Graphics & Sound

Graphics

Akella’s Storm engine is producing some of the nicest images we’ve seen. A common use of pixel shaders is to enhance water by giving it ‘waves’ and the requisite reflections. Most games benefit only marginally from this, but since Pirates of the Caribbean has the player spending considerable amounts of time on the sea, the effect is quite dramatic.

The Storm engine is quite flexible, as it is responsible for seaborne and land graphics, rendering ships and individuals with equal ease. Texturing is of the highest quality and the terrain is covered in patches of high grass that react to the player’s movement, but Storm isn’t quite a next-generation engine like Doom III or Half-Life 2.

It would be so effective with better sails

Fort Douwesen

Mountains Gandalf, I want to see mountains again

Unfortunately, Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t take full advantage of the strengths of its engine. Too much time is spent on land or on the world map, rather than at sea. There also remains the size disparity between ships and land that irritated us with Sea Dogs. Ships are, relatively speaking, huge compared to forts and even cities. A frigate, never mind a battleship or man o’ war, will dwarf a settlement.

The developers did an excellent job of simulating weather conditions and the various times of the day. The sun moves from horizon to horizon, can be obscured by a fog or cloud, and storms wrack the ship mercilessly with high waves and strong winds.

Sound

The sound is merely adequate for the job. Would it really be so much to expect cannons to fire with a resounding boom, or the explosions of bombs to tear into the silence like a thunderclap?

Final Craptasy of the Caribbean

Pirates off to port

Fire!

The music is blatantly recycled from Sea Dogs. While it wasn’t all that bad for a dark horse budget title from a Russian developer, we were hoping that with PotC being a movie-licensed sequel and all, it would receive an overhaul in this department. Not that we particularly want that tired, stock Jerry Bruckheimer music from the movie, but at this point even that would be an improvement.