A new Pirates of the Caribbean movie has arrived, and with it the inevitiable flood of games bearing the same name for every console possible. If you don\'t know by now, Pirates of the Caribbean, as it stands, is a trilogy of movies following the zany Captain Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth Swann, and Will Turner. Neither Curse of the Black Pearl nor Dead Man\'s Chest--the first and second movies, respectively--received proper games, so here\'s At World\'s End to make up for it.
At World\'s End covers the second and third movie. You begin in Dead Man\'s Chest, and after just a few hours of play enter the realm of At World\'s End. Unfortunately, not many will actually reach At World\'s End. This isn\'t because of the difficulty, it isn\'t because of glitches, but rather the monotonous gameplay. As you proceed through the game you will battle endless groups of three. Always three friggin\' people. Fishmen, Redcoats, Pirates, it doesn\'t matter. You fight three of them at a time. If you kill one, another will take its place right away. This removes all the strategy from the game... who cares if you concentrate your attacks on one guy, hoping to better the odds, another will just take its place.
Every now and then you\'ll fight a one on one duel. All your items are unusable, you can only move left and right, and the parry system is completely ignored. What you get is a basic Rock-Paper-Scissors style fight. Duels are usually against characters from the two movies, but sometimes you come up against generic enemies that you must duel. I never lost a single duel, and I played all the way through the damn game. They just aren\'t fun, they aren\'t challenging, and they weren\'t worth it.
Over the course of the game, you\'ll get to play as characters like Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth Swann, Captain Barbossa, and a few others. It would have been a good idea if the characters played at least somewhat different. Instead, you get the same exact combos, the same exact everything, really.
Let us not forget the "Sea Battles," as they are called on the loading screen. When I saw the words Sea and Battle, I got really excited. Controlling the Black Pearl while fighting against enemy ships is awesome, right? Too bad thats not what a Sea Battle is. A Sea Battle is you fighting another group of three enemies on your ship, while their ship sits in the background. Exciting! Kill any of them, and another jumps down from space on to your boat.
There are many... many... many Sea Battles in the game, and they are all the same exact thing. After the third Sea Battle I felt so bored playing the game that I contemplated taking a nap. It was about 3pm.
Jackinisms are exclusive to the Wii version of the game. This consists of being warned that there will be a Jackinism coming up, and then a rather boring interactive cutscene that requires you to swing the Wii-mote, twirl the analog stick, and press A, sometimes B. Again, these aren\'t hard, they aren\'t fun, they aren\'t worth it, and they aren\'t inspired. Good idea, bad execution. Huh... just like most of this game...
In At World\'s End, you\'ll swing the Wii-mote side to side, up and down, and stab it forward to attack with whoever you\'re playing as. Swinging the Wii-mote is nowhere near as responsive as it should be. You really have to swing that sucker to get your character to do anything. While blocking, if you swing the Wii-mote, sometimes your character will decide he wants to counter an enemy\'s attack. Sometimes, that is. It depends on if he or she is in a good mood... I think... Nonetheless, it is hard to pull off, and the return isn\'t big enough to warrent using it anywhere but a duel. In a duel it is the only thing you can do to hurt your opponent, really. Duels last a long time...
If you shake the nunchuk up and down, you can grab enemies... if your character is still in a good mood. You need to point the Analog Stick in the direction of the enemy you wish to grab, and then shake... so, as you can see, it is pretty counter-intuitive. Not good for an action game, if you ask me.
Even running in the game feels sluggish. Everyone runs really slow. Running from a baddy is just about useless. No matter how hard you try to get away, if they attack you, they lunge just far enough to still hit you.
When I booted the game, I nearly thought I was playing a first-gen PS2 title. At World\'s End looks about on par with Dynasty Warriors 2 for the PS2. On the Wii, that is just not acceptable. Sure, it is the weakest of the three consoles, but it isn\'t a PlayStation 2...
At certain points in the game, you need to open doors and such. To do this, you put your sword in something that looks like a barrel... then pull towards you. Yes, that\'s vague, but that\'s all I could figure out... I couldn\'t tell what I was doing! Maybe I was... I don\'t know! These barrel-things appeared everywhere, too. Ships, prisons, they all had the same barrel-things-that-if-stabbed-open-doors. The Caribbean must be really weird compared to the Midwest... we just use door knobs.
Everyone in the game also seems to be wearing steel gloves... because whenever you zip-line, you use your sword. One hand holds open blade.
Come on guys, you can do better than this!
"You\'ll Always Remember This As The Day You Were Defeated By Captain Jack Sparrow!"
"You\'ll Always Remember This As The Day You Were Defeated By Captain Jack Sparrow!"
"You\'ll Always Remember This As The Day You Were Defeated By Captain Jack Sparrow!"
Was that annoying to you? Don\'t pick up At World\'s End. Jack says it just about everytime you kill something. Almost every single time... it got old in the first movie, annoying in the second, and downright frustrating in At World\'s End.
Voice acting in the game is fairly decent, but unfortunately the script was not. At World\'s End doesn\'t follow the movies to a T, so they took quite a few liberties here. Not only did they actually change some of the events from the movies, but the dialog is nothing like it should be. If you haven\'t watched the movies, you won\'t have a clue about whats going on... thats how bad the script is. Huh... more horrid execution... I\'m really picking up on a pattern here!
I\'m going to stop writing about this game now, because I just can\'t take anymore Pirates... if you want to know if you should pick up this game, here is your answer: While talking to a friend about the game, I told him that "Dude, Pirates is so friggin\' bad that I want to take a pen and stab it into my wrist so I can\'t swing that damn Wii-mote anymore... I wonder if I could use that as a Work-place related injury... free money!"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Wii)" is on sale May 22, 2007 and is rated T. Action.
