by Dave - August 15, 2003

I had just finished watching a fantastically fun movie from Disney called Pirates of the Caribbean (herein referred to as PotC) with my daughter. With the thirst for adventure still at full tilt, I ran out and purchased the game from my local gaming store (no big box superstores for this gamer). Even with the horrible experience that was Enter the Matrix, I was looking forward to this game from its Sea Dogs II days. Here was what I expected prior to playing the game for the last couple of weeks:
A fun single player game with the main emphasis on adventure mixed with some light role-playing game features. It�s not a huge expectation, for a game to be fun, but so many have missed the mark for me in the last while that it is getting scary to buy a game nowadays. Anyways, enough with the intro, lets get on with the review shall we?

Gameplay

Pirates of the Caribbean places you into high seas adventure as Captain Nathaniel Hawk. You start off with a small, damaged ship with a meagre cargo in a lovely little port town called Oxbay. Right off the bat you are given the option by your first mate to take part in a tutorial. I strongly recommend that everyone who plays this game take the time to go through the tutorial and learn the various functions of the game. Not because the controls are hard to master, but they are clunky at the best of times and downright bewildering at the worst. They are so far out to lunch that I couldn�t be bothered to re-map the keys; I just kept the manual open on my desk for quick reference. After a couple of hours (hey, I�m not a young guy anymore) the controls became a little more intuitive but were still a pain sometimes.

After you sell off what cargo you have, you can load up on new cargo and take it to the nearby island of Redmond. Just as you leave, the French invade (yes, at one time they were a world power) and take control. Only one English manages to slip away unnoticed� Yours. After you make it to Redmond, you warn the Governor of the French invasion. The Governor, in a true display of English compassion, immediately orders your ship into military service. The only way to keep it is to undertake some secret missions for the English. You are sent in to recon the occupying French forces and secure a landing beach for the English soldiers. That is about all the main plot I am going to mention, as I am loath to give away storylines in single player games. Players should experience a game for the first time when they play it, not when they read about it.

PotC is a non-linear or open-ended game, where you don�t have to follow the main quest if you don�t want to. There is a whole ocean out there to explore. Towns have dungeons, jungles are filled with bandits and the undead, and wilderness caves hold treasure and adventure. All yours for the taking, whenever you want. If you do continue on with your quest, you will become an active part in the ongoing power struggle in the Caribbean and join the hunt for an artifact of incredible worth and power. I managed to follow the main quest for awhile, but like Morrowind, I got sidetracked and my ship �The Pregnant Guppy� has become the scourge of the French navy. Raiding merchant ships and selling the goods in a nice safe British port. I am not a pirate yet, but I do see a hook and a peg leg in my near future.

The role-playing game element comes in two forms. The first is the ability to hire NPC crewmen. These AI controlled non-player characters will accompany you when you are on land as an adventuring party, similar to Neverwinter Nights or Dungeon Siege. These NPC�s can also take control of ships that you capture, enabling you to control a small fleet of ships. Essential not only for huge trade profits, but for protection from Pirate fleets. The second element is the typical character progression. As you gain levels of experience you are able to purchase special abilities and increase skill levels. This allows you to spread the points around to become a well-rounded captain, or specialize your abilities for your preferred style of play. For example, I prefer to get to within grappling range and board the enemy vessel. This lets me take the ship intact and more importantly, lets me take the ships cargo/ booty intact. My character is therefore more adept at hand to hand fighting then ship-to-ship combat. If it were the other way around I would sit back and let fly the cannonballs, then scoop the cargo from the wreckage.

With your trusty flintlock pistol and keen cutlass you will battle against a variety of opponents, ranging from military soldiers to the undead. Although you can run around in first person view mode, combat automatically puts you in 3rd person mode. While I have no issue with how combat is handled in PotC, I long for the day when technology will let me leap from table to table in a tavern while holding off the bad guys (or good guys) with a beer stein and a ham hock for a sword. What can I say; I am a marketing victim for Hollywood swashbuckling. The clunky and awkward controls are the only thing that holds this game back from a higher score in the gameplay department.

Graphics

Thanks to a robust game engine and a team of talented artists, the graphics in PotC are nothing short of jaw dropping. While I could go on and on about lush landscapes and excellent character models, the screenshots accompanying this review could easily save me a thousand words apiece. I will however, tell you about the things the screenshots can�t show you. Long grass sways as you walk through it, insects flutter aimlessly about in the warm Caribbean breeze and lizards and rodents scurry about underfoot. It�s the little things like this that truly make a game environment feel alive. The towns, from little outposts like Oxbay to the large towns like Redmond, each have a distinct feel and make you believe that you are on the Caribbean frontier. Weather effects are also well done and you will find yourself travelling through fog, storms and all times of day. But as nice as the graphics on land are, the ocean-based graphics steal the show.

The water effects are downright incredible and you will encounter everything from breeze sized waves, to gentle rolling waves and even gale force wind driven waves that dwarf your ship. Sharks swim menacingly beneath your ship and although they may be comically oversized, it still reminds you that danger lurks in the otherwise eye-catching beauty of the Caribbean ocean. If this game could be called eye candy, you�d be paying a visit to the optometrist to have your cavity-ridden eyeballs extracted. I was really amazed at just how stellar the graphics were in this game. A few minor clipping issues aside; this game is easily the best-looking action/adventure game I have seen so far this year.

Sound

The opening theme and the scripted/ event music are suitably piratish and well written. There isn�t much to write about when it comes to sound in PotC as the game is a much more visual experience than an audio one. If this were a first person shooter game, I would have been disappointed. I would expect to hear the cannonballs or pistol shots flying past me and sinking somewhere in my dresser behind my computer desk. Things like 5.1 dts and EAX are not required and the game sounds just as good on 2 speakers as on 5. The sound is still pretty much bang on, with thunderous cannons and the clash of metal on metal coupled with the gorgeous graphics, really bringing the game to life. The only fault that I found was that sometimes the scripted music would start up before I could see the danger waiting ahead for me. While not a huge issue, it did take away the surprise factor from a couple of the encounters.

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Although a single player game in the purest sense, it would have been great to see some sort of multiplayer feature for PotC. The only thing that I can think of that would be better then fighting off pirates single-handed, would be doing it with a friend. But still, I went into this expecting a fun single player experience and I got one. Replay value ranks highly in this title due to its open-ended style of play. I haven�t even finished the game yet, but I will� Once I get the loan sharks off my tail and figure out how to repair my standing with the French Navy.

Sea battles have never been more fun then they are in this game. If you think you are more then a match for any pirate vessel, try fighting one in a storm with ship-dwarfing waves and a twister cutting though the water around your ships. All in all, this game is a nice blend of action/adventure and rpg. Everything comes together to make a truly fun gaming experience. Now if only I could build my own town�

Plasmafactor/ Closing Remarks

Well, what can I say? This game caught me off-guard in not only its sheer size, but in just how fun it was to play. Like Morrowind, this game will inhabit my hard drive for quite some time. I still have to become the most feared pirate captain in the Caribbean. This game should be a reason for publishers to look at getting some more action/adventure games out there. Computer gaming is all about having fun and escaping the problems of the mundane world for a couple of hours (or an entire weekend if the wife/girlfriend is out of town). PotC is one of the most entertaining games I have played to date and I don�t impress easily. I would like to take a couple of lines and congratulate Akella and Bethesda Softworks. You guys put out a great game and really impressed the pants off me. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy gamer to please so understand that when I give this game two thumbs up, it deserves every thumb coming it�s way.