Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest
Another day, another Pirates of the Caribbean tie-in.
Tags: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Categories: GBA Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Michael Hanning on Aug 21st, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest for the Game Boy Advance puts in the pixellated shoes of Jack Sparrow in a very broad interpretation of the movie. You’ll engage in naval battles, sail between fifteen islands, platform through sidescrolling stages and even do a few things that relate to the plot.
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The bulk of the game is going to be spent in the sidescrolling parts, fighting off various wildlife, British and the British-controlled wildlife. The nature of the game will be familiar to anyone who’s played videogames in the last twenty years. Pirates doesn’t try a single new thing in these parts and even makes a few steps back from other sidescrollers on the Game Boy Advance. Jack has a double jump and a basic attack button that can turn into a few different combos, along with a few things to throw for tiny amounts of damage. You don’t get to block at all even though your enemies do. Between your short range and the way being hit doesn’t stop moving enemies, it’s pretty likely that a lot of skirmishes are going to hurt you no matter what you do. It gets frustrating quickly.
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Unfortunately, the stages aren’t much to write home about either – games as recent as Gunstar Super Heroes have shown how far the GBA can take background or even the ground you walk on. In Pirates you get lifeless backgrounds and dull platforms at right angles to one. It’s all familiar to anyone who played the first Mega Man games. Pirates of the etc. also might be the first sidescroller where the character moves entirely too fast. The screen whips by at breakneck speed, grinding to a halt for a brief fight, then goes right back to too-fast. The jerky back-and-forth of movement gave this reviewer motion sickness when he first gave the game a try.
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On the other hand, there’s more to the world than running from left to right on a screen. Pirates lets you take control of the Black Pearl to engage in some good old-fashioned piracy. The cannons on the left and right side of the ship are assigned to the A and B buttons and it becomes your duty to move the Black Pearl in a gigantic circle around your enemy, firing until they light on fire. This would be more fun if the Pearl were more responsive, but it’s got a set speed and nothing you do will make it change its mind. The Black Pearl just has better things to do than slow down. In lieu of that sort of control you’re left to keep making hard turns until you’re back in range and pointing at your enemy, your combat drawing a broad Spirograph pattern on the ocean. You’re guaranteed to win most of the combat if you’re diligent about paying for repairs, meaning the ship combat isn’t exactly heart-stoppingly tense. Once you’ve blasted the enemy enough you just point the Pearl at it, run around inside another sidescrolling stage and grab a lot of gold away from other pirates.
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There’s more to be found in Pirates etc. etc. for the Game Boy Advance that makes the game seem like it wanted to be much more complex than it turned out. There’s a lot of money you can sink into upgrading the ship, making sure that supplies are adequate, the crew’s morale is good and so on and so forth, along with additional ‘rumored’ treasures that you can go looking for on the other islands. This is hardly Sid Meier’s Pirates, however, and if you want to you can ignore that entire part of the game and charge from plot point to plot point to complete the game quickly. The compass will always point to what island you need to go to next, once you’re on the island it’s pretty hard to lose track of where you’re going. Hardcore Pirates of the Caribbean fans at least have plenty of replay value to the game if they choose to indulge in it.
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Unfortunately, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest just doesn’t stack up against the competition. There are more fun sidescrolling adventure games to be had on the Game Boy Advance and more detailed pirate sims to be found elsewhere. It’s hard to recommend this game to anyone except the most hardcore fans of movie, and even they will have more fun with the PS2 game. Pirates of the Caribbean gets points for ambition but loses almost all of them in execution.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Good Music + Free-roaming piracy is fun. + Tries pretty hard to be very in-depth |
4.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- ...but most of the in-depth parts can easily be skipped. - Most enemies can hurt you no matter what you do. - Jerky camera combined with sudden starts and stops can make you queasy. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest tries to do a lot of things and wind up not doing very many of them well. It's a good effort but you can find a lot of better titles out there. | |
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Tags: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Posted by Michael Hanning on Aug 21st, 2006 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
