Ok. Here we go. I just jotted down notes as I went, so forgive me if it's not structured that well.
Standard Play
- Blimey, there's a lot of cutscenes. One before the title screen and one before the level even begins! What is that, five minutes before I actually get to play? Was Star Wars this long? Was Indy?
- They changed the sound for picking up studs! it sounds more like jingling coins now. More appropriate, but it just doesn't feel right!
- Is it taking longer to build things or is it just me? I think it's taking longer. I like how you can knock the pieces around the floor before building the item in question, that's kinda nice.
- Well, the combat's interesting. It's like you take turns doing a four-hit combo on each other. Hope it's not like that for every enemy, that'd get old fast.
- A CHARACTER SELECT WHEEL. Oh thank god. Six games too late, but better late than never.
- Oh, Captain Jack's run just looks silly. Also, nothing like the way he moves in the movies. They didn't even get his swagger-while-walking right.
- You can run along narrow ledges? That's a neat idea.
- Barrels! Wait, how many of those were in the movies? Oh who cares, it's fun to jump on one and roll it around the level. Wee!
- Oh good, the combat's much more straightforward on standard enemies. Guess the whole take-it-in-turns thing is for bosses and such. That works pretty well, when I think about it.
- That pirate I just rescued did a little jig as thanks. I probably shouldn't find that as entertaining as I did, but I don't care. Dance, Lego Pirate man, dance!
- Using Captain Jack's compass to go on scavenger hunts might be more fun if he moved faster with his compass out. It's a bit tedious at the moment and makes the whole exploration aspect really slow the game down.
- Will that dog drop his sodding bone already! (This really shouldn't irritate me as much as it does)
- Hey, they made the minikits little boats in glass bottles! Nice.
- Heh, Jack's wearing a seashell as a hat. That's silly.
- Ok, slight problem. If you knock all the pieces away, where do you need to stand to start building stuff? That might get a bit frustrating if you accidentally walk through a buildable object and knock half the pieces into the water, as I just did.
- Wait, you have to hold your breath while underwater now? And if you run out of air you die? That sucks! And you hardly get any time at all! I could hold my breath longer than that!
- Oh wait, you can climb in a barrel and just walk on the bottom of the ocean. I remember that from the movie.
- Wee! Sliding down ropes is fun!
- You can use your sword to activate certain switches. For some reason I find this thoroughly awesome.
Free Play
- Nice of them to include this in the demo.
- Wow, the character selection in Free Play is somewhat awkward. Lemme try to explain. Y'know that Character Select screen that normally appears before each level in the other Lego games? When you hold down the Y button, that's what appears on the bottom half of the screen. Slightly cumbersome, I think you'll agree. Still, at least you don't have to keep pressing the trigger buttons to swap characters.
- Oh, what? When you do use the trigger buttons, you can only select between the characters the level normally use and the last character selected from the great big list! Well that won't get old, will it?
- There's a wall-jumping feature now. Don't expect to use it too often though, I think it's only on certain walls.
- My god, the model for Elizabeth Swann looks wrong. It's like they couldn't think of any animations for a woman in a dress.
- Ok, so I went swimming and a shark ate me. I don't think I lost any studs though. Oh, sorry - I don't think I lost any 'treasure' though. About time they stopped punishing me for exploring.
- I never noticed til now, but the jump attack sounds really vicious. A nice big 'CLANG' when you hit something. It's great.
- Who the hell is Hadras? Is he in the new film, or did I just blink and miss him from one of the other films? Either way, I totally need to unlock him in the full game to get anywhere. Able to walk underwater, travel through mushrooms(?)... Thanks for telling me, demo!
- Oh hey, there's that shark again. Can confirm that you don't loose studs- TREASURE if he swallows you.
- The thing that normally unlocks cheats (Red Bricks, Parcels and the like) is now replaced with Captain Jack's Compass. If you find all 8 of his scavenger items, you're given the Gold Brick (and, presumably, the ability to purchase a cheat) at the end of the level.
- ...and now I know exactly how to get all the Minikits in the first level. Again, thanks, demo!
Ok, so to briefly summarise - it's a Lego <Insert Franchise Here> game. But there's enough things different here to keep people interested. The humour is there, the level design is just as good as always and while the cutscenes seem to be overly long for a Lego <Franchise> game, they're just as entertaining as ever, so it's not the end of the world. Or should I say, the World's End?
