Jack Sparrow and gang get a swashbuckling game for PC...
Written: Dec 02 '07 (Updated Dec 03 '07)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Good graphics, gameplay, 2-player duelling...
Cons: ... repetitive, some characters don't sound right...
The Bottom Line: Solid movie to game conversion, fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are sure to enjoy it.
|
|
|
| captaind's Full Review: Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End for PC |
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End puts in you command of Captain Jack Sparrow, William Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Captain Barbossa and in fact a whole host of characters from the film if you unlock them as extras. The plot straddles both the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean film, ultimately ending with an epic battle against Davy Jones.
For fans of the films, many locations, and plot elements as well as the characters are in this game for your enjoyment. It is a rather simple style of arcade adventure where you explore, do a lot of sword fighting, collect objects, solve the occasional puzzle and complete quests. It’s not in any real respect an RPG, although as you progress through the games the objects you can collects - such as food (regain life points), flintlocks (one-shot, slow but powerful weapons), grenades (fiddly to use but good for attacking groups of enemies), and knives (for a quick throw before they get near enough to split your gizzard with their sword) gain power as you progress through the game. The story mode features 12 locations, each containing one main objective and four sub-objectives. Completing the level just involves completing the main objective, but to unlock special game features, the sub-objectives need to be completed too. On your first run through the game you’re not likely to complete more than one or two sub-objectives per level. Along the way you’ll find yourself facing Navy militia, Chinese pirates, native cannibals and of course everyone’s favourite, the undead crew members of Davy Jones’ ship.
The graphics are nice if not amazing, with the locations being represented very well. There are no real options for the graphics apart from the resolution, which goes as low as 640x480, so you don’t need a very powerful system to run it at a decent frame rate. My system ran it at 1280x1024 with no lag whatsoever. The character models are somewhat less impressive - basic, rather skinny and angular models with 2D digitised pictures stretched over a simple 3D head. Still, at least most of the characters did at least resemble their movie counterparts. While the music in the game is taken straight from the film (and is excellent), unfortunately very few of the original cast were here to lend their voices to the game, though notable exceptions are Tom Hollander (Lord Beckett), Mackenzie Crook (Ragetti) and Lee Arenberg (Pintel). Jared Butler, Crispin Freeman and Brian George were pretty convincing as Captain Jack Sparrow, William Turner and Captain Hector Barbossa (whoever knew his name was Hector?!?) respectively, but sad to say that Eliza Schneider sounded nothing like Keirra Knightly as Elizabeth Swann. Oddly enough Swann’s character also looked the least convincing, with a really bad job done on the graphical modelling of her face.
Fans of Elizabeth Swann are likely to be further disappointed by her dialogue - it’s bland, boring or just plain annoying whereas the other characters, particularly Sparrow and Barbossa, have some quite funny lines. There’s not a great deal of dialogue in the game, most of what there is being generic expressions when you win or lose a fight, but they are quite fun on the whole. There are some proper conversations in the game and you sometimes have a (rather limited) choice as to what your character says. It’s really all about the action though, and thankfully this is well handled in the game and the sword fighting is really good fun, if a little repetitive at times. (No more repetitive than the shooting in a shoot-em-up though!) Some characters you encounter can be talked to for more information or possibly sub-quests - look out for the exclamation mark above their heads, it’s a dead giveaway! The story mode can be completed quite quickly - I would have thought that most players will complete each level in around half an hour to an hour, with the whole thing taking maybe ten hours altogether. Only the last level set between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman posed a serious challenge, though the earlier levels might require two or three goes at certain sections to beat. When you have been killed, the game immediately restarts at a restore point, and you can only save the game between levels.
To add to the longevity of the game, there are two mini-games - completing them isn’t really necessary in order to complete the story mode, but they are quite fun. The first is Pirate Dice, first seen in the third film when Will Turner tries to win his freedom from Davy Jones. It takes a little while to work out the rules (though they’re explained in-game and in the accompanying game manual, it still takes a little working out), but once you do it is really a quite enjoyable distraction. (Incidentally the manual is small, well laid out, easy to understand and contains all the essential information you might need. Just as a game manual should be, really - there for quick reference when all else fails!) There’s also Pirate Poker, which won’t take you long to pick up if you know any type of poker. This also is well implemented and I’ve actually played it a fair bit. But a dice game and a card game… hardly going to have any real staying power for the average gamer, is it? Well there aren’t just any dice and card games we’re talking about here, because these be pirates, you see. And pirates, being as they travel the seven seas, encounter all sorts of legendary and mystical objects. (Of course in the game you have to complete various quests to obtain them.) There are talismans around that can increase your chances in these games - being able to see the opponents hand, change the game rules, that sort of thing. Cheat, if you will. Playing the games is one thing, but playing them when you have some uncanny game-altering abilities is quite another!
