Review by WhiteX
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Date: 2006-07-04
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Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead man´s chest

PotC is the tie-in to the movie starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and
Keira Knightley, it comes in the form of a hack and slash game, a brawler if you
want, while it is not the best game ever, it certainly have enough good points
to make it worth your while.

Presentation/graphics 7

Full 3d with lush environments, a great variety of enemies to be cut down and
detailed and well animated characters make the graphics on this one a very positive point.
There are also several different weapons, all with different animations and on screen representation,
as well as a 3d gameplay, that´s right, you are not confined to the "2d rails" like The Incredibles or Kim Possible, on PotC you can fight your way giving the back to the screen.
However the lack of a proper intro or cutscenes allied with the extremely bad minigames pulled down the grade a bit.

Music/sound effects 5

The music is quite forgettable, the sound effects are doing their job and there are some voices to go with
some combos, the cutscenes use written text, so we are deprived of the actors´s voices.

Gameplay 6

It is a brawler so there is the infamous "3-hit combo" and you can get away with the most of the game with it but if you want to try something new, there are unlockable combos that make quite the difference on the gameplay, for an example, most of the enemies defend a lot, so there is one combo that break defenses if you time it right you can ally it with the first two hits making it the third of a devastating combo, or use it to break the defense and use a two hit combo using the kick button on the second hit taking staggering 70% of a sub boss energy on a single combo, cool as hell!
There are some annoying collision problems, specially with larger enemies, that spoil some of the fun but it is nothing major.

DS factor 5

The lower screen is used with some statiscs and the touching capabilities only appear with the hideous minigames.
The good use of the 3d engine made it come up a bit.

Learning curve 8

You can go 3-hit combo right from the beginning, very easy, but if you want the more powerfull combos, use an hour.

Lasting appeal/game modes 5

They packed some unlockables to make you revisit stages but most of them are concept art, you may want to unlock Elizabeth and the Rapier but there´s not much worthy to unlock besides the weapons.
Have i said that the minigames are horrendous?

Final considerations

It is an honest brawler and it is way better than most portable movie tie-ins, it is superficial if you want it to be
because you can and must use the combos to improve its depth.
The scenarios and the characters are very nice and so are the enemies, for the DS standards.
I say rent it, see if you like it, because the game is weirdly large than buy it.
Oh! And stay the hell away from the minigames.

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