SWASH. verb to swagger with a drawn sword BUCKLER. noun a small shield SWASHBUCKLER. noun stock character to nance flamboyantly in inadequate armour Sid Meier’s Pirates! promises that there shall be buckles and, by golly, that they shall be swashed. Sid Meier’s Pirates! has never seen a cuirass and wouldn’t know how to fasten one if it did. Sid Meier’s Pirates! thinks that duels are won with comedically-timed swinging crates. Sid Meier’s Pirates! puts an exclamation point in its official title. It’s everything that the name promises - a ridiculous romp through naval battles and ballroom dances. You begin as a callow boy seeking the man who stole his family and end as a privateer who forgot his family existed about three weeks in. You’re sure they’re fine. They’ve probably gone to live on a farm somewhere. The main thrust of the game is hunting other ships for fun and profit. You pick your prey - British, Dutch, French or Spanish - and use their deaths to curry favour with their enemies. Then you romance said enemy’s daughter and milk the poor girl for map fragments, before kicking seven bells out of her other suitors and swanning off on another caribbean murder cruise. Eventually your men get moody, so you split the take and go your separate ways - you to recruit another crew, them to do whatever it is unemployed sailors do down the docks in 1660. Pirates! Technically has a plot to follow: Marquis de la Montalbán kidnapped your family when you were a kid and you’re looking to learn where he stashed them. Once I almost got as far as finding my sister. Once. Because Pirates! is a glorious open ocean and it’s so easy to find yourself following the horizon instead, so easy to chase after the top ten wanted pirates. There are cannons to fire, crew to hire, ships to board and their captains to duel. There are barroom brawls cheered on by feisty barmaids. There is a ballroom dancing minigame. There is an exclamation mark in the official title.
Death has a story to tell you. It's about deals and revenge and a handsome man in a black suit who comes to you when you are dying, and he tells it in a voice like the angel Gabriel on a night shift. Mostly, though, it is a story about regrets. A classic Weird West tale: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy lies bleeding out beside her body and sells his soul for a second shot at their killers. All narrated by Dave DeAndrea, doing a bang-up job of distracting you from threadbare prose with his woodsmoke-and-whiskey purr. Even if I didn't favour unforgiving turn-based strategy games, I'd buy Hard West just to hear the man speak. And make no mistakes – Hard West is unforgiving. An essential character takes a bullet through his soft, pale throat? Back to the start of the fight. No mid-way saves, no compromises. Hard West only makes deals with the devil himself. The fights are (appropriately) hard as hell. Your people have low health and the game has some truly nasty guns. If you're not on the side pulling the trigger, a single shot can put you down or even out. What you have on your side is luck. Luck is probably the most interesting mechanic Hard West has going. When a character dodges a bullet, they use up luck. When they're hit, it replenishes. And it's marvellous. Nothing feels more Clint Eastwood, undead gunslinger cool than dodging a shotgun blast from three feet away; nor tenser than praying you make this final killing shot because you are, quite literally, on your last legs and all out of luck. It is, in the words of Oscar Wilde, atmospheric as balls. The plot loops around and ties back on itself smartly, with emotional beats in all the right places, but they lack the build-up to land the hit. Like the knucklebones of a skeletal hand; useless without sinew and wet, red connective tissue. But it has style, and that's worth any price. Old Nick always did have the sharpest suits.
