And until this I'd never really felt the call of the sea, though I had seen it wave. Pirates! - and damn that stupid exclamation mark - is all but irresistible in its cheerfulness, even for those with a near-unhinged cynicism towards 'family entertainment'. Don't get me started. No, this is a game from another age, and I don't mean the pleasing colonial setting; the treatment is as soft as watercolours, as relentlessly pleasant as a Disney soundtrack even while dealing with something as unpleasant as, say, Walt Disney. It could be offensively inoffensive, but it's not. It's just cheerful. Why? It's in love with the myth, not with the cash it could reap by neutering the reality.