Sid Meier is a legend. Back in the day, he was a giant among visionaries. Who else could have dreamed up such groundbreaking gems such as Railroad Tycoon, Civilization and the original 1980’s game – Pirates! So now, nearly 20 years down the road, Firaxis bring forth a lovely updated version of the same game. First on PC, where it went down a storm, and now to Xbox, which is an interesting prospect, as I wasn’t sure how the controller-led interface would keep things going at a reasonable pace. I was really enamoured of this version of the classic game, but also disappointed with some of the performance issues the game had.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! has translated surprisingly well to the Xbox, and even has some added content on its way from the PC. You play a daring and dashing young buccaneer, who has set out for revenge on an evil Baron who devastated your family when you were a child and sold your relatives into slavery. Now old enough to command your own ship, you sail to the sun-sparkled waters of the Caribbean to seek your revenge, and make a hefty fortune along the way by trading, pillaging and romancing.

The game is set up as a series of minigames and static choice screens. As you make your way through the map of the Caribbean, you will mostly be spending time aboard your ship, sailing around, attacking other ships. This is set up really well on the Xbox controller; you navigate by using the left stick (making sure you are running with the wind or at an angle, otherwise you won’t be able to go anywhere). Here you also have to keep an eye on your food level and your crew’s mood meter. Run out of food or stay at sea too long without getting any treasure, and you’ll have a mutiny on your hands.

When you encounter another vessel, you have the option to enter into combat with it. This works really well, you basically use the left stick to navigate so that you are broadside (side-on) to your opponent, then fire one of three types of cannonball (normal to damage the ship’s hull, chain to cripple the sails and grape shot to cut down the opposing sailors). You’ll either sink the opposing ship or they will surrender. If not, you can ram them and enter into the duelling minigame, whereby you board the enemy ship to do battle with the captain.

The other minigames in Pirates! are also quite fun, there’s a dancing minigame, where you have to press buttons in time with the music in order to woo governors’ daughters to gain information and gifts. There’s also a stealthy sneaking-type game when entering an enemy port, you will need to evade guards or knock them out from behind - it’s quite rudimentary, but can also be quite fun. Finally, there’s the land battle minigame, where you pit units of your pirates against a port’s guards in order to pillage it. This is a cut-down strategy game, using three types of unit (long, short and support), moving in turn until one army is left.

The graphics in Pirates! are lovely. In the sailing mode, the view is often from quite a distance, but you can still see the beams of your ship and the booms swinging and sails bellying as you move your ship into the path of the wind. The duelling scenes also look good, with smooth animation and bright colour palette, plenty going on around you as if you are in the midst of a sea battle. The Port scenes are nicely drawn, it’s just a shame that all the taverns you enter look exactly the same, even down to the same models for unemployed pirates, they just have different clothes on! This also goes for most of the duel and dancing and port scenes, you will see the same cutscenes over again, as there are only five or six available.

The one real issue I had with the Xbox version of Pirates! is with the loading times and the amount of slowdown I encountered, especially during transitions from sea to port and vice versa. It took my old Xbox a while to run smoothly after one of these transitions, which spoilt things a little for me.

Otherwise, Pirates! is a great success on Xbox, and this game is the kind of thing you can spend hours playing at a time, or just jump in and out of as you wish. The balanced mixture of the free-roaming sailing with the structured nature of the other minigames makes for an absorbing experience.