I'll admit i find these games enjoyable(except harry potter...never saw the movies though or read the books). I'm hesitant for trying this one for the same reason...haven't seen the movies.... sorry, but I'm an adult male and I tend to avoid the Disney logo no matter what the movie.
I'll admit i find these games enjoyable(except harry potter...never saw the movies though or read the books). I'm hesitant for trying this one for the same reason...haven't seen the movies.... sorry, but I'm an adult male and I tend to avoid the Disney logo no matter what the movie.
You're doing yourself a disservice.. PoTC is a pretty good movie franchise.. its similar in tone to Star Wars... or Lord of the Rings... not so much the usual Disney princess movie...
I'll admit i find these games enjoyable(except harry potter...never saw the movies though or read the books). I'm hesitant for trying this one for the same reason...haven't seen the movies.... sorry, but I'm an adult male and I tend to avoid the Disney logo no matter what the movie.
You should at least watch the first movie. The later ones are more divisive but the first movie is funny and enjoyable for anybody who enjoys piratey adventure comedy (and who here doesn't, really?)
oh I probably will...people keep telling me to.
And I used to love lego...I know I'm dating myself here but I remember getting that massive space shuttle one when it first came out...and had those canad-arm hinge doors for a good decade in my collection...just because you could put stuff in them.
In the review of At World's End, Film Brain said that Captain Jack is a reactionary character. He does extremely well when events are happening around him and he's just reacting to those events (like in the first film ) but when you put him as a lead character who drives the plot (like the second and third films) he fairs much worse.
I would easily recommend seeing the first film, as it's a hugely enjoyable romp. The others... not so much. I might also recommend the fourth one, On Stranger Tides, but since it's not out yet...
I'm also going to hop on the bandwagon of people saying that the first Pirates of the Caribbean is a great movie. Do yourself a favor and stop there, though--the sequels are bad. Perhaps not Matrix-sequels-bad, but pretty bad.
As for the game--if felt burnt out on these Lego games way back when Lego Indiana Jones came out, is there any reason to try this one? From what I've read, it doesn't seem like Indy, Batman, Harry Potter, Clone Wars... any of them really did anything all that different from the first two Star Wars games.
i want the lego games to be a bit more challenging. They are way to easy
Nah..... I think of them as games for kids that just so happen to be enjoyable for adults... They were perfect for my son when he was first starting gaming... it was something that I could play with him and not want to stab my eyes out... NOW he is 8 and can kick my ass in most games after he gets the hang of it.
Well then i guess they could just add more difficulty levels. Maybe a mode where when you die you have to start the level over.
How about a game where enemies knock off body parts so you're limited to one weapon/punch/ability until you pick up your arm...or hop around looking for your other leg... I would find that morbidly entertaining.
How about a game where enemies knock off body parts so you're limited to one weapon/punch/ability until you pick up your arm...or hop around looking for your other leg... I would find that morbidly entertaining.
It's just a flesh wound!
So... what will the next Lego trilogy be? They could pick up Harry Potter again for Years 5-7, I suppose.
I pre-ordered with Gamestop they are giving away a Jack mini figure with pre-orders..
So if you guys wanted a mini-figure you have a really short amount of time to pre-order because the game comes out Tuesday.
Usually my Son would get this sort of thing... but I already bought him some PoTC lego sets so he has a Jack mini fig already... So I am totally going to keep it he will sit at my desk drinking all my rum.
I pre-ordered with Gamestop they are giving away a Jack mini figure with pre-orders..
So if you guys wanted a mini-figure you have a really short amount of time to pre-order because the game comes out Tuesday.
Usually my Son would get this sort of thing... but I already bought him some PoTC lego sets so he has a Jack mini fig already... So I am totally going to keep it he will sit at my desk drinking all my rum.
I've spent an evening with the Wii version of the game (which, severe downgrade in graphics and slightly different controls aside is pretty much the same as the PCS360 version), and I thought I'd try writing a review on it. I might be making references to my notes from the demo, so if you didn't read that, one or two points may be lost on you, but I'll do my best to make it self-contained.
Before I do so, a few very quick notes that I either got wrong in my earlier observations, or was just unable to take note of.
- Finding all 8 compass items in a level does not unlock a cheat. It unlocks a Gold Brick. These bricks work as they did in Lego Star Wars Complete: they unlock new areas in the Hub. Since there was no Hub in the demo, you see why I got confused.
