Game Reviews

Sid Meier probably didn't have a whole lot to do with it (hint: Firaxis bought the rights to Civilization from Atari for $15 million), but Sid Meier's Pirates!: Live the Life is just as good as the original ever was. In fact, if you've played the first game, you'll be perfectly at home with this one.

Pirates casts the player in the role of a young man who's lost his family to the evil Marquis Montalban and his equally evil side-kick, Baron Raymondo. If you wish, however, you can completely ignore the storyline and simply go on pirating, trading and sacking towns. There are changes to the gameplay, but nothing overly dramatic. Firaxis merely brought the game up to date, rather than re-working the whole idea.

The action continues from a third-person isometric perspective, similar to Diablo. The game is similar in artistic style to WarCraft III or World of WarCraft, emphasizing simple yet attractive cartoon-style graphics. It's not cel-shaded, but does make use of pixel shaders for water effects, though little else.Pirates forces the player to start on the easiest difficulty level in the easiest period the first time around, but after completing that game, you can switch to any difficulty and any time period. Sadly, the original 1560: The Silver Age setting has been removed.