It could've been great
User Rating: 6.7 | Pirates of the Caribbean XBOX
Pirates of the Caribbean had the potential to be an exceptional game, but technical glitches and difficult controls take a lot of the fun out of it. I'll start off with the games good points, though. First off, the game is very open ended. Much like Bethesda Softworks' masterpiece, Morrowind, you can play for days wihout ever actually taking part in the games main quest. The scale of the game world is significantly smaller than Morrowind, but it is large enough that you have plenty of towns and villages to explore. The graphics are some of the best I've seen on XBox. Seeing the ship, it's hull gleaming upon the sea as it sets out from Redmond Bay at sunset is almost worth the price of the game. The soundtrack fits perfectly with the game, and even offers up a little surpise here and there. There was one point in gameplay that I entered a battle for no other reason than the soundtrack made the moment too perfect to waste. Now for the bad. The default control scheme is absolutely abysmal. Moving the character and the camera is done completely with the left thumbstick. Fortunately, if you hunt around in the options long enough, you can find another setting that allows you control character movement with the left thumbstick and the camera with the right. That brings up one of the worst problems with the game...and one which I've never found the need to criticize a game for before. The manual is absolutely ABYSMAL. Your ships officers are very important, and the manual gives absolutely no information on how they work other than to tell you that you need to hire officers who possess skills you don't. As far as how they gain experience, how to be sure they effect the ship's stats, or any of the other information you need...it just isn't there. Another thing that's missing is a world map. I know in some games you don't really need the map, but when you're out on the open sea with no landmarks at all, it would be really handy to be able to find out where you are. And the idea of a pirate without a map just, somehow, strikes me as wrong. Also, the game is just way too hard. As far as I can tell (another issue addressed in the manual) the only ways to gain experience are by sinking other ships, killing other characters, and riding out storms at sea. The only problem is, when you start the game your character is a lousy sailor and an even worse fighter. Your first ship is equipped to do one thing well: run from a fight. Add to that the fact that you rarely come across a loan ship at sea (pirates seeming travel in packs of three) and it makes the game almost impossinle in the early stages. Finally, there are the glitches. There's nothing like completing a really difficult quest, delivering a valuable cargo, or getting that all important next level, then finding your game save is corrupted. Unless, of course, it's doing any of those things and, just before you moor in the port (so you can save) having the game decide it's just going to reboot. This IS a decent game, and enjoyable despite all the major issues, but it's also far more frustrating than it has to be. If you play it, remember to save and save often. You never know when something's going to kill you, when the games going to just shut down, or when your save file is going to be corrupted. 
