What ever happened to simplicity? That pick up and play value, to just boot up, jump in and get on with things? It seems to have been missing lately, with some games being so complex they force you to trudge through boring tutorials and manuals bigger than the phone book; where's the fun in that? I just want to play, not be bogged down with learning each and every facet of the game before I get a chance to try it. To this problem comes the games industry's answer - Sid Meier's Pirates!, a sequel, or to be precise, a remake of the popular original Pirates! As its name suggests, it's a game cantered around the swashbuckling antics of those eye-patch wearing, peg-legged scalliwags who sail the seven seas in search of plunder.

You take the role as one such pirate, who's on a quest to seek out and rescue his missing family, who were years earlier imprisoned by the evil Marques Montalban. A standard tale of rescue and revenge, with the added objective to rise through the ranks and become the number one pirate of the Caribbean. Starting right at the bottom, you are given a small, simple ship to command, a handful of crew and are pointed in the general direction of where you should go; from there on, you're on your own.

While it does seem a little aimless being let loose on the seas with no clear objective, this does make Pirates! a very open ended game, not restricting you to a particular narrative. From the get go you are allowed to choose your own path, be it a privateer for one of the four super powers of the region (comprising of the English, French, Spanish and Dutch) a trader who can buy goods at one port and sell them at another that buys particular items at an inflated price, or just a plain old pirate, not pledging alliance to anyone and attacking anything of value. But it's often more prudent to mix these together to maximise the amount of profit you can get your hands on and keep a few friends on standby, in case things go a little awry.

Profit is naturally on the top of any pirate's To Do list, a commodity certainly not lacking in the busy seas of the Caribbean. This is a place of thriving activity, a huge sea full of ports, ships and lots and lots of treasure to be found, or taken. It's certainly not a quiet place, with the four major sea powers constantly at each others' throats, sinking each others' ships and attacking and taking over towns, while other pirates and native Americans struggle to stay afloat amongst these constantly bickering colonists. At the beginning of the game you are allowed to ally with one of the four main nations. While doing so doesn't restrict you to doing that side's bidding, occasionally helping them by protecting convoys, attacking enemy ships and raiding unfriendly towns does give you promotions, which in turn cuts the cost of goods and upgrades in that nation's ports.

And it's ports that'll form the backbone of your merry adventure. Seeing as the game never really offers up any clues or guidance as to the whereabouts of your missing family members, you have to seek them out yourself; and with ports being a breeding ground for suspicious types who thrive off rumours and tittle tattle, they prove to be an invaluable source of information. Not that all of this information is vital to the main quest; in fact, more often than not it just gently pushes you in the direction of big treasure finds, that while not benefiting your rescue mission, do get you the kind of money you'll need for later in the game.

New crew members and items can also be acquired from the many Taverns in these ports, making them an essential part of your journey, but ports offer many more services besides; shipwrights for repairs, merchants to buy or sell supplies, plus each town's governor can also be visited and talked to. What they have to say however is never really of much importance; their daughters on the other hand are always on the lookout for someone interesting to charm them and how does a pirate dazzle a fair maiden? By dancing of course! Ballroom dancing to be precise, which leads us to the first of many mini-games that makes up the majority of Pirates!

While some may shriek at the prospect of such a task, this little deviation is actually quite a nice break from the constant sailing. Playing out like a rhythm game, you have to successfully match your partner's hand gestures in time with the corresponding movement. Succeed and wow the lady off her feet, then she'll offer you a choice of gifts that can be used at sea or in battle, or even just give you important information. However, be too slow or misjudge a particular movement and all you'll get is a slightly miffed lady kindly telling you to naff off. But who plays a game based around pirates to dance? While these sections perhaps play out far more often than they should, they aren't the only mini games here.

In fact, it would be hard to call Pirates! a game; it's more a collection of small adventures. Sailing is the most common aspect, with its top down, isometric view of the sea, it's an easy to grasp section that just requires you to point the ship in the right direction, but depending on which actions you decide to take against ships, or indeed land based targets, the subsequent mini games can be quite different.

