The console crowd may not be all that familiar with the name Sid Meier, but he's been responsible for some of the most groundbreaking and successful PC games of all time. One of these was the original Pirates! , which was released in 1987. It let gamers air it out on the open waters with their high-powered 286 computers. Live the Life is somewhat of an updated remake of this classic.
The game starts -- not unlike a million games before it -- with something horrible happening to the main character's family. In this case, you're a normal, well-adjusted, eight-year-old kid whose family meal one evening is ruined by the evil Marquis de la Montalban. The Marquis not only shows up uninvited, but also takes your entire family prisoner. You manage to escape with out being captured. The game takes place 10 years later. You're 18 years old and are ready to do whatever it takes to find your family and exact revenge on Montalban. Not the most original premise, but it's just about the only gaming cliché you'll run up against. There's a lot here that's new and different.
After choosing the difficulty level and your character's specialization -- and you can choose "wit and charm," which will make you better with the women -- you then choose which nationality you want to be affiliated with: the Spanish, Dutch, French, or English. A quick cutscene of you leading a mutiny against an evil captain and being chosen to take his place puts you in charge of the ship -- as well as your own career.
The guts of the game are the naval battles -- and they're a refreshing and challenging change of pace from just about any other type of gaming warfare out there. First off, there's a learning curve to just maneuvering your ship around. There's no turbo button and you can't just throw the thing into reverse to backtrack. On the water, you're at the mercy of the wind for power. You have to know when to raise and lower your sails to either take advantage of the breeze -- or to avoid being slowed down by it. I spent the first twenty minutes at sea spinning around aimlessly, wondering if there was something wrong with either the preview copy of the game or my controller.
And that's just the moving around part. To fire on an enemy, you have to be in the right position. Cannons are mounted on the sides of the ship, so you kind of have to parallel park your vessel to be in position to do damage. Again, it can be frustrating at first and, for a while, I was glad that I had decided not to become a pirate in real life. But once you do get the hang of how to use the wind to move and set yourself up for the kill, things get easier and somewhat addictive. That just-one-more-battle vibe kicks in.
