LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (Hands-On) (Nintendo 3DS) Preview

By Stuart Lawrence 15.05.2011

Review for LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (Hands-On) on Nintendo 3DS

Cubed3 took a very quick look at LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Videogame earlier this year at the launch party for the Nintendo 3DS, but recently the team was invited to try more of the eagerly-awaited new LEGO game based upon the first trilogy of movies, as well as the upcoming new release, On Stranger Tides.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Videogame started off with a LEGO version of a scene from The Curse of the Black Pearl, as with all LEGO games, it has a particular sense of humour. However, the cut-scenes in this are back to the standards they were within the LEGO Star Wars games (i.e. actually funny). I also noticed that although I had the 3D fully on, the scenes didn’t seem to make use of it. The game itself is your standard LEGO game affair with added extras. For the 3DS version I played it seemed like the focus was mainly on single-player with only one playable character on display on the screen at any one time, with extra playable characters appearing in a puff of smoke in place of the other. Since I got to play through the first two levels of the game, it’s fair to say this is something that will remain through the whole game.

Screenshot for LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (Hands-On) on Nintendo 3DS

You start off as Will Turner, having to use your LEGO-building pirate skills to fix the mess that Captain Jack Sparrow has caused. This is typical LEGO-style fun with the game letting you build a giant chandelier and then letting you ride a donkey to lift the thing up. The game then takes you into a Boss Battle with Captain Jack himself. Unlike previous LEGO games, though, this focuses a lot more on timed button presses in close range battles rather than simply mashing away at the ‘A’ button, hopefully getting a hit on your target. This works very well to keep you in the battle with the 3DS’ smaller screen and is a different experience to the usual battles in previous games, except this time, it really does the job of making you feel like a Pirate. Level exploration is the same as in the past LEGO games, with loads of studs to collect, as well as a vast majority of hidden items.

Another difference in the gameplay, besides battles, is some of the characters’ weapons. For instance, Jack has a gun from which he can shoot two targets at once. These extra abilities add a different way of getting round the levels, which are also built differently to the console versions. This is all due to the lack of a co-operative mode, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it could end up making the 3DS version stand out as a good single player game.

Screenshot for LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (Hands-On) on Nintendo 3DS

Final Thoughts

Overall, from the hands-on with LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Videogame the game was so-so, and it was too early to tell how the full game would play out. However, it was showing good signs so far. Although there was a distinct lack of co-operative play, no doubt it will make up for it as a solid single player experience. The graphics are GameCube-like and the 3D effect didn’t take effect in an admittedly sunny area to play the game. Look out for more details when the full review comes out following the retail launch on 15th May, 2011.

Developer

TT

Publisher

Disney

Genre

Adventure

Players

2

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  7/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (1 Votes)

European release date TBA   North America release date TBA   Japan release date TBA   Australian release date TBA   

Comments

There are no replies to this preview yet. Why not be the first?

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Azuardo, jesusraz

There are 2 members online at the moment.