gmae is well designed and pretty,but repticious
The first half of the game follows the events of Dead Man's Chest, specifically Captain Jack Sparrow's attempt to recover the heart of Davy Jones to avoid becoming a member of his crew, and it culminates with Jack's encounter with the Kraken. The second portion of the game sees Sparrow and his not-so-merry band of misfits joining together to take on Lord Beckett and retrieve the heart of Davy Jones once and for all. Even if you've seen the second film, the story is quite difficult to follow since it's told by way of a mishmash of well produced, yet disjointed, cutscenes. You'll recognize several scenarios and locations from the movies, but there are many things you'll do that aren't in the movies.
There's only one button used to swing your sword, so all you do is run up to enemies and mash that button until they turn their back and you finish them with a final slash. Enemies literally appear out of thin air and put up little resistance as you pound the attack button. Occasionally, you'll come across a tougher character that can only be killed with a special move. As you kill a bunch of lower-level baddies, your attack meter fills, and eventually you'll be able to perform a cool-looking finishing move. You can punch enemies, and when you don't have a sword handy, you can kick them, though you're rarely forced to result to fisticuffs.
Most of your time in At World's End is spent as Jack Sparrow, though you'll also get to play as Elizabeth, Will, and a few other characters. Sometimes you'll even get to fight as all three at the same time, switching from character to character by pressing the D pad. These are the worst parts of the game because characters you aren't controlling don't do much in the way of defending themselves. This means you're constantly switching characters trying (often futilely) to keep them alive. There are plenty of checkpoints in the game, but for some reason when these three-person battles come up, you're forced to start with the same amount of health every time, which is a big problem if you came limping into battle with a limited amount of life left. The rest of the game is quite easy, so dying shouldn't be much of a problem.
The characters all look like their movie counterparts. Jack's drunken stupor is a bit overdone, and he's not as flamboyant as he is in the films, but that's just nit-picking because the likeness is uncanny. The animation is quite good, particularly when you're just running around and jumping, but there isn't enough variety to the fighting moves. Each character plays and attacks the same way, so you'll see the same few attacks over and over. The sword fighting is surprisingly violent, especially when you consider there's no blood. It's anyone's guess as to why it's OK for a T-rated game to show someone getting stabbed in the chest and the blade going all the way through the person's body, but it's not OK to show any blood around the wound. The locations in the game look very nice as well, and the camera will zoom in to make sure you notice, often at the expense of the gameplay. The Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman look just as you'd expect--you'll notice detailed rigging, rusty metal bars in holding cells, and detailed timber on the decks. Since nearly the entire game takes place on or near water, it's important that the water looks good, and it does.
When it's all said and done, At World's End is a very by-the-books approach to a movie-based game.Read full review