- Cheats are unlocked in a slightly complicated way. You need to find a red hat in the Hub, which are uncovered by doing simple tasks, like chasing down and riding a giant Crab or jumping across 5 poles quickly enough. Once the hat is revealed, it stays revealed and you can purchase the cheat it represents.
- The Hub itself is more like the one in Star Wars Complete than it is Harry Potter. There's a central area with the four 'chapter' selections, each with five levels. There's also several off-shoot areas that you need Gold bricks to unlock. The first of these has the minikit models, for example. There's no actual shop., so if you want to buy additional characters, they need to be beaten in standard combat first, then you can purchase them. They appear at random around the various areas of the hub.
-x-
Lego Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (aka Lego Pirates, or Lego Search for a Longer Name) is the 8th in a long series of games based on a tried and tested formula. Take an establish franchise, transform all the characters into Lego renditions of themselves and let them run riot in a humorous rerun of the films.
Traveller's Tales nailed this pattern on the very first go, and every game they've made since has tried to improve upon it, with varying degrees of success. Lego Pirates is no exception. There are a number of new additions to the formula, and some are more welcome than others.
The first, and many would say most important, point of call is Captain Jack Sparrow. TT have done an excellent job of taking his personality and rendering him into a voiceless block figure... even if they do have him say the odd word here and there. But hey, it's Captain Jack! Rules don't apply to him! His swagger, his cheeky grin and the pure likeability of the character is all here, and you eagerly look forward to seeing him in action.
The rest of the cast all go through the same process, though some come out of it better than others. Orlando Bloom's model comes across as having more personality than the film version, while Keira Knightley comes across as a fawning, irritating prima-donna with little to no purpose. Much like the films then. The rest of the characters are, for the most part, well represented, though the lack of dialogue does restrict their characterization somewhat. There's also the fact that there's just so many characters, over seventy in total, which means some get practically no screen time at all. Again, much like the films. Overall though, TT did a pretty good job with the cast.
Going through the game, the core gameplay remains much the same. Break everything that looks like Lego, collect studs and avoid falling into bottomless pits. Much like Lego Star Wars, the combat is surprisingly entertaining, swordplay being much more interesting than simply having a punch-up. Of course, the jump-slash still makes most enemies hopelessly simple to defeat, but then, there's no honour amonsgt pirates, right?
The new additions to the core gameplay are what make it the most interesting. Rather than simple switches and buttons to stand on, there's a lot more variety, with barrel spinners you need to roll on, explosives to detonate, rope bridges to swing along and levers you need to use your sword to activate. They all show a lot of imagination and help to break up the repetition of the rest of the game.
Your characters also have a few new moves up their sleeves. They can wall-jump (though this feature is somewhat underused), climb along certain ceilings and even take first-person control of cannons to aim properly. These changes really do help to spice things up, which is nice, because at its heart this is the 9th time we've been asked to do this sort of thing (9th if you count Star Wars Complete), and it can be hard to keep things fresh after 6 years. Traveller's Tales have done a good job of it though.
...
And at this point I abandoned the review. Sorry guys. Hope you enjoyed it up til then. May finish it tomorrow, but I doubt it.
Comments
Ok. Here we go. I just jotted down notes as I went, so forgive me if it's not structured that well.
Standard Play
- Blimey, there's a lot of cutscenes. One before the title screen and one before the level even begins! What is that, five minutes before I actually get to play? Was Star Wars this long? Was Indy?
- They changed the sound for picking up studs! it sounds more like jingling coins now. More appropriate, but it just doesn't feel right!
- Is it taking longer to build things or is it just me? I think it's taking longer. I like how you can knock the pieces around the floor before building the item in question, that's kinda nice.
- Well, the combat's interesting. It's like you take turns doing a four-hit combo on each other. Hope it's not like that for every enemy, that'd get old fast.
- A CHARACTER SELECT WHEEL. Oh thank god. Six games too late, but better late than never.
- Oh, Captain Jack's run just looks silly. Also, nothing like the way he moves in the movies. They didn't even get his swagger-while-walking right.
- You can run along narrow ledges? That's a neat idea.
- Barrels! Wait, how many of those were in the movies? Oh who cares, it's fun to jump on one and roll it around the level. Wee!
- Oh good, the combat's much more straightforward on standard enemies. Guess the whole take-it-in-turns thing is for bosses and such. That works pretty well, when I think about it.
