Pirates of the Caribbean

*DISCLAMER*

Any references to booty within this review are based on the gold and treasure variety. You will not find any nude pictures of Brittney Spears or anything of the sort.

*END DISCLAIMER*

Pirating has always been a favorite feature in gaming for me. From the beginnings with Sid Meier’s Pirates!, I have been enthralled by sailing the Caribbean, ravishing shipping lanes, and being a general pest. My pirating love of the stealing of booty and raising the old skull and crossbones rolled well into the Monkey Island series (though not quite as serious as Pirates!, it still involves them) and now on to Pirates of the Caribbean.

I had entirely missed out on Sea Dogs, so I have no idea what kind of game it was, (or if it was any good) but this new game called Pirates of the Caribbean (formerly known as Sea Dogs 2) caught my attention. Promising to combine the excitement of plying the waters in search of booty, adventure, fame, women, and good booze with a stellar graphics engine that would draw you into the world of deadly high seas combat and salty dogs.

So, how did it all fare? Is Pirates of the Caribbean a box of gems, or an ugly bar wench?

Graphics – Sharks, Ships, and Pirates, Oh My!

Pardon me while I clean off my glasses and wipe my eyes. Pirates of the Caribbean is absolutely stunning. I had originally started the game up on standard graphical settings, being 800X600 with mid-ranged textures set. Visuals were good. Tried to hit up the graphics options (not there) and assumed this is it, until I read the instruction manual pointing to the separate program to set graphics. Well, set up my usual 1024X768 affair and boosted the textures to maximum. WOW!

First, let’s talk about the graphics on land. You get a good view of the back of your character, well rendered and a nice skin map over him to show the intricacies of his pirate captain outfit. Ground foliage moves around as you walk through it, textures are beautiful. The light as it glints off your saber and the smoke of gunpowder is also nice. The only real flaw in the land graphics is the poor detail on the faces of the character models. Everything from humans to undead monkeys have plain, boring, undetailed facial features.

Then we have the graphics while sailing at sea. They are a tad bit more impressive than land visuals. The sailing ships, the centerpiece of ocean travel, are rather impressive. Ships show visible sail damage from battles, flap in the wind, and realistically fold and unfold on the mast. The ocean below is translucent and in many locations you can see geometry on the bottom and sharks combing the waters. Gunpowder blasts from the broadsides of large ships is pretty and you can even watch the balls, knipples, grapes, and bombs flying through the air. Again, the only real flaw in this mode is the horrible people animations, but they are meant to be small and unobtrusive as they do little more than try to simulate ship goings.

Overall, visuals in Pirates of the Caribbean do not disappoint, but instead impress.

Gameplay – Yech

While the graphics are insanely impressive, the gameplay rolls in on the other end of the spectrum. It stinks. As with graphics, I will go into two forms of gameplay – land and sea.

First we are going to go over land, mainly combat. Movement is easy and simple affair, it is when you are faced with bad guys that the problem arises. The combat system absolutely sucks. First time through, I went into the game and got into a sword fight. Luckily, this was in a sort of early tutorial mode. I was able to block, jump back, and fire off my pistol, but the key that was tied to attack didn’t do anything (it was written in the front of the manual). Odd, so, I backed out and checked the controls option screen. Wow, great move, Akella (group who actually developed the game), let’s not map any keys to an important function like attack. So, jacking myself with an attack key, I went back in.

Before we continue with the combat system, I would like to go over how the controls are initially set up. You move your character around using only the mouse. Mouse motion looks and turns, right mouse button moves forward, left moves backward. There is no strafe function. Pistol is keyed to Q, dodge is keyed to Z, and block is keyed to the control key. Use E to draw sword. This is an absolutely horrible setup. I played around with it a bit, and this is the setup that seems to work the best:

W – move forward
S – move backward
Q – Fire gun (leave this alone)
E – draw sword (leave this alone)
D – dodge
Left click – Attack
Right click – block

Now, back into the game. Combat has little to do with stats and all to do with how you control the game. This would have been fine had the game been set up as an action game from the start, but it functions like Morrowind. In Pirates, if you are not blocking when the other guy swings, you will get hit regardless of any other skills. They only reduce damage done. So, combat involves simply holding down the right mouse button (block), let the guy wail on you, and hit him when there is a brief opening. Occasionally, you can dodge back a couple times and let loose a gun shot, and assuming it hits, do a bit of damage. Block, swing, wait for the gun to reload (you have unlimited ammunition for some reason) and repeat.

This option is fine when going after one enemy, unfortunately, if you get more than one on you, might as well open up your last saved file, because you will be looking at a cut scene of your dead body being eaten by ants in a short while. Combine this with the fact you tend to get stuck fighting two or more enemies as a regular event, you are in for a hard, unpleasant time.

