Nintendo Okie

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game is the latest in the line of popular games from Traveller’s Tales that gives a unique spin to popular movie and comic book franchises. We’ve gone from a galaxy far, far away to fighting Nazis, to casting spells in medieval castles. Every game in the franchise so far has had something that has tried to set it apart from all the others, but ultimately they all boil down to the same basic gameplay with some humor thrown in for good measure.

What You Need to Know

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game takes you across all three of the movies you’ve seen and the upcoming fourth movie in the series. You’ll take on the role of more than 70 characters from the series including Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, Captain Barbossa and Elizabeth Swann. If you’ve seen the movies then you’ll immediately recognize many of the locations that you travel to and follow along with the basic plot of the movies breaking blocks and building structures along the way.

Same Basic Lego Goodness

If you’ve played any of the Lego games before you’ll know exactly what to do from the beginning. You’ll choose a mission from the different movies that is loosely based around the portions plot. You’ll use characters to build different structures then blow them up collecting Lego studs to unlock new characters and cheats that will make it easier for collectors to obtain everything.

Lego Pirates gives you the same basic structure as before. You’ll start out with the opening of the Curse of the Black Pearl. Once you’ve completed that stage the other three movies are opened up and you can play through them in any order you choose. All of the most familiar characters from the films are included with hilarious voiceless comedy filling in the story holes in between levels.

Each of the characters have unique abilities like Will Turner’s ability to throw axes at targets to open up crates or drop items to a level where character can reach them. Jack has his compass, which in the films shows him the direction of the thing he desires most. In the game it’s used to uncover hidden treasures that you’ll need to progress the story.

Something New

Traveller’s Tales has done something a little bit different this time around with the cinematic portions of the story. Rather than having everything told through Lego characters you’ll occasionally get scenes that are told in a sort of popsicle stick puppet theater. These portions of the game manage to convey just as much of the story and humor as the standard portions of the game, but do so in a fun new way that you might not have been expecting.

Also this time around you’ll be exploring the levels with up to eight different characters in your party. Since the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 the roster size of the crew has been slowly expanding, but this time they more or less open the floodgates because there are so many different characters present in the films at any one time. There is a bit of a drawback to this though. Having that many characters to control at one timemeans you’ll be spending a lot of time yelling at the AI controlled characters to get out of the way because they just tend to trip over each other so often.

Much like Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars you no longer are required to go to a store to unlock new characters. You have the option to purchase them as you encounter them wandering around the docks of Port Royale. Red Bricks can be purchased by finding them hidden around the hub as well. Some of this is more seamless than before and makes it a little bit easier to unlock everything.

It’s Still a Lego Game

Despite all the attempts of the developers to try to make something different it’s still a Lego game that still has you doing the same things that you’ve done dozens of times before. There are small, sometimes subtle differences to each game, but ultimately this game is the same as the first Lego Star Wars game that was released back in 2005. The formula still works and it’s still as fun as ever to play through these games, but they’re really becoming stale after so long. Things are improving slowly, but surely. Still, I think it’s time for a bit of a refresher for this series.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that the game hasn’t changed much over the years playing through a Lego game is still a fun experience, especially if you’ve got younger players in the house. The co-op mode is seamless with the way the screen cuts if characters get separated. The graphical style of the game has been bumped up from before and the Lego characters look more realistic than ever. If you can look past the fact that you’re essentially playing the same game as before then this is definitely going to be an enjoyable experience. Aside from the it’s just hilarious to see Lego Johnny Depp drunkenly wandering around the screen barely able to stand.

Final Score: 4/5 Average

Review copy of the game provided by Disney Interactive Studios
Played through the campaign in its entirely with 42% completion.
Total Play Time: 8 hours