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Sid Meier's Pirates! Remake Hoists Mainbrace
Thanks to GameSpy for its first impressions of the PC remake, Sid Meier's Pirates!, an updating of the seminal Civilization designer's late '80s game of the same name. Meier notes: "We've learned quite a bit about gameplay... we learned how to build on a classic game without destroying it", and the preview reveals: "The game world is a 'fully fleshed-out sandbox' where you'll have your own ship (or fleet of ships) and free reign to do as you please." However, Meier also mentions: "There's a little more of a stronger story pull", since apparently, this Q4 2004-due title has, like other piratical titles, "an über-villain, a pirate captain responsible for killing your parents, forcing you to leave the old world, and scattering your family all over the Caribbean."
... who thinks that this will be 99% like the first one, only with better graphics and such?
:)
For every feature discussed in the article, I was like "yes, just like the original".
Yes, I loved it, but, after 17 years, I wanted more than a graphics update - I wanted something like a Daggerfal to an Arena. Not "Pirates Gold Plus".
Ah, but it'll have *dancing*. Nice.
Oh well, I'll buy it anyway, but they could have done *so* much more...
The Tlog - a technology blog
Actually, PG was exactly like the original, only with better graphics and sound. Oh, and accelarated time.
The Tlog - a technology blog
...I think I'll pirate this. ;)
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
Considering the original Pirates! had the open ended gaming, missions present if you decide to do them sort of style long before even the first GTA, I think it would be more appropriate to say that GTA has a Pirates! style feel to it...
a Pirates game in OSS: http://huntforgold.sf.net Taking shape, needing developers... plays as good as Pirates! Gold
games that only play for a certain time period - ie - you have 500 turns to do as much as you can. Let me play for as long as I want, or at least give me the option to do so.
:/
I would have much rather seen Cutthroats, Terror on the High Seas from Eidos get an update.
Oh well, since it's piratical, I'll probably get it anyways, but I already have a feeling I'm not going to like it.
Personally, I think you are perhaps omitting several thoughts in your statement. Sid Meier is saying that this is an 'update', so it's quite obvious that those who are expecting a complete overhaul beyond that of the graphics, for example of the gameplay and the other features, will be somewhat disappointed. If the developers changed the game so much that it didn't resemble the original in many ways, it wouldn't be just an update, but a new-generation sequel -- or maybe, to a certain extent, another game in the same genre. What i think Sid Meier wants this to be is a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of the latter, which are mainly the graphics overhaul and the power which can render the in-game world.
What you may be forgetting is that these new benefits will be like allowing the player to see the same game through a different eye. The in-game map will be immense and rendered with beauty thanks to the advances of recent technology. What's more, this new perspective must have allowed the developers to add or update some features which they could probably not have inserted before, because they did not have the technology to exploit for doing so. This is the kind of gameplay updates which the game will have done some good to the new version of the game, so the playing style doesn't change so much -- which stays in line with Sid Meier wanting this to be an 'update' of the original game.
As I have already said, I think that all this game is is an update, a port of the original game to a modern format, using all the benefits of this more recent hardware, to overhaul the graphics, features et al, but without forgetting what the gameplay is all about. As Sid Meier says it so well himself, they are "building upon a classic game without destroying it."
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
That's not really much of a change from the original game. Originally, the main character's family was scattered throughout the carribean and you had to rescue them. The only real change here is that a "why" has been answered more clearly.
As far as time limit, there needs to be one. Just as the Civ series couldn't go on forever (no new technology changes gameplay fundamentally and for the worse), Pirates has to end too after a certain ammount of time. Or else, your character will be forced to become a video pirate. Arr..?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Intresting idea but unless you live in venice how are you going to get your ship up the highstreet?
Hoist the electic window and shiver me sheet metal does not quite have the same ring.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
But will it have a huge honkin manual, which is more historical primer than anything else, in the classic Microprose style?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You can play several versions on emulators. I recommend the Amiga version, with excellent Bach music, and great graphics. I've also heard that the Genesis version is very good, but I've never played it.
The Tlog - a technology blog
If they didn't include aging in the game, it wouldn't be Pirates! anymore. One of the coolest features of the original was that, despite the open nature of the game, you were still battling time. The more you were wounded, the longer you took to get something done...These things gave the game a sense of time, and it needed that badly in order to enhance the challenge. In fact, you could argue that it was entire crux of the game. The goal was to retire as wealthy and happy as possible - wealthy defined [obviously] by one's booty and happy defined by good marriage and liberation of the family. I can't say how many times I ended up penniless because I pushed a crew too far and for too long...Awesome. :)