The silly antics of a blundering pirate seem like a great match for a line of children’s building block toys, and it’s probably no surprise that one would see both of these profitable franchises come together in the form of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, or "LEGO PotC" from here on. Like other LEGO video games, this one merges basic versions of several genres together to create a fairly enjoyable, family-friendly whole. If you’re familiar with its predecessors, then you can safely expect more of the same this time around; the major difference is the new stages and cast taken from Disney’s movie franchise. Chances are that experienced players already know whether that interests them or not, so the rest of this review will primarily address concerns newcomers may have.
LEGO PotC is primarily played as a 3D action game where you control a small team of characters ranging from the likes of Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, to more obscure ones such as a prison guard dog or one of the angry natives chasing Jack in his earlier adventures; there are easily dozens to choose from. While most characters have some kind of special skill such as digging or using a compass to find hidden treasure, they also tend to share some basic abilities such as fighting with weapons, moving objects, building items that aren’t so much broken as simply disassembled, and so on. All of these tasks are quite simple, as fighting is easily done by pointing your character in the enemy’s general direction and pressing the attack button repeatedly, exploring stages often demands little more than plenty of time and the ability to do some simple jumps, and puzzles tend to be of the ’find object X, move it to location Y, and do character skill Z to activate it’ variety. Anyone with even vaguely functional reflexes can play this game, whether they’re an expert or not.
While there is a lot of fighting and danger in LEGO PotC, it’s pretty tame. Whether you shoot an enemy pirate or British soldier (or whoever else is after Jack at the time) or cut them with a sword, they tend to just fall apart into LEGO bits and there’s no blood or anything of the sort. The same is true of your own characters when something ’lethal’ happens to them, as they simply fall into pieces and then reassemble themselves a few seconds later. There was definitely an emphasis on keeping things playful and light-hearted, something that carries over to the story’s presentation. With each stage representing events from one of the four films, the LEGO versions of the famous cast retell the story through emotive grunts ("hnn?" "oh!", etc.) and gestures. This doesn’t work for all of the scenes, but others go quite well; anything involving Jack in particular works great, as his whimsical and exaggerated behavior carries over perfectly to the LEGO style.
Online play isn’t available, but local co-op and single-player modes are. Most stages can be completed with ease on your own, and segments that require teamwork do prompt the game to take over a character and provide the support you need; they’ll take care of switches to raise platforms you need to jump across and so on. Thus, it’s up to you whether you wish to go alone and have the AI back you up when needed or play with a friend; both options are viable.
Though most of LEGO PotC’s features behave as they should, there are a few problems worth bringing up. While puzzles are basic in execution, it’s sometimes not very clear what you’re expected to do even with the on-screen hints. This can mean that the solution to a puzzle may be very simple to do once you figure it out, but you have absolutely no clue that you’re expected to go to a certain spot, use a specific skill, or find a particular item. There are definitely times where you’ll need to look up this information online, and that’s a shame for a game meant to be accessible to all sorts of players. There are also a few strange glitches where the AI will get a character stuck against a solid object such as a wall or other parts of the stage geometry, and I’ve accidentally managed the same a few times myself (but was able to eventually ’wriggle free’). Such incidents are usually easy to solve, but they slow down play all the same and one can only hope they’ll be addressed at some point.
Nonetheless, those problems don’t ruin LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean or even come close to doing so. It’s a decent mix of action, exploration, and puzzle solving set in the story of an enjoyable movie series and most of its demands on the player’s talents are basic enough that nearly anyone can play. It is a little on the easy side and may not appeal to those demanding a challenge, but most others should find some merit in this game and fans of the films will want to give it a try.
Post-Review Note: Some readers have indicated they are experiencing system freezes (both soft-locks that could be solved by the Guide button or other similar measures, and hard-locks that required turning their game system off) with various editions of this game. I have not personally encountered these problems, but additional research showed several people on a variety of websites are claiming to have this issue; far too many for me to simply ignore. As I cannot directly verify the problem, my opinion of the game remains unchanged. Nonetheless, there are enough players reporting that LEGO PotC freezes mid-game for them that I advise potential buyers to research the matter before making a purchase.
