Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

If you are looking for a good single serving, play for 30 minutes a game, this is a great choice. It’s got enough to get you to play for a bit, just not enough for a few hours at a time. You’ll find yourself putting it down in the morning, only to pick it up for a level or 2 in afternoon.

Although the game play is extremely liner, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest manages to provide a few hours of entertaining bad-guy-bashing, and manages to follow the story well. It only leaves out the very uneventful parts that would make for a boring beat-em’up game.

If you’ve ever played any plat forming brawler, there are no surprises here. For those that haven’t, a brawler or “beat-em’up” is when the main character set out across a story arc, and each level has to pound their way from the beginning to the end of each level, usually using nothing more that brute force.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing adorned with certain features that make beating up people fun. PotC:DMC happens to do a decent job of sprinkling in enough combos to give you something new to try once in a while, although you may find yourself using the same 1 or 2 over and over due to their effectiveness. Other things include finding gold dropped by the bad guys. Gold is used in the Extras menu to purchase unlockables like Game Art and other things, but also some useful weapons and even playable characters that you can change at will during the game.

The puzzles aren’t overly difficult. And in this case, is probably a good thing. You frequently have to do things like grab a torch, light it on fire, and burn down barriers. Or pick up a bucket of water to put or fire. You occasionally use a cannon to shoot things, but its already aimed, just fire.

There are a couple of mini-game between levels, but they are skippable. Both facts are unfortunate considering it’s the only real time you use the touch screen for basically anything.

All in all, if ya want a quick butt kickin fix, give it a whirl.

Having played the GBA version of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was expecting a lot from the DS version - I assumed it would be more or less the same game, only with pretty 3D graphics and such.

Wrong.

The GBA version contains a nice blend of genres... a little side-scrolling action, a little top-down ship-to-ship combat, a little RPG quest-and-loot collecting. The DS version contains hitting guys, and that's about it.

That's not all bad - you hit guys with a large variety of items, some quite amusing. The game turns everything from a bucket of water to an umbrella to a chicken into a weapon, and it's entertaining to be able to pick up darn near anything and whack your enemy with it. The graphics are good for the DS, and there are oodles of extra characters (or character models, in the case of the three main roles) to unlock, and once you've unlocked a model you can play through any level with them. All have slightly different moves, and weapons they perform best/fastest with. You can also unlock specific weapons for use at any time, and concept art from the film.

That's the good part: Lots to unlock, competent 3D brawling, nice graphics considering the system. The bad part is, you need those unlockables to keep it from getting repetitive after about 20 minutes. Enemies all behave the same, either rushing you blindly or hanging back and firing a ranged weapon. The AI does occasionally make them block, but honestly all you ever do is wail on someone with your chosen weapon until they're dead. Repeat x 5,000, and that's the whole game. Boss fights are marginally more interesting, but none are what I would call a challenge. If you die, you hop back to a nearby save point and continue.

It's worth a rental, but you'll probably power your way through it within a week, and after that, there's no reason to play again. "Above average" rating was given because of the nice graphics and competent 3D fighting, but I was hoping for more.