Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Amaze Entertainment's PSP game adaption of the film mostly fails to entertain.

Amaze Entertainment's retelling of the blockbuster film Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest is another game based on a film that does almost everything wrong including bad execution, a weak combat system that isn't very engaging, object interaction that isn't very responsive, uninspired enemies, framerates that stutter, a total lack of presentation, a camera system that sometimes interferes with gameplay. The only real redeeming qualities of this PSP title is multiplayer which doesn't require everyone playing to own the game and the musical score borrowed from the feature length film.

Dead Man's Chest follows the latest exploits of the drunken, swaggering pirate Jack Sparrow, who goes on a quest to lift a curse put on him by the legendary and long past dead Davy Jones (we won't have any plot spoilers in case you haven't seen the film yet). This quest will see Jack fight hundreds of pirates, zombies, natives and more, solve simple puzzles and upgrade his combat skills with new moves – all to advance his search for the fabled Dead Man's Chest.

Sounds fun enough right? Wrong. Dead Man's Chest has a number of serious problems that make it a less than positive gaming experience. The first problem is the framerate, which chugs and sputters depending on how many enemies are on the screen. The game runs smoothly when there are two or three enemies, but when you throw more than that at Jack the game begins to slow down dramatically.

Another problem is the sometimes uncooperative camera. The camera sometimes shifts in a way that makes third-person combat a very difficult task. Sure you can hit the shoulder buttons to refocus your view, but the game should be smart enough to do that on its own.

Putting those problems aside, there are still even more problems that hinder the basic gameplay in Dead Man's Chest like puzzle elements that don't always respond to the player. Sometimes you'll hit the action button and you'll get no response. Eventually you'll succeed but simple elements like this shouldn't be a matter of hit or miss.

Then there's the actual combat which isn't as good as it could be. In Dead Man's Chest you engage enemies by hitting the buttons that "appear" over their heads. For example, some enemies can be taken down by hitting X, X, X, X and Square, Square, Square, Square; others are taken down by hitting Square, Square, Square, Square and X, X, X, X. That in and of itself is fin if you're only dealing with one or two enemies, but what if you have to do this with six or seven enemies? Then things get a little hairier. When you mess up the button sequence (and you will when there are lots of enemies on screen), you will take damage and eventually die. The one good thing is that when you die you'll respawn nearby because most of the levels aren't that large to begin with. Still the combat system feels half-baked, and makes fighting large numbers of enemies more frustrating than engaging. Some of this can be countered by finding items through each level that offer one hit kills, but when you're out of those special items it's back to awkward button combos..

The overall presentation is pretty decent, though some areas look better than others. Enemies in this game aren't as varied or pretty as they could be, with many coming off as repackaged versions of the first enemies you encounter in the game. A change of color here, an outfit change there and it all ends up looking the same after awhile. Graphically Dead Man's Chest looks pretty good for a PSP game, but I can't help but feel that many of the world elements and character models could have used a bit more refinement and polish. The coolest part of the presenation is the musical score which was taken directly from the film...

If there's one redeeming quality of Dead Man's Chest it's the multiplayer portion of the game, which has absolutely nothing to do with Jack Sparrow or sword fighting. The multiplayer mode consist of naval battles using one of six ships to blast your opponents out of the water in either Deathmatch or Last Man Standing mode. Up to four players can play the game and your opponents don't have to own the game in order to take part (though things go a lot faster if they do). The multiplayer mode is a fn and addictive diversion from the problems of the single-player game, and ultimately a more engaging.

In the end Dead Man's isn't a very fulfilling gameplay experience mainly due to technical problems and poor execution. One saving grace of this game is the multiplayer, which can be fun for awhile - but even that's not enough to save this one. If you must play this game at least give it a rental first.

Review by James 'Prophet' Fudge - courtesy of Gameshark.com