The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet
Save for a few boss encounters that can take a few tries to get the timing down, most of the enemies here, which include regular pirates, undead pirates, samurai warriors, Viking ghosts, and elemental sand monsters, are a bunch of softies. It can get a little hectic when you've got a half-dozen enemies surrounding you, but the game is pretty liberal with special health-imbuing treasure chests and barrels for you to restock your projectile weapons, and most of the levels are pretty short. The eventual monotony of the constant hacking and slashing is occasionally mitigated by stuff such as cannon battles, on-foot chase sequences, and short-lived timing and endurance minigames. Also, the game itself is over really quickly, and a determined afternoon session could make short work of it. There are hidden collectibles that the game lamely tries to lure you back with, but it's just not enough.
The Legend of Jack Sparrow doesn't have the most spectacular or even-keeled presentation either, but it's not without its moments. Jack's in-game animations, while sometimes distractingly choppy, often give off an appropriately swaggering air, and just watching his idle animation, you wouldn't be too surprised if he fell over. Alternately, Will Turner's animations snap with the grace and sharpness of someone who has dedicated themselves to the art of swordplay. The environments are kind of small, with too many flat, grainy textures, but for the most part, they accurately capture the kind of theme-park feel of the film. Comparing platforms, the PC version looks a little cleaner than the PlayStation 2 version and features shorter load times to boot, though the default keyboard controls are so arcane that it all but demands that you play with a gamepad. Curiously, though, we could find no options to tweak the resolution in the PC version or any options for adjusting the game's graphical quality.
Johnny Depp's performance, while not as drunkenly giddy as it should've been, definitely adds some authenticity, and though the voice actors that provide pipes for Orlando Bloom's, Keira Knightley's, and Geoffrey Rush's character aren't always spot on, they do an honest job, and it ultimately doesn't distract. The game fills out the action with lots of clanging swords, death knells, and a rousing soundtrack that, while repetitive, gets the job done.
In comparison to the source material, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow is a largely unremarkable affair with a few clever ideas that don't really get exploited to their full potential. It's mostly competent as a simple beat-'em-up, and fans of the character might get a rise out of it, but the experience is too short, the gameplay too simple, and the presentation too uneven for it to be recommendable to most.
