dwl10@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) (06/13/88)
This is being posted for a "netless" friend. Comments, questions & flames
go to him, not me.
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Subject: Lengthy Game Review: Pirates!
Title: Pirates!
Description: Historical Simulation
Publisher: MicroProse
System: Commodore 64 disk (C-128 in C-64 mode), joystick required
Price: $28 discount
Overall Grade: A to A+
"Pirates!" is hard to classify. The closest one-sentence description I could
come up with is "a first-person historical simulation with a variety of
action sequences". It should be noted that although based on historical
fact, the game has been embellished with a smattering of popular legend.
What I find most impressive about "Pirates!" is its scope. It gives the
player an unusually large degree of freedom to follow his own playing style.
It also includes a wide range of consequential events (e.g. if you run out of
food for your crew, expect desertions and/or mutiny), timed events (e.g. the
itinerary of the Spanish Treasure Fleet), and chance events (e.g. malaria
striking a colony).
As you explore this seemingly boundless playing field, "Pirates!" maintains
a surprising level of continuity. At every step, whatever choices you make,
whatever the turn of external events, the storyline always flows smoothly
and believably.
Another thing that I really like about "Pirates!" is that there is more
than just a single goal. There are short-term goals (e.g. overpowering and
plundering an enemy ship), middle-term goals (e.g. building up a large enough
crew and fleet to be able to attack your ultimate objective), and long-term
goals (a comfy retirement), all to be pursued at the same time.
The situation:
By the late 1500's, Spain has established a line of colonies along the
Northern coast of South America, what we now call Panama, Colombia, and
Venezuela. This is the Spanish Main (mainland), although the definition
often is expanded to include Spanish colonies throughout the Caribbean
area. Spain prohibits these New World colonies from trading with
foreigners, but some of the less affluent colonies find it expedient to
ignore the law.
Other countries, notably England and France, have no love for Spain in
the first place and resent being locked out of the Caribbean trade. They
also want to establish colonies of their own. Since they have no formal
navies stationed in the New World, they resort to the issuance of Letters
of Marque which authorize privateers to attack enemy ships and towns. Of
course, some folks get a bit carried away and become out-and-out pirates,
plundering and pillaging without much regard to nationality.
"Pirates!" lets you select from 23 different career scenarios. These
scenarios cover 15 career choices including not only privateers and pirates
but also explorers, traders, and Spanish Costa Guarda. They encompass four
nationalities and six time periods spanning 140 years (1560-1700). Or if
you'd rather, you can try to repeat one of six famous expeditions.
Regardless of your chosen career, your long-term goal is the same: you want
to be able to retire comfortably. To this end, you're looking to collect
wealth, land, and social stature (reflected by titles of nobility). Your
career, usually limited by health considerations, may last only a few years
if you're a vicious pirate, or it might last twenty years if you're a
peaceloving trader. Each year takes maybe an hour of game play, but the
actual time varies quite a bit. A career typically spans a number of game
sessions (you can save 4 careers-in-progress on one diskette).
During your career, you'll make a number of expeditions. You yourself may
be a "lifer", but you'll find that your crewmen expect to invest only a year
or two in your service. You'll need to accrue capital, ships, and crew
fairly quickly, make your "big score", and then liquidate your fleet, pay off
the crew, and let them go on their way. If you did well, your reputation
will make it easier to field a new crew for your next expedition.
Many of the expeditions take unexpected turns. You might have part of a
treasure map come into your possession, or you might suddenly find that you
need to embark on a quest of personal nature. These medium-range goals add
a lot to the enjoyment of "Pirates!" because not every expedition requires
you to invent a goal.
Another thing that I liked about "Pirates!" is that -- as in reality -- your
career doesn't come to an abrupt end just because of a single failure. It's
merely a temporary setback; you "pick yourself up and dust yourself off" and
get on with your next expedition.
