August 18, 1999 Web posted at: 2:48 p.m. EDT (1848 GMT) by Ed Sherman

From...

INTERACTIVE:

(IDG) -- This year at E3, MicroProse and Firaxis announced that they'd be cooperating on yet another iteration of the Civilization series. I, for one, was excited--and yet a bit disappointed. I think that what we need instead of another Civ game is an update of Sid Meier's classic game Pirates, the action/strategy/RPG hybrid that let you plunder and pillage to your heart's content.

Fortunately, we won't have to worry about this dream any more: Microids, a development company from France, has a successor to that classic game in its new real-time strategy title Corsairs, a game that's currently available in Europe but will be getting U.S. distribution this October.

Corsairs allows you to step into the patent leather boots of a privateer, a government-sanctioned pirate on the side of either England or France. It's your mission to thwart the enemy at every turn for the glory of your monarch, and maybe for your own personal gain as well. Four training missions teach the basics of navigation, fighting, trading, and everything else you need to thrive on the high seas.

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When you start a new mission in Corsairs, the governor will give you a primary objective, like capturing a certain French port. Even with these specific goals, the huge game map and the abundance of things to do make the game very open-ended. You'll encounter several nationalities as well as merchants and pirates who may befriend you or wage war on you.

Instead of having you harvest the magical resource that makes all things possible, as in every other RTS, Corsairs takes the more historically accurate route. As befitting a pirate, the two routes to wealth are trading and piracy.

Trading between the different ports makes for an interesting game-within-a-game as you analyze the varying commodities available at particular ports. The accessible interface makes it very easy to determine what the prices of goods are at each port, and a simple system of supply and demand allows you to buy low and sell high to make your fortune.

Obviously, the other way a young swashbuckler can make his way in the world is by resorting to piracy. As you patrol the seas, you may encounter--and if you're lucky, capture--the occasional enemy ship. Every captured ship adds gold as well as the possibility of trade goods to your fleet. Of course, there's always the possibility that your ship may be overwhelmed by the enemy force, in which case your vessel may be sunk or captured.

Both the sea battles and the shipboard battles are in real time. The ship-to-ship battles seem very fun, as you maneuver with the wind to fire broadsides into your opponent. You can choose several types of cannonballs depending on whether you want to sink a ship or merely disable it.

Boarding occurs when two ships collide, and you have the option of letting the computer resolve combat or playing it out yourself. Combat between the two crews is top-down and in real time, with regular crewmen carrying only cutlasses and officers using pistols. As in Total Annihilation, your character is represented by an onscreen unit in battle. If your corsair dies, game over.

Corsairs has some other aspects that make gameplay even more compelling. You can place spies on enemy ships and track their movements. The in-game animation is well-done and detailed, right down to the water wheels in the cities and the sails on the ships. And the interface is easy to learn, allowing you to access a wealth of information quickly.

In short, it looks like Corsairs could be a breath of fresh sea air amid the crowded RTS genre. The combination of an underused theme and a lot of gameplay make this one that may last for a long time on gamers' hard drives. Come October, pull up your anchor and get ready for some high-seas adventure!