Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

A cool multiplayer can’t make up for the rest of this totally uninspired, cookie-cutter rush job masquerading as a pirate adventure. Alone, this pirate is a dud. But find some fellow captains and a few pints o’ Jack’s rum, and you’ve got yourself a parrrty, mate.

You should be able to beat the game in an afternoon. [Oct 2006, p.84]

The ship battling multiplayer game is a lot more fun than I had imagined it would be, but this alone isn't worth shelling out for.

A feature-rich mediocre game. I can't really recommend it to anyone other than people with a scary obsession over Mr. Depp and fans of the movie that are willing to bear any hardship to play as Jack Sparrow.

Multiplayer is better, but it'd be the scurvy dog indeed that talked his friends into buying this cash-in.

The repetition of the combat means that sore thumbs – and an underused brain – are the main enemy of Dead Man’s Chest.

A poor movie to game adaptation (yes, another one) that has repetitive gameplay and no redeeming features. Johnny Depp has never been in anything so boring.

Keep your coffers shut and do not contemplate putting this in your UMD drive – tis utter rubbish, for sure.

Sparrow is capable of light and heavy sword swipes, but specific enemies are damaged only if you use the "correct" combination of moves on them. It's a restrictive and highly repetitious system that drains much of the fun out of combat.

Aside from the brief diversion of the multiplayer mode there’s little to enjoy here. Dead Man’s Chest is the very definition of a lazy licence - so routine, clunky and mechanical that it’s as soulless as a ghost pirate.

Does almost everything wrong including bad execution, a weak combat system that isn't very engaging, object interaction that isn't very responsive, uninspired enemies, framerates that stutter, a total lack of presentation, a camera system that sometimes interferes with gameplay. The only real redeeming qualities of this PSP title is multiplayer.

Like a waterlogged corpse afloat in a handheld sea, Jack Sparrow's PSP adventure stinks. [Sept. 2006, p.100]

It's Dragon's Lair disguised as a brawler. There are a few extraneous bits like endurance arenas (beat them all to unlock the final boss!) and ship-based multiplayer combat (also not terribly well thought-out) but they can't distract from the fact that the core brawling gameplay is an absolute mess.