- That pirate I just rescued did a little jig as thanks. I probably shouldn't find that as entertaining as I did, but I don't care. Dance, Lego Pirate man, dance!
- Using Captain Jack's compass to go on scavenger hunts might be more fun if he moved faster with his compass out. It's a bit tedious at the moment and makes the whole exploration aspect really slow the game down.
- Will that dog drop his sodding bone already! (This really shouldn't irritate me as much as it does)
- Hey, they made the minikits little boats in glass bottles! Nice.
- Heh, Jack's wearing a seashell as a hat. That's silly.
- Ok, slight problem. If you knock all the pieces away, where do you need to stand to start building stuff? That might get a bit frustrating if you accidentally walk through a buildable object and knock half the pieces into the water, as I just did.
- Wait, you have to hold your breath while underwater now? And if you run out of air you die? That sucks! And you hardly get any time at all! I could hold my breath longer than that!
- Oh wait, you can climb in a barrel and just walk on the bottom of the ocean. I remember that from the movie.
- Wee! Sliding down ropes is fun!
- You can use your sword to activate certain switches. For some reason I find this thoroughly awesome.
Free Play
- Nice of them to include this in the demo.
- Wow, the character selection in Free Play is somewhat awkward. Lemme try to explain. Y'know that Character Select screen that normally appears before each level in the other Lego games? When you hold down the Y button, that's what appears on the bottom half of the screen. Slightly cumbersome, I think you'll agree. Still, at least you don't have to keep pressing the trigger buttons to swap characters.
- Oh, what? When you do use the trigger buttons, you can only select between the characters the level normally use and the last character selected from the great big list! Well that won't get old, will it?
- There's a wall-jumping feature now. Don't expect to use it too often though, I think it's only on certain walls.
- My god, the model for Elizabeth Swann looks wrong. It's like they couldn't think of any animations for a woman in a dress.
- Ok, so I went swimming and a shark ate me. I don't think I lost any studs though. Oh, sorry - I don't think I lost any 'treasure' though. About time they stopped punishing me for exploring.
- I never noticed til now, but the jump attack sounds really vicious. A nice big 'CLANG' when you hit something. It's great.
- Who the hell is Hadras? Is he in the new film, or did I just blink and miss him from one of the other films? Either way, I totally need to unlock him in the full game to get anywhere. Able to walk underwater, travel through mushrooms(?)... Thanks for telling me, demo!
- Oh hey, there's that shark again. Can confirm that you don't loose studs- TREASURE if he swallows you.
- The thing that normally unlocks cheats (Red Bricks, Parcels and the like) is now replaced with Captain Jack's Compass. If you find all 8 of his scavenger items, you're given the Gold Brick (and, presumably, the ability to purchase a cheat) at the end of the level.
- ...and now I know exactly how to get all the Minikits in the first level. Again, thanks, demo!
Ok, so to briefly summarise - it's a Lego <Insert Franchise Here> game. But there's enough things different here to keep people interested. The humour is there, the level design is just as good as always and while the cutscenes seem to be overly long for a Lego <Franchise> game, they're just as entertaining as ever, so it's not the end of the world. Or should I say, the World's End?
You're doing yourself a disservice.. PoTC is a pretty good movie franchise.. its similar in tone to Star Wars... or Lord of the Rings... not so much the usual Disney princess movie...
And I used to love lego...I know I'm dating myself here but I remember getting that massive space shuttle one when it first came out...and had those canad-arm hinge doors for a good decade in my collection...just because you could put stuff in them.
Review Part One, and Part Two.
I would easily recommend seeing the first film, as it's a hugely enjoyable romp. The others... not so much. I might also recommend the fourth one, On Stranger Tides, but since it's not out yet...
(Some of) the aforementioned actual Lego PotC kits are now available in the shoppp!!
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Leaf.aspx?cn=734&d=70
I wonder if they're already available in the brick & mortar shops
As for the game--if felt burnt out on these Lego games way back when Lego Indiana Jones came out, is there any reason to try this one? From what I've read, it doesn't seem like Indy, Batman, Harry Potter, Clone Wars... any of them really did anything all that different from the first two Star Wars games.
Nah..... I think of them as games for kids that just so happen to be enjoyable for adults... They were perfect for my son when he was first starting gaming... it was something that I could play with him and not want to stab my eyes out... NOW he is 8 and can kick my ass in most games after he gets the hang of it.