The game play in "Pirates!" can be divided into eight major phases:
Startup: choose the scenario;
In port: trading, recruiting, hobnobbing with the governor;
Travel by sea: navigation and seamanship, also can march over land;
Battle at sea: intercepting a target ship;
Amphibious assault: landing an assault party at a fort;
Battle on land: commanding a land-based assault on a town;
Swordfighting: at startup and after each of the previous three phases;
Wind-down: dividing the plunder, deciding if it's time to retire.
Such a simple listing of the various phases cannot do justice to the overall
richness of each phase. Each involves a number of activities and choices.
Swordfighting is the only phase involving rapid action which can test your
reflexes. Even there, the action you see on the screen is a lot faster than
your joystick movements need to be. Each joystick movement commands a
sequence of actions which can take a couple of seconds to actually execute.
The other phases which involve movement and battle are done in "real time",
but your timing can be fairly imprecise and you usually can correct for any
small mistakes.
The rest of the game -- in port, startup, wind-down, and all of the phase-
to-phase transition stages -- are done with text and menus supplemented by
1/4-screen color illustrations, sort of like an illustrated storybook. An
indication of just how wide-ranging the game is: the box claims that there
are over 70 such illustrations! Some of the illustrations (mostly the ones
associated with some kind of achievement) are accompanied by music.
The graphics, sound, concepts, and game play are all done very well, but
(except for the sword-fighting) not particularly original. I found little in
"Pirates!" that I hadn't seen before in other games. The "travel at sea"
phase looks an awful lot like "Seven Cities of Gold", the concept of a
trading game has been around for as long as I can remember, the land battles
look like any of a hundred battle strategy games, and the notion of going on
a quest must figure into half of all the computer games ever written.
But what I haven't seen is so many different games rolled into one, and
combined in such a way that the action flows naturally from one game to the
next. *That* is where the creativity lies in "Pirates!".
By the way, the manual is another MicroProse gem. 88 pages, and every bit of
it useful. There are a number of typos though, some of them amusing. Like
references to "pirate bass" instead of "pirate bases", and "loser groups"
instead of "looser groups". Also included: a color map of the Caribbean area
with the various colonies marked -- essential for navigation.
The game's weak spots: poor color choices often make the text difficult
to read, the text formatter is somewhat sloppy, there's a bit too much
emphasis on the swordfighting, a specially formatted diskette is
required for "save game" and "hall of fame", and there are a couple of
minor inconsistencies in the user interface.
And just in case there are any women who might be interested in playing
"Pirates!", I should point out that from start to finish there are frequent
references which clearly indicate that the player's personna is male.
The program's assessment of your career, when you finally retire, can be
unduly harsh because it makes no allowances for the conditions of your chosen
era. Neither does it give any "brownie points" for leading a peaceful life.
On the contrary, it places heavy emphasis on titles, land, and other factors
which only can be obtained as rewards for privateering actions. If you
choose a difficult time period, or if you choose to have a peaceful career,
you will have to make your own judgement as to how well you succeeded.
In MicroProse tradition, the game is heavily copy-protected. When you start
a career, you have to look up some information in the manual. Finding your
way around is difficult without a map, and just to make sure you use *their*
map instead of the atlas on your bookshelf, they've altered the position of
the Caribbean by about 8 degrees North. Of course, there is copy-protection
on the disk, too.
Like any good simulation, "Pirates!" is both great fun to play and gives some
first-hand insight into the conditions that existed at the time. For me,
"Pirates!" went beyond that; it sent me off to the library to learn even
more about a time and place where the reality was just as intriguing as the
legends. Now *that*s quite an accomplishment.
--
Doug Pardee {ames,hplabs,sun,amdahl,ihnp4,allegra}!oliveb!edge!doug
Edge Computer Corp., Scottsdale, AZ uunet!ism780c!edge!doug
--
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"Familiarity breeds attempt"
Dave Lowrey
Amdahl Corp.
Houston, Texas
(713)-850-8828
...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs,oliveb}!amdahl!dwl10
[ The opinions expressed <may> be those of the author and not necessarily
those of his most eminent employer. ]