Sid Meier's Pirates!

 Wii, Sid Meier's Pirates! (2010) game

The original on the Amiga somehow passed me by - I didn't like strategy games at first, your 'Settlers,' 'X-Com' or 'Dune II,' but after spending enough time with them I came to love these games as favourites of the machine (and in gaming generally), but for some reason, maybe a suspicion of too much disk-swapping, perhaps a perceived lack of variety, it could have been I didn't have my own copy, I don't know, I never actually played 'Pirates!' and as a result it both retained some vague draw, of the exotic and unknown category, and a seed of interest that eventually grew into getting a copy for the Wii thinking it would be a far more advanced version. As it turned out I was to be rather disappointed, and I'm sure they were going for a strong nostalgia factor for those who'd loved the original back in the 90s (or was it late-80s?), because this was almost an exact copy in gameplay terms. There is the obvious addition of motion sensitive gameplay (though this is few and far between, limited to the dancing and fighting minigames, most of the game controlled from the D-pad), and a fairly pointless collectable accoutrements section that allows you to dress your pirate up in all manner of clothing like a Ken doll (which may have been part of the original anyway), but it's pretty pointless other than for the joy of customisation and putting your mark on your character. In every other respect it's the same gameplay. Though I never played it I somehow gained the knowledge of what the game entailed, and also heard firsthand in the now from one who had played it, but even if I knew nothing about this version, it's archaic systems and rigid gameplay would have tipped me off that it hadn't moved on in the two decades since!

The graphics are far more detailed, 3D and lushly colourful, and I will say that playing it in a heatwave with a fan blowing at me and my wooden door creaking in the background of air pressure gave me an almost 4D-enhanced experience of sailing the high seas at times, but overwhelmingly my impression was one of trudging through thick mud to get to something shiny, then turning round and doing it all again. Over and over again. It may be that this was a realistic depiction of piratical life: slow, tiresome, punctuated by occasional moments of excitement, delight and success, but it really did feel as if I was at sea on long voyages the way travel was so laborious. It could be painfully slow, especially when you're going against the wind (yes, I know all about tacking), inching forward while days are passing in-game and your character is literally ageing in the meantime! And then whenever you do reach port half the time was spent waiting for loading screens to the extent I didn't know which was slower: the sailing or being a landlubber! It didn't help, nor put me in the best frame of the mind that the Wii booklet was so slim and uninformative, telling you to download the full manual online. Fine, but when I did download the manual for the Wii version it was the same as the paper copy! Admittedly much time has passed and there were other versions I could have used, but it put me off trying to search out the proper manual and consequently I had to work things out for myself.

All well and good, sometimes it's ideal to approach a game that way, and the loading screens were at least full of helpful hints for the gameplay. At the same time there were key points it took me a long while to work out, and one or two I never did (such as how to attack a port - I assume you have to be at war with that nation, presumably by attacking enough of their ships...), and I felt on the whole there was no reason to have made the game anything other than a series of menu screens (and the fact that every different screen is accompanied by loading times didn't inspire confidence), everything else was mere bonus trappings - if we're talking Amiga games one aspect made me think of a specific genre of that era in style and relevance: the Don Bluth titles, specifically 'Dragon's Lair' and 'Space Ace' which were amazingly like being in a cartoon at the time, but could only achieve such heretofore unattainable graphical prowess at the expense of actual gameplay where it was merely a case of timing button presses to advance, a memory and reaction game, basically. The duelling brought this to mind very strongly since it's all about timing and the fancy graphics (not all that fancy now), were mere window dressing. I couldn't get a handle on them at first (nor the dancing), yet another game affected detrimentally by Wii controls not precise enough for purpose, so you're left uncertain if it's your own timing at fault or the sensors themselves (then there's the issue of 'A' being so close to the D-pad it's easy to roll down onto it and select an option by mistake). As time drew on and I was able to collect items that improved my skill in such areas and gradually made my way up the ranks of each country, the game opened up and I started to enjoy it instead of bumbling around. For a time I even considered it a 3-star game, though even then I'd have felt generous awarding it that. As it turned out, one last sting in the tail dropped the experience back down to my initial impressions.