Well, the boat combat should be better, right? Right? Wrong. Again, I went into boat combat to find out my ships didn’t have an attack key mapped at all, so I dumped in C as it stands for cannons. Moving around isn’t quite as hectic as land, but still important. Ship combat is about maneuvering and playing with sail settings to get yourself in the right location. Battles sails (half-mast) give you the best maneuverability, but lose speed. Folding your sails all the way reduces damage to sails, but you get pounded more easily and don’t go anywhere. Full sails give you high speed, but can’t turn worth beans. The object is to face your side at the enemy and fire your cannon. Sounds easy, but it is not, especially when your crew is filled with idiots.

So, here I am, facing (or so I think) my side about 10 yards away from the enemy ship, and let loose a volley. About 75% of them go flying all over the place, landing 50 or so yards behind the ship too far, and a couple landed in the water to the front and back of it. What in the Hell is that all about? It takes skill to MISS at that distance, but they did it with ease. So, I find out the camera, which is free rotating with the mouse, wasn’t exactly faced at the ship from the side, so I lost a bit of the angle. I used the mini map in the top right to get a better bead, but the crew still missed at close range. Idiots. Never was able to actually sink anything.

God help you if you are ever boarded. I got one moron crewmember to help out and had to take on 8 guys at once, who came in from two ends of the ship and ripped me to shreds with ease. Taking on one guy is a breeze, two is a challenge, but 8 guys, half of which are at your back, stabbing it, is impossible. My idiot crewmember ally died and the enemy swamped me, making me wonder where the other 56 guys were hiding (had a 57 man crew).

Now, the other ship issue bridges outside of combat, storms. I get dumped into a storm quite frequently, and there seems to be no option but to get pummeled and tossed around by them, creating a worthy money sink. They are absolutely pretty to be in, assuming you are only there to watch, like when little planks fly off your ship when struck by lightning. So, your only option is to ride it out and spend the extortion fee to get it repaired.

Then there is moving around in the world map. Pretty simple, point your ship and hit W. Unfortunately, there were issues here as well. First, getting out of the world map. No where in the manual, keymap screen, or any other easy to find location showed me what button to push. So, on a whim, I went and dug through the directory and found a keymap file. Well, push the space bar, would have helped to tell me that in, say, the manual. Then there is the issue of encounters. I normally wouldn’t have issues with this had they been tailored to your current level and ship, but when my very first combat encounter is my sloop against a frigate. That thing rolled me into Davy Jones’ locker with a volley from its 16 freaking cannons. Assuming I did survive the first volley, my 4 wouldn’t do much to it, because my crew came from the short bus and I wouldn’t even dent it.

Sounds – Where Are They?

You have your obligatory explosion sounds, sword swipe and cut hit sounds. Apart from them, there isn’t much. If you jack up the volume controls, you can hear footsteps over surfaces and chatter from townsfolk. Unfortunately, voiceovers suck and are sparse. You talk to a shopkeeper, you get some totally unrelated voice clip to what you are doing, as happens with any other guy you speak with. Beyond that, the sound department was completely skimped on and even a catchy score throughout the game seems to be absent (or so unobtrusive I don’t notice it).

Story and Open-Ended Gameplay

There is a story, something about French taking a colony, but getting anywhere without blowing up, getting backstabbed, or sinking in a storm kept me from doing much of anything. You are also apparently able to do whatever you want as you terrorize the seas, but, again, after 10 hours of trudging through this game, it didn’t come to pass. Just trying to sneak back into the starting city proved enough of a challenge I have yet to get past as I need to beat down two French regulars to get in there (which I managed to beat once, but the game immediately crashed afterward).

Stability Problems Abound

As stated above, after beating a couple of French regulars guarding a gate, the game dumped to the desktop and gave me the infamous “do you want to send an error report” message. Also, if you spend more than 5 minutes in the world map, you will dump back to the desktop again. Talk about a stability issue. Sheesh.

Bottom Line

Sea Dogs 2 suffered from the Curse of Hollywood by naming itself Pirates of the Caribbean. It may have still been a stinker of a game, but sticking that name on it sealed the coffin lid. While it is a visually outstanding title, the poor gameplay mechanics and insane difficulty will turn off all but the most dedicated players (I will keep plugging at this bitch until I get back into Oxbay!). While I won’t let this game do me in, I will have to suggest to just about everyone else that you should stay far, far away from this. You will get nothing but frustration from this title. That treasure map to the hidden booty only offered up a box full of sand. At least I got a free movie ticket out of the deal, albeit a $50 one. I would have taken a simple graphical upgrade of the original Pirates! game over this.