So what can you do when you’ve completed the entire story mode? Just sit there playing with dice? Not really - as well as the sub-objectives within the story mode, for each of the twelve locations there are three “challenge modes” for you to complete in order to get more hidden goodies. There are to gain a certain amount of loot in a given time, defeat a certain number of enemies, or attaining a combo of a certain number of sequential attack moves. These unlock new characters, weapons, and other stuff for you to play with later on. You can visit a location called “Treasure Cove” from the main menu to see exactly what extras you have already managed to unlock, what remain to be unlocked, and where the still locked extras can be found.
Another small aspect of the game is “Jackanisms” - in these you have to pres the right keys at the right time to complete the sequence in Jack Sparrow’s own unique way. Failing will not actually hinder your progress in the story mode part of the game, but you do only get one chance at it each time you play that level. Managing to do it increases your notoriety, which is your overall score at the end of the day. Certain other sequences in the story mode also require you to pres the right key at the right time, but you get unlimited attempts for those.
The other game type you can pursue is duelling. These are unlocked when you have successfully won that particular duel in the story mode. Once you play it as a standalone duel, however, you can select any character you have already unlocked. While the difference is not very great in terms of the difficulty of the game, each character has their own particular stance and style; for instance Will Turner and Elisabeth Swann, being brought up in the aristocracy, use the classical fencing position and technique; Captain Barbossa, never having had such privileged learning and being a bit on the uncouth side, holds his cutlass rather roughly and attacks in a hacking fashion; Jack Sparrow, with delusions of grandeur but without the proper training, is somewhere between the two. The various weapons seem to mainly be different in aesthetic properties rather than action. This duelling can be a little odd in that whatever character you are controlling at the time, the dialogue remains the same as in the story mode - so you are Jack Sparrow, Will Turner etc to your opponent whoever you actually are at the time!
As mentioned before the game is a little simple and repetitive, though the fact that it’s not in depth makes it one of those rare games (these days) that can be played for a quick ten minutes rather than having to have marathon playing sessions. What edges it up from being a good 3 star game to just about a 4 star game is the fact that, as long as you have at least one controller (plus keyboard), you can have a go at 2-player duelling. This adds enough to the game which while good does struggle a bit to have long-term appeal.
System Specs
OS: Windows XP, Vista (worked bug-free on my Vista, yay!) [not Windows x64]
CPU: Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 1.5GHz or higher (at least 1.8GHz recommended)
Ram: 256Mb (at least half a gig recommended)
HDD space: 1.4Gb
3D card: 64Mb card - 128Mb or higher recommended - compatible with DirectX 9.0C, hardware T&L compatible
There is a note on the system specs saying that integrated (built-in) graphics cards are not supported.
Other:
DirectX 9.0C compatible sound card.
DVD-ROM drive essential.
Compatible with game controllers that have 10 buttons or more. (I used the keyboard for the one-player game, it was fine once I got used to it!)
Tested on: Packard Bell imedia J2489 Desktop PC
More Piratey Games
Pirates of the Caribbean (the first game, not really based on the films as such but rather an open-ended game based in the same locations, but severely hampered by a very awkward interface)
Sid Meier‘s Pirates! (the classic 8-bit / 16-bit game reinvented for the modern PC - without a doubt the King of all Pirate games!)
Sea Dogs (a very interesting pirate game with more of a traditional RPG slant, developed by a Russian software team, sadly hounded by more bugs than you could shake a longsword at)
Cutthroats (a nice enough effort at a pirate game with real-time strategy land battles, unfortunately this is also quite buggy)
PC Game Controllers
Logitech Attack Joystick
SpectraVideo Logic 3 Phantom Joystick
The Pirates of the Caribbean Films
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man‘s Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World‘s End
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.