Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

"Avoid at all costs."

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the third movie of the series and honestly, it's the worst one out of the three. This game, while it does carry out events from both Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, is too really bad. Well, the third movie isn't bad, it's worth a rent. But this game...*sighs* is horrible. Yeah it's a movie-based game. However, it could have been much better if it weren't for the incredibly repetitive gameplay. You know what the most appealing aspect of this game is? The graphics.

Now the reason why I did pick this up (I rented it thank God), I went to Blockbuster to return another game. I looked in both the 360's library and the Wii's library of games, nothing interesting. So I decided to get a "T" rated game to please my mom, considering I rarely get something that's not rated "M," all though my favorite game is "T." Well I looked down a bit and there I saw it. I haven't played a movie-based game in a while and it looked decent and worth renting. Haha, that was my mistake; picking it up in the first place and showing the slightest sign of interest in it.

So I wasted nearly $8 on this pile of crap, so I'm now going to explain why you shouldn't waste your time with it. Unless of course you feel the need to play any game you can get your hands on and do not care about opinions, but you still decide to read the reviews anyway.

Seems just like real life, doesn't it? The graphics which sadly, is the best thing about this game, which I've already mentioned before. The graphics are truly remarkable in practically every way possible. They are probably some of the best graphics featured in console gaming to date. The characters in some ways, look exactly like their real life movie counterparts, pretty impressive if you ask me. I think many people can agree that the graphics are the high point in this abomination you call a game. However, there are repetitive-looking environments.
Graphics: 9/10

Bring in the real voice-actors First thing I have to mention about sound is the voice-overs. Instead of using their real life counterparts, which should have been used in the first place, they replaced them with other people. I don't know if they used some of the real actors to voice their roles, or not, but either way, the actor playing Jack Sparrow is horrible at voicing him.

The actual in-game sounds on the other hand do sound fantastic. Like when your sword hit's an enemy's sword, it sounds great. The sound effects in the game are the second highest point, which isn't saying much since it isn't cool when you hear it over and over. So in this case, the worse overpowers the good that was turning bad in the first place.
Sound: 4/10

Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive. Repetitive When I think of gameplay, I think of two words; tedious and repetitive. You can already tell the core gameplay is sword-play. When you're in battles with many enemies, you attack twice and for some reason, they turn around, fall asleep whilst standing, and hunch their head or, which is when you kill them. Ugh...what? Seriously, who does that? Well that's it for the regular enemies. There are sub-bosses that sometimes come out and you need to kill them with a special move. You have a "Special Move" Meter which you build up by killing a lot of soldiers which that boring combat system. When you have it filled up enough, you do that same swordplay, and when prompted, you press "Y." to finish him off. Boring.

Another thing that I absolutely HATE, is when you have a party of "friends" or "maties" with you. This means you basically have to take care of everyone in your party. Meaning, you must switch around characters constantly so they don't die, the A.I. is just horrible. You may think the combat might change a little when you switch, but no, it doesn't. If you are near an NPC or a character that you can control is idle at the moment, when you block, you can do a little "special" attack. All it does is have your player sit on their back on the friend, and kick either 1 or 2 enemies. Gets old after you do it twice.

Really, the only thing that's remotely cool about gameplay is the duels. These are pretty much the boss battles. It changes the view so you can see both fighters by their side. It's really hard to explain, but it's actually organized very well and releases a bit of entertainment. It still doesn't save the rest of it. To explain it more, just think of the fight (if you have seen the movie) in Curse of the Black Pearl between Jack and Will.
Gameplay: 1/10

Final Rating: 3/10

Eurocom Entertainment Software has a decent resume, some good games, but some really crappy ones. And this is one of them. They obviously are skilled in the graphics department, I just don't get why they couldn't apply that kind of skill in the gameplay department. It could have been better if the gameplay was more complex than that, not just a hit, hit, kill formula that is used over and over, with the exception of the special kills and duels. There are other things I could have explained, but there really is no point to playing this either way. Don't buy it. Oh god don't buy it. And don't rent it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/08

Game Release: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (US, 05/22/07)