There was certainly plenty to do, searching for lost cities, romancing governor's daughters, collecting, trading, ship battles, hunting for your kidnapped relatives, tracking down treasure and dealing with the pirates that put it there... And once I understood the landscape of this 'World' map and where to go for this or that, it's quite satisfying ticking things off lists, achievements being a modern addition I assume, that at least gives you more reason to keep playing, but eventually pales as you find yourself having to run the length of the ocean to catch up with your nemesis (or nemeses' since there's more than one!). But it was in the final battle against Montalban, the man who stole away your childhood by taking your family, my negative impression was sealed. The 'story' such as it was, at first appeared to be something more than I was expecting, and I assumed this wouldn't have been part of the original game and would be a far more developed part of the experience than it turned out to be - it was in the original and there isn't really any story other than giving you more of an impetus to explore and goals to aim for. But back to that final sword fight: to get to it you have to blast his secret city base, an on-rails 'light gun' shooting section, fun the first few times, but when it takes a couple of minutes to get through and at the end of it Montalban chops you to pieces in a few hits then it's one of those most ancient gaming headaches of the kind found in so many platform games and the like which is more trial than challenge.

It took me hours of repetitive, trying attempts, and I seemed to make no progress: I might get a strike in on him, only for the favour to be returned immediately, and defence moves seemed no avail as he'd simply recover faster. I actually did feel like I was starting to get RSI from the repetition of the two sequences, aiming and shooting my ship's cannons, then sword-fighting, and I got to the stage where I contemplated the shame of potentially having to give it up - perhaps at 88 my man, Robeye The Worthy, was simply too old for the necessary reaction speed, but there was no way I was going to start at the beginning again to find out! I tried various tactics, each sword (the attacking one, the defending one, the one in the middle), then I started bringing in another remote in to play as the second player - it enables a parrot to fly in and attack if you make a successful hit, giving a slight advantage, though repeatedly mashing buttons with one hand while at the same time trying to have a sword fight with the other, was certainly a challenge of dexterity! After days of attempts I somehow got the right timing and won the fight, but it was a major low point of the game that sealed my opinion. It's not that it was a terrible game, and once you understand the values of the few goods you trade, reach the top rank with free repair work on your fleet of ships, get a fleet of ships, tick off the tasks, it could be quite fun - I even pulled some late shifts, even an all-nighter at one point so I was clearly sucked into the world, but there were just too many irritations, tasks that took too long, and a growing sense of simply repeating the same few tasks over and over.

I grant that there is something enjoyable about being able to play a game one-handed (it didn't use the Nunchuk attachment so you could have a cup of tea or a sandwich in one hand, while controlling your ship with the other!), and I once ate a meal while playing, something I don't think I could say about any other game. But the motion controls didn't add much to the experience and once again I think of annoyances: the fact that if you leave a port it pushes you fast out into the sea, and if there's a reef, or rocks in the way you'll run right over them causing all kinds of damage! It's realistic in that food is used up over time and your crew grow restless and eventually mutinous if you don't do enough plundering, yet at the same time the other ships in your fleet will follow you blindly, running over rocks instead of steering their ships sensibly. I'm sure the greatest difficulty in a pirate Captain's life would have been dealing with people, a commodity with their own mind and short tempers, so it adds some internal threat to your plans that the crew need to be kept, if not happy, then merely miserable instead of mutinously angry! Early on I found it so hard to recruit new crew and they seemed to mutiny so often or get killed in battle that it was very demoralising, though once I got the hang of hopping into a port with the hope the bad apples would desert and the ship would go back to normal operations, or I was successful enough with countries I could recruit more easily, it became a much better experience.

It was a very gradual, if addictive game, which had the feeling of climbing a hill to get somewhere or make money, but when you get near the top it became much more enjoyable. But once you've beaten all the pirates, have a solid fleet and have taken on the majority of the tasks there isn't much reason to keep playing, though you can. One other flaw was it was almost impossible to actually lose the game, maybe a concession to 'modern' gamers? If you lose your ship you're picked up by someone else, if you're marooned on a desert island someone will come along and make you their Captain. The graphics reminded me of 'Age of Empires III,' colourful, bright, detailed, but it also reminds you there are much better resource management games you could be playing so it's hard to justify starting again (though I applaud the idea that everything you need to collect is reset in a new game so you can replay without feeling you know where everything is). The bottom line is that it's very old-fashioned, and not in a good way, it didn't succeed in updating the format to give you a greater sense of control and options - 'mouse'-controlled strategy games could be ideal for the console, as shown by how great 'Star Trek Conquest' was, but Sid's 'Pirates!' didn't cut it, me hearties.

**