Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)

Sid Meier has always had a knack for making games so fun and addictive that I'd set aside a 72 hour block after their release just to roll around in them. This mostly amounted to lost weeks spent on the Civilization series (Alpha Centauri in particular), but long before I first met Civ II, I was an avid Pirates! enthusiast. It was by far the cooooolest game I had on my old black-and-white Apple, offering a then-unparalleled open-world sandbox experience. Over a decade later, an updated remake was released, replacing all the agonizingly pixelated artwork with aesthetically-pleasing 3D and padding the gameplay here and there to round out the whole experience.

In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you are a scurvy dog professional privateer, scouring the seas and shorelines for victims to loot and pillage. After picking out your pirate's special skills, chosen from a list of suitably dashing and swashbuckley professions, you set out upon the Atlantic, robbing from the rich and the poor to give to yourself. Combat begins at range, with each ship setting their sails to catch the wind, bringing them into position to blast their opponent with various metal projectiles. Since your goal is usually to capture the ship rather than sink it, however, you'll more often than not wind up ramming the enemy, boarding them, chopping up the crew in hand-to-hand combat, and dueling the captain in single combat. All of this takes some getting used to, but has enough strategy and visceral satisfaction to it to keep it fresh well into the game.

When you aren't looting and plundering, you'll likely spend much of your time sailing from port to port, dropping off your illegitimately acquired cargo in exchange for cash, hiring new goons, searching for tips on big scores, seducing beautiful mayor's daughters, wheeling and dealing with the various colonial powers for letters of marque, purchasing vast estates in gorgeous tropical paradises, seeking out your long-lost family members, and so on, and so on... The world's not endless, and there isn't much of a traditional quest system per se, but there's plenty to do all the same. As time goes by, your pirate captain will mature from a plucky young upstart to Grandpa The Pirate, eventually forcing you to retire and giving you a summary of your achievements. Do you end your days in the lap of luxury or as a decrepit beggar? Give Pirates! a go and find out. It may be a bit too PG for the liking of some players, but it's an exceptionally solid time sink all the same.