Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
PlayStation 3
Before Playing:
This will be the 12th Lego game I've played through in my life. Honestly, I am surprised that number is so low. It feels like I've played about 30 of them. I like the games, but they are very repetitive. And they are all basically the same thing.
I was never too excited to play this game. I've known about it since it originally came out 14 years ago back in 2011. I've just never been a big Pirates of the Caribbean guy. So why did I decide to play this now? I was scrolling through the Lego games on my PS Plus list, when this one caught my eye. I wanted to play through something short and easy, and knock another Lego game off my list at the same time. A two birds with one stone kind of thing. It's a bit of an older title as well. Better play it now, while I still can!
So how would I feel about Lego Pirates of the Caribbean? Let's dive in.
Story:
Like almost all Lego games, this game is based around an existing blockbuster Hollywood IP. You play through several Pirates of the Caribbean movies, of which there are four of them in this game. The basic plot of each film is told through silent pantomiming. This was before they added voice acting to the Lego games. The characters gesture with their hands and their body movements, while making grunting sounds. There is no talking in the game.The action is very cartoonish and slapstick in its quality. It is meant to be funny. And it has to be funny without talking, which can be hard to pull off.
I haven't seen these Pirates movies in ages. Probably around the time I first met my wife. I remember we watched them together. That had to have been shortly before this game came out. And we only saw the first three. Nothing past that. So when I got to the fourth movie in the game, it was territory I was unfamiliar with.
To be honest, the game doesn't do a great job at retelling the story of the movies. It recreates a lot of the memorable scenes and lets you play through them. But if I had never seen any of the movies before, I don't think I ever would have understood the plot of them based on what is shown to you in the game. I certainly don't know what the fourth movie is about after playing this game.
I guess I could say this about pretty much any Lego game, though.
Gameplay:
As this is an earlier Lego game, it doesn't have a whole lot of newer or innovative ideas like we've seen in recent Lego titles. It's all fairly straightforward. You start in a hub world. The four movies are immediately available to you from the beginning. You can play through them in any order you'd like.
Each of the movies is broken down into five levels. So there are twenty levels in total. If you've ever played a Lego game before, you know what to expect. You attack, you break stuff, you solve puzzles, you assemble Lego pieces, you fight the occasional boss battle. There's not much here that you haven't seen in other Lego games. It's one of the more straightforward entries in the Lego series.
Once you make it through one of the movies, you unlock playable characters. You can also use the Lego pieces you accumulate to purchase new characters within the hub world. Once you've beaten all the movies, you can then return to them in free play mode and get all the stuff you missed. This is normally where I stop playing a Lego game. I don't need to go back and play through a bunch of levels I've already played.
If this sounds like every other Lego game out there, that's because it is very similar. If you stripped away the fun Pirate of the Caribbean theme and compared the gameplay itself to other Lego games, they would be nearly indistinguishable.
That said, there was something about this particular theme that "worked" a little bit better than other Lego games. Like Indiana Jones, for example. I had a much more fun time with this game. Considering the gameplay is nearly identical, I'm not sure exactly why that is. Pirates of the Caribbean must be a more natural fit for this kind of game, since it is more action oriented. It's hard to put into the exact words. It just works better.
Graphics/Sound:
I'm lumping these two categories together because I feel like the look of the game and the music are closely intertwined. You can tell the people who made this game went to great lengths to make it look and sound like a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
The classic Pirates soundtrack makes its appearance here. I love the theme song for these movies, and I can't believe I didn't even consider how it would be present when I first fired this game up. It really gets you into the mood to play these games.
Graphics are good, too. It looks like a Lego game, and I don't know what else more I can say about that. The movie locales are faithfully recreated, and I just love how all the characters simply "work" as Legos. As repetitive as these games are, they never fail to be ceaselessly cute and funny.
Overall:
This is a fun little Lego game. There's been so many Lego games released now, that you should know coming in if this game is going to be for you or not. If you're a fan of these kinds of games, you should love this. If you're not, you should stay away. That said, if you are a Pirates of the Caribbean fan, you are going to want to check this game out regardless.
This game has made me want to go back and watch the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Don't be surprised if you see me start to talk about them on this blog soon. Like I said before, I've seen the first three. I'll probably rewatch those. Then everything after that is brand new territory.
All in all, this is an enjoyable game. I should make a ranking of all the Lego games I've played someday. The only one I've played in recent memory is Lego Indiana Jones, and I can safely say I prefer this one to that. How does it stack up against other Lego games? Heck if I know. But yeah. If you were on the fence with playing this game, like I was, you should go ahead and do it.
THE GRADE:
B
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