Pirates of the Caribbean (PC, XBX)
No Johnny Depp, but lots of guys with scurvy.

PLATFORM: PC, XBX

PUBLISHER: Bethesda

DEVELOPER: Akella

GENRE: RPG

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

The recent film Pirates of the Caribbean was a mainstream summer blockbuster, complete with an all-star cast (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, etc.) and a big corporate tie-in (Disney).

You would think that the unavoidable video game spin-off would be a standard by-the-numbers arcade-style platformer or some other kind of mainstream game. But the Pirates of the Caribbean game is anything but a piece of movie-related fluff. It’s a deep, challenging RPG that has a lot to offer, but may also scare off some potential fans.

When we first saw Pirates of the Caribbean at this year’s E3, we were impressed with the scope and depth of the game. At the time, we compared it favorably to a GameGal favorite, Morrowind – also from Bethesda.

Both were open-ended RPGs, with a third-person POV and a mix of combat, trade and adventuring. Pirates of the Caribbean also added sea-based ship-to-ship combat, which takes up perhaps half of the game, depending on your playing style.

While there’s a lot to like about Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s also hampered by some bad design decisions. Most importantly, the step learning curve. This is not helped by the almost total lack of in-game help and the skimpy manual – which covers almost none of the basic information you need to get more than a few minutes into the game.

Inventory screens are confusing and never explained properly, leading to your first few sessions with merchants to be hit-or-miss. Any in-game help tells you to hit, for example, the “action” key, without telling you what that key is. You’d have to look in the manual to figure out that it’s the not-so-obvious F3 key.

Even the basics of sailing from one island to the next are a matter of trial and error, and we sunk our ship several times just trying to figure out how to dock on the next island over.

Navigating through the in-game menus is also a chore, and screens that scroll up and down, like the commands screen, seem to simply not work properly. There are also no graphics settings at all and the on-screen text is very large, making the entire game seem like a quick console port (we were playing the PC version -- the game is also available for Xbox, probably its native format).

But, if you can put up with the awkward controls and almost total lack of useful instruction long enough to get the hang of the game, you’ll be in for a wild ride.

Pirates has a great swashbuckling vibe, and has plenty of touches that take advantage of the pirate setting – making it more than a generic action/adventure RPG dressed up in a peg leg and an eye patch.

The game also boasts some nice graphics -- including fantastic water effects. We've always been suckers for good-looking water...

The gameplay is also very open-ended, and you can choose what factions to align yourself with, whether you concentrate on trading or pirating and other factors that can make for a unique experience.

While pirating is traditionally a male-dominated field, we didn’t find anything too offensive about the gender roles in the game. Although it would have been fantastic to let you create your own character in the beginning, rather then sticking you with some generic himbo.

If you think you can handle figuring out how to play this fairly complex game on your own – and have a taste for adventure on the high seas, then you should climb aboard Pirates of the Caribbean.