I bumped into 'Hidden Treasure' - Sid Meier's Pirates!

XeononyX

WOW, now I must admit I bumped into one of my favorite games recently perusing the shelves of Wal-Marts $18 PC game software Isle.

That game is Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life.

First of all it's open ended, many goals and you never have to play the game the same twice. You can decide to be a merchant pirate, or a crazy pirate who attacks anything in the ocean, you can be a pirate hunter.

Now what makes this game so good are the many differect styles of play all rolled into one.

1) RPGish . You got your guy and you build him up looking for special Items and treasures to make him better. You look for special crewmembers for you ship to help you out in sailing.

2) 1 v 1 combat . You sometimes have to swashbuckle other pirates and generals to take over ships.

3) Sea battles . You attack ships and have to make evasive manuevers, decide what kind of shot you are going to use and the ultimate delimma: Keep her or Sink her.

4) Unit style combat . Kinda like the Romance of the three Kingdom style games, you have units like Buccaneers, Pirates, and officers and try to get them to the other side.

5) Evasion style . Some times you get caugt or out numbered and you have to sneak around town, avoiding guards and such or you get caught again.

It's not easy either, its not a cake walk. For example you have one ship and you lose you get deserted on a island and you have to wait.

If you like games like these you should give it a shot.

Until next time, I'll be sailing the seas, Xeon.

anhstar

Its a good game, but it gets repetitive and you have a limited time since your avatar growing old after a time and you have to retire.

XeononyX

Yep that add to the realism I always go for a guy into medice, helps me out until I find the 2 herbs to make you live longer.

djared90

Yeah, I got Sid Meier's Pirates! for last Christmas, and at first I was bitterly disappointed. My computer met all of the "requirements" that the box listed, but the game ran ridiculously slow (especially land battles: it was so bad that it took over half a minute for them to move over just one square), even with all graphic settings down as low as they could go. However, then I found out that eliminating all background processes helped greatly in speeding it up, and when I got my new computer all of these problems disappeared completely (cruddy old GeForce 2).

When I could finally enjoy the game, I found that I really had fun with it. The one-on-one battles could get really intense, as well as naval battles, and capturing a city in a land battle always provided a good profit. In one of my games I captured a ship of the line, found all of the treasure, defeated all of the pirates, rescued all of my family members, got a "beautiful" wife, found the lost cities, retired as governor, etc. etc. Now to try it on a different time setting.

XeononyX

WOW a ship of the line!! Thats great Ive never been able to find one of those, the best I could Find was Captain Morgans Large Frigate, which is a great ship. On the easiest level I got all the points except for one wealth point, definately a good game for me. Im venturing on to harder levels.

Dorsk82

Just to warn you as someone already did the game does get repetitive. That said though it is an awesome game and one that had me addicted for about 2 weeks right in the middle of writing my thesis for graduation (doh!). It is sooo much fun to just sail around feeling like a jolly swashbuckler straight from say monkey island (at least that is what the game reminded me of). And when it does get repetitive just take a break for a few months and come back... it worked for me! Very Happy

george7004

pirates is a great game.. I am trying to develop a mofps like it... its hard

Dorsk82

Good luck man... if you ever get it up and running spread the love! Cool