PotC: Dead Man's Chest PSP review

It’s fair to say the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a disappointment. It was a very “tick the box” kind of a sequel. It crow bared in all the elements that made the first such a success, but in trying to replicate the same formula it lost the freshness that made the original enjoyable. Only Johnny Depp’s charismatic Jack Sparrow prevented it from becoming a sinking ship.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s chest for the PSP is a very tick the box kind of game with the same mix of 3D fighting, platforming and puzzle solving you come to expect in an action-adventure film licence. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have a spare Johnny Depp up its sleeve to save it from a watery grave.

Sparrow Sorrow

Oh sure, it features Depp’s likeness as your player character, but he’s there in body rather than spirit, so to speak. Put it like this; you won’t be grinning with glee at this particular performance.

Quite the opposite in fact as the developer seems to have taken a will this do approach to design. Everything seems rushed and unfinished from the frequently sloppy frame rate to inadequate bare-bones combat and uninteresting puzzles.

Sword Swinging

Let’s start with the combat. It would be fair to say it’s the focus of the game as you’ll spend about two thirds of the single player mode fighting. So it boggles the mind why the mechanics are so extraordinary simple it becomes boring before you’re even halfway through the tutorial.

It works like this. You have two attacks, one light and one heavy. Some enemies have to be worn down with a three or four light attacks then finished off with a couple of heavy attacks. Some are defeated the other way round. And that’s pretty much it. You get a few one-use items and a there few special moves assigned to the d-pad later on. But it won’t make things any more interesting.

There’s no block button, no real ability to dodge attacks and no combos beside what I’ve described above. Meanwhile, the enemy displays no AI whatsoever other than to walk towards you when you get near them. It’s just no fun.

Surrounded

It’s also not all that easy. Jack just doesn’t have the moves in his arsenal to talk on multiple adversaries. If you get attacked while halfway through a combo (which I use in the loosest sense of the word) it gets cancelled out and you have to get start again. So when you get surrounded, which you frequently will, the results are often very frustrating.

I imagine that younger players attracted to this title would be frustrated with its difficulty. Although the combat is simpler than a village idiot it requires some perseverance and you can’t quite button mash your way through it.

Matters aren’t helped by some jittery animation and frame rate that’s choppier than a tropical storm in the open sea. So while Pirates might look good in screenshots, in motion it’s distinctly ropey. If the combat doesn’t kill your enthusiasm this will.

The other third of the game consists of puzzling and platforming. Basically, if you can work out that a flaming torch can be used to set off an explosive barrel, you shouldn’t have much trouble with the puzzles. The platforming is as equally simplistic. Like everything else in the game these sections are highly derivative and dull as dishwater.

There’s no hiding the fact that this single player has been rushed. It’s unpolished, uneventful and has been done better hundreds of times before.

Life on the Ocean Waves

In fairness, the multiplayer side of the game is better. Basically it’s deathmatch with ships. You fire at other ships with your forward and side cannons (or to in more nautical terms port and starboard) while collecting power ups. If you don’t have any friends with PSPs you can play against bots.

It’s fast paced and responsive but a little on the light side. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play it for more than a few hours before getting back to Halo or Battlefield. While it adds a point to the score it certainly doesn’t buoy up the title enough to merit your pieces of eight (not that I’m suggesting you should steal or, ahem, pirate it).

Walk the Plank

Aside from the brief diversion of the multiplayer mode there’s little to enjoy here. Dead Man’s Chest is the very definition of a lazy licence - so routine, clunky and mechanical that it’s as soulless as a ghost pirate.