of motion gestures for specific mini-games but the game is largely played out by way of the d-pad and A and B buttons. While the simplistic setup seems initially inviting, the general layout of commands is made more complicated as a result of the Wii-mote's design and having to use the d-pad to sail and the A button for attacking will definitely leave your fingers in a bit of a twist. Couple this with a slight lag in the input detection and the sailing and naval combat sections can become to feel tedious to control. Things fare better in some of the other mini-games however, such as the armed combat or lock picking segments. These sections require uses of motion gestures that, at least in the former case, will generally have you flailing around to get the game to detect your attacks. The latter case will have you making smaller motions with the Wii-mote to pick locks and it is here that the controls shine through and work their magic best.

Graphics

There is a distinct division within the game's visuals that puts everything into two main categories: On shore and at sea. On shore, you'll see pre-rendered locations with a sparse collection of 3D character models, including your own, to interact with. You're unable to move around the locations or move your character at all at any point of the game as these sections merely act as an extension of the menus which house the numerous possible on shore interactions, such as talking to the governor, trading, upgrading your ship or dividing your plunder amongst your crew. These pre-rendered locations and the character models have seen no change whatsoever from their original outing 6 years ago on the PC and as such, things are starting to show their age, with the locations lacking some detail and generally not being up to the standard you'd expect on the console. The same goes for the character models which, while generally managing to look the part, show some blurry texturing and some very basic featural work which leaves them at times feeling rather rigid.

The at sea sections manage to hit a different note altogether and while some issues still carry over visually, such as some blurry textures being used for some of the landmasses, the 3D maps you'll sail around in your ship are nicely designed, with plenty of activity making it feel like more natural, with plenty of ships coming to and leaving port, and some nice touches such as clouds passing over and dolphins and fish swimming around your ships making things feel slightly serene and creating a paradoxical peacefulness for your journey around the Caribbean.

Sound

A collection of suitable songs and shanty tunes help to keep the game very much in character. Yet while they ably suit what is on show here, they begin to grate rather than continue to ignite any feeling you have of playing as a pirate. Sound effects have a similarly grating tone yet do well enough to convey the on screen action but again, they're not something you'll miss or take notice of throughout the game as the music generally plays over the top of these and as such, opting to mute the sound altogether is perhaps to the betterment of the game in general.

Final comments

Porting a 6 year old PC title to the Wii seems like an odd choice and unfortunately for 2K Games, it hasn't truly played off. The lack of new content means that anyone who has had a whiff of the original will get little satisfaction from the sparse collection of mini-games added to help breathe some life into the game and yet the same sentiments can be extended to those who never got a chance to play the original as everything on offer feels sedate and suitably dated making things at times tedious, even for a strategy title. The original was revered in its time, and still is to a certain extent, but this recent port does little to show why and even those looking for some strategy style gameplay should look to the Wii's other sparse collection of strategy titles to satisfy their gaming needs.

Pro: Game is pretty lengthy, can tackle objectives and tasks however you want
Con: Lack of new content, gameplay beings to tire quickly, presentation is dated, some control issues,
Final score: 6

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