Ship combat can actually be quite enjoyable, transferring the camera to a more detailed 3D view, it requires a little bit of strategic thinking with good use of the wind to manoeuvre around enemy ships. While some may think it a good idea to throw the biggest ships with the most guns into a fight, often smaller vessels can use the wind to run circles around the enemy and pepper them with cannonballs before they get a chance to react. Then it's simply a case of moving in for the kill, boarding the enemy vessel and raiding it of its stores, where the game again changes, this time into a sword fighting game against the ship's captain. Force the rival crew to surrender with your supreme sword fighting skills and the battle is yours.

But treasure needn't be restricted to the sea and often the most rewarding plunder can be found on land. Towns can be raided by your crew, again with another change in the style of the game, this time into something that resembles a turn based strategy game. A simplistic enough mode to get the hang of, though if your forces happen to outnumber the town guard you'll overwhelm the defences immediately and simply have to deal with their commander. The variety is quite staggering, though despite the numerous changes in gameplay, the game never feels overcomplicated. The controls are designed around ease of use, with the numeric pad acting as the main hub for much of the game.

Sword Fighting? The 7, 4 and 1 keys act as attack buttons while the 8, 5 and 2 keys are defence. Fighting is less about constant button bashing and more about timing. The same goes ballroom dancing; correct timing brings in more prosperous rewards while little slip-ups will have you stumbling on your feet. To keep things a little varied, the further you progress, the more difficult these sections become, requiring even more razor sharp reactions. But if such sections become a little too much, there's always the chance to go for a bit of treasure hunting. In the fine tradition of things, searching for that elusive treasure stash can be acquired by buying parts of a treasure map that can eventually be pieced together and used to hunt down those huge stashes of gold.

And yet, despite all this variety and changes in gameplay, Pirates! never loses its simplicity. The controls are so easy to grasp that you'll rarely find any need to look in the manual for anything other than general hints; this is a game you can really jump into and get on with right away, with none of the hassle of dull stat screens with useless information bothering you. This does however cause a few little problems.

Ease of use also means ease of play, with perhaps a little too much emphasis on the ease part. Simple controls are always welcome, but the simple mini games can be a little too easy; so easy in fact that it's quite possible to acquire a fleet of ships and a mountain of gold in the first hour of play. But in an attempt to quell this rapid expansion, your crew makes sure that your spoils are never kept to yourself, often demanding their own cut to go their own separate ways, leaving you back where you started, with one ship and a bit of gold.

This can get quite annoying at times, especially after you happen to come by a huge stash of gold, but it's almost unavoidable. Your crew morale declines constantly to a point where you are forced to split the share of profit, either by your choice or in a mutiny at gunpoint. Morale can be affected by your actions; raiding ships and towns can bring in the kind of money that keeps the crew in line, but in order to sustain this you have to attack almost everything in sight and even then there's no guarantee your crew will be any less unhappy.

Other problems also appear from time to time, in particular the sailing sections, where the constant Westerly wind makes it extremely difficult to travel eastwards, prolonging journeys that can eat through supplies faster than you can sustain them, forcing yet more trips to local ports. Storm clouds help with little boosts, but some of these can actually damage your ships, adding yet more to the costs you have to fork out for.

Perhaps the biggest problem however is with the game structure itself. Varied though it is, the game often doesn't feel varied enough. Things can become quite predictable - travel to a port, repair your ship, buy supplies, gather information, acquire replacement crew and charm the governor's daughter, sail to next port to do the same. The longer you play and the more mini games you get involved in, the more repetitive things seem to become and with the constant need to split your fleet and profits, there's never any real sense of achievement to it all.

Despite its flaws, Sid Meier's Pirates! is a very enjoyable and instantly playable game. It's the pick up and play value that saves it, the ability to dive in and play for an hour an so without any of the restrictions that bog down so many games these days. It's just a shame there's no multiplayer support, as such a feature has never seemed so appropriate as it does here. Until a similar game appears adding online support though, Pirates! certainly does provide a good deal of enjoyment for the single player side of things. Though it may be flawed and lacks the challenge and depth to keep some gamers hooked, it's a thoroughly entertaining slice of gaming simplicity. Take a break from all that realistic shooting, put yer best eye patch and get ready for ever pirate catchphrase ye've ever heard. It may be no classic, but it's one of the finest pirate adventure games around, ye scurvy seadogs.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).