Pirates of the Caribbean

"ARGH! What a game!"

This is my first review, please cut me some slack here.

Gameplay: 9/10
Well, the game is... incredible. You can explore islands, sail ships, crash ships into other ships (hehe) and all sorts of things. It is a freeform game, and you can literally do almost anything. You dont have to follow the main quest, and there are many side quests. Sailing and ship battles are by far the most fun, although I also enjoy boarding. Selling ships for cash is such a good business... Although the control scheme is horrendous, and sword fights are rather boring, it gets a 9 in gameplay.

Graphics: 11/10
HOLY MACKEREL! I got in the game, and on the screen with the character portrait and skills, I could actually see LINES on the FACE! The character models are flawless, the ambience, like water and grass, is perfect. (the grass even rustles when you walk through it ^.^) The ship models are perfect. (I actually found pictures of some of these ships in real life... they are perfect) The smoke from guns and cannons is better than any game I have ever seen! By far the best graphics I have ever seen. I have no choice but to give it an 11. Yes I know that is off the chart. It is that good.

Sound: 10/10
Im not real big on sound, but this game had it perfect. The guns and cannons sounded very realistic. The music is flawless, and adapts to the situation instead of the same repetitive music. The swords clanking (and cutting into the flesh of your enemies) sounds incredibly good. The ambient noises though are the best. The sound of waves hitting rocks, (and your ship hitting rocks) the sound of a wild hog in the brush (which made me look around for 10 minutes the first time I heard it), and the wind in the trees are all the best they could be. I give it a 10 in sound.

Controls: 2/10
The one drawback. The controls are insanely hard to master. I tried changing controls, but I was already almost accustomed to the defaults so it didnt work. Now I try to click to move in ANY game, which does NOT go over well when you bazooka a teamate as soon as you start a game of BF 1942. 2/10 is more than it deserves.

Replayability: Unscorable
I cannot give it a replayability. Since the game never ends, you can never replay it, thus, no score. You can (literally) swashbuckle for ever, thus, no replaying.

Total: (not average!!) 10/10
So if you exclude the crappy controls, this is the best game I have ever played, and that alone is why I reviewed it. I havent even finished it yet though. It takes a while.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/04