Lawrence.com

If you're of college age, chances are you played the classic Oregon Trail computer game back in elementary school. In that game, you rode in a covered wagon from fort to fort, buying and trading goods, stopping occasionally to hunt. Pirates is more or less the same concept, except you get a ship instead of a covered wagon, and you fight other ships instead of hunting animals.

On the surface, Pirates deceivingly appears to feature a ton of different things to do. Reading through the manual, you'd think there was an endless amount of varied gameplay to be seen. You can swordfight, dance, participate in land battles, treasure hunts, invade ports, and engage enemy ships on the high seas. It all sounds great, but then you realize there's really not much input required from the player. Swordfighting is a completely linear affair, forcing you to simply hit A and one of three directions to hit your opponent. Pressing B and a direction will dodge. The controls for these swashbuckling sections is sluggish, and the fights themselves are simply boring. Most fights can be won by madly hitting A and a direction until you've forced the enemy pirate to the end of the ship, at which point you'll see one of a few different cutscenes for about the 200th time.

Each time you sail into a port, you can speak to the governor of the city. More often than not, they'll either praise or scold your actions, and then their daughter will ask you to dance. Accepting this invitation will take you to one of the most drawn-out and monotonous minigames I've ever seen in a videogame. You're placed in the middle of a giant square of dancers, facing your partner, then you have to press face buttons in the order they're presented on screen. Here's how it pretty much goes down: Stare at the screen. Wait for the "X" button to show up. Press "X" button. Watch the dance for another few seconds until the "B" button shows up. Repeat 48 times.

The opportunity to marry one of these women pops up once during your pirate's lifetime. This "lifetime" is basically how long the game lasts. There's no defined end to the game, you simply have until your character retires from his life of plundering. How long this lasts depends on how you play. Stopping frequently to send out search parties for buried treasure will cost you weeks and weeks of your life, ending the game quicker. It should be noted that there's no actual "searching" for treasure, it's just a matter of sailing your ship into a land area and pressing "A", followed by either a "No treasure was found" message or a short cutscene of your gang finding the loot.

The main story revolves around your characters' family being abducted, forcing you to participate in a series of quests to find them. It's just too bad that none of these quests are particularly interesting or involving in the least. The story seems very inconsequential, and is told unconvincingly through cutscenes with no voice-overs. Obviously, this isn't the type of game you should buy expecting an epic story. Or anything resembling gameplay for that matter.

You'll often find yourself simply sailing around aimlessly, looking for something to do. Each time you visit a port, it's a good idea to talk to the governor, as well as visit the local tavern. Every visit to the tavern is basically the exact same procedure. You'll hire a group of sailors to join your crew, and then talk to the mysterious stranger in the corner, followed by the barmaid and bartender. The only semi-interesting thing that happens in these taverns is the info from the mysterious stranger. Sometimes it'll be free, sometimes he'll charge money, but he'll usually have some valuable information. You'll receive treasure maps and information about quests, which give the game a temporary sense of direction.

Usually, the game lacks the aforementioned sense of direction. Far too often, I found myself just sailing around aimlessly for periods of time, just trying to find a city that'll give me good money for the spice and sugar I plundered. This process is just as boring as it sounds. While sailing, you'll often run into enemy ships that you can choose to engage. These sea battles are slightly more exciting than the swordfights, which means they're about as interesting as the slide-puzzles in Wind Waker. You just sail in circles around the enemy ship, pressing A from time to time to shoot cannons at them. Granted, you can upgrade your ship with different kinds of shots and armor, but the gameplay remains the same. If you're tired of pressing the analog stick and the A button, you can ram the ship and take on the captain::leading to entirely new ways of pressing the analog stick and the A button! Defeating the captain or winning the sea battle will give you the option of either keeping or sinking their ship. After the win, you can plunder the enemy vessel for a variety of goods. You can play multiplayer ship battles, but I can't even fathom why people would want to subject themselves to that.

Talking about graphics in Pirates is like talking about the particle effects in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. It's obvious that graphics simply weren't an important part of the development process. It wouldn't surprise me to see this game pulled off nearly as well on the PSX. Granted, I don't think that super-realistic water effects or explosions would help the game out at all, but it's worth mentioning that there's nothing particularly impressive to look at in this title. Audio is a similar issue. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect out of a game like this. Generic sword and cannon sound effects, piratey-sounding music (Yes, I know that's not a word), and the like. Nothing in this title really strikes the eye or ear.

There are a lot of aspects of Pirates that sound very promising, but just aren't executed well. You become more famous as your pirating career becomes more prolific, you can hunt down rival pirates and try to bump them off the top 10 list and you can play nations against each other. All these concepts sound like they might be fun, but they really don't deliver. This game is a collection of potentially great ideas, but as it turns out, the developers seemed to forget to include any real gameplay to complement them. Pressing the analog stick and A for hours can only take a game so far. This strikes me as a game that a select group of people will really enjoy, but I can imagine it getting lost on the majority of the gaming public.

Graphics: C-

Sound: C+

First Play: C-

Last Play: C-

Gameplay: C-

Overall: 70% C-