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

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.

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.