Unless you’ve been stranded on some island during the summer, you’ve probably heard of Disney’s hit movie Pirated of the Caribbean. And what better way to cash off a hit movie even more then to release a game under the same name. Surprisingly this Gameboy Advance game based on the popular summer movie has pretty much nothing to do with the movie except for the fact that the characters share the same names. In the game you will wonder through 22 levels of land and sea smashing the A and B buttons mindlessly.

The main parts of the game happen on land. On the land levels you run around looking for lost treasure as well as killing anything that gets in your way, such as pirates, English soldiers, or giant crabs. The battle gameplay is really simple and really easy. Once you get near an enemy you automatically draw your sword, now you can either hit them with the fast and weak attack or the slow and powerful attack. You’ll soon learn that it’s just easier and faster to smash the fast and weak attack button. To add to that the collision detection is another major fault to the gameplay. Sometimes you’ll hit an enemy and your sword will go right through them and no damage will have been done. Jack, the main character, also has the ability to jump, climb, and push blocks. Although that may sound nice you hardly get the opportunity to use those abilities throughout the game.

Every few levels or so you are treated to a sea level. In these levels you take control of a ship and have to simply make it to another point in the map or kill off other enemy ships in the water. You can fire the left and right side cannons by using the L and R buttons, determining the distance by the length of time you hold down the buttons. All in all these sea levels come off more as a mini game then an actual part of the main game. The biggest gripe I have with the game is that it uses a password system. Come on it’s the year 2003, being able to save on the cartridge should be a mandatory thing now.

The game is full of nicely drawn as well as animated sprites. The backgrounds also are nicely drawn, but they lack a variety of colors. Along with the lack of a variety of colors, another fault is the land levels seem almost lifeless. The sea levels however come off as if the ocean is full of life. The camera is identical to the Gameboy Advance game Incredible Hulk, and it works well with this game. The sound is easily the games strong point. With sound effects that are surprisingly crisp, as well as eerie background music to match the games mood. There are a few sound effects that just don’t really match up with the object in the game. For instance when you kill a crab it screams out like a human man.

The game can be finished in a couple hours. The only reason why you would want to run though the game again is to see if you could get more gold and better weapons then your first time through. Other then that there’s nothing to bring you back a second time, no hidden levels, nothing to unlock, and no multiplayer features. This game comes off as very average and could have easily been a lot better if more attention had gone into the battle gameplay. I can only recommend this game to you if you’ve got money to blow and want a button masher to fool around with for a couple of hours.