How about a game where enemies knock off body parts so you're limited to one weapon/punch/ability until you pick up your arm...or hop around looking for your other leg... I would find that morbidly entertaining.
It's just a flesh wound!
So... what will the next Lego trilogy be? They could pick up Harry Potter again for Years 5-7, I suppose.
But after that... Lego Doctor Who, anyone?
how about lego twilight =P
P.S. before responding, remember that any movie property+lego=win, just remember that hehehe
...nope, pretty sure that'd be an exception.
So if you guys wanted a mini-figure you have a really short amount of time to pre-order because the game comes out Tuesday.
Usually my Son would get this sort of thing... but I already bought him some PoTC lego sets so he has a Jack mini fig already... So I am totally going to keep it he will sit at my desk drinking all my rum.
good times
Before I do so, a few very quick notes that I either got wrong in my earlier observations, or was just unable to take note of.
- Finding all 8 compass items in a level does not unlock a cheat. It unlocks a Gold Brick. These bricks work as they did in Lego Star Wars Complete: they unlock new areas in the Hub. Since there was no Hub in the demo, you see why I got confused.
- Cheats are unlocked in a slightly complicated way. You need to find a red hat in the Hub, which are uncovered by doing simple tasks, like chasing down and riding a giant Crab or jumping across 5 poles quickly enough. Once the hat is revealed, it stays revealed and you can purchase the cheat it represents.
- The Hub itself is more like the one in Star Wars Complete than it is Harry Potter. There's a central area with the four 'chapter' selections, each with five levels. There's also several off-shoot areas that you need Gold bricks to unlock. The first of these has the minikit models, for example. There's no actual shop., so if you want to buy additional characters, they need to be beaten in standard combat first, then you can purchase them. They appear at random around the various areas of the hub.
-x-
Lego Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (aka Lego Pirates, or Lego Search for a Longer Name) is the 8th in a long series of games based on a tried and tested formula. Take an establish franchise, transform all the characters into Lego renditions of themselves and let them run riot in a humorous rerun of the films.
Traveller's Tales nailed this pattern on the very first go, and every game they've made since has tried to improve upon it, with varying degrees of success. Lego Pirates is no exception. There are a number of new additions to the formula, and some are more welcome than others.
The first, and many would say most important, point of call is Captain Jack Sparrow. TT have done an excellent job of taking his personality and rendering him into a voiceless block figure... even if they do have him say the odd word here and there. But hey, it's Captain Jack! Rules don't apply to him! His swagger, his cheeky grin and the pure likeability of the character is all here, and you eagerly look forward to seeing him in action.
The rest of the cast all go through the same process, though some come out of it better than others. Orlando Bloom's model comes across as having more personality than the film version, while Keira Knightley comes across as a fawning, irritating prima-donna with little to no purpose. Much like the films then. The rest of the characters are, for the most part, well represented, though the lack of dialogue does restrict their characterization somewhat. There's also the fact that there's just so many characters, over seventy in total, which means some get practically no screen time at all. Again, much like the films. Overall though, TT did a pretty good job with the cast.
Going through the game, the core gameplay remains much the same. Break everything that looks like Lego, collect studs and avoid falling into bottomless pits. Much like Lego Star Wars, the combat is surprisingly entertaining, swordplay being much more interesting than simply having a punch-up. Of course, the jump-slash still makes most enemies hopelessly simple to defeat, but then, there's no honour amonsgt pirates, right?
The new additions to the core gameplay are what make it the most interesting. Rather than simple switches and buttons to stand on, there's a lot more variety, with barrel spinners you need to roll on, explosives to detonate, rope bridges to swing along and levers you need to use your sword to activate. They all show a lot of imagination and help to break up the repetition of the rest of the game.
Your characters also have a few new moves up their sleeves. They can wall-jump (though this feature is somewhat underused), climb along certain ceilings and even take first-person control of cannons to aim properly. These changes really do help to spice things up, which is nice, because at its heart this is the 9th time we've been asked to do this sort of thing (9th if you count Star Wars Complete), and it can be hard to keep things fresh after 6 years. Traveller's Tales have done a good job of it though.
...
And at this point I abandoned the review. Sorry guys. Hope you enjoyed it up til then. May finish it tomorrow, but I doubt it.
yup... a longggg time ago