LEGO Pirates Of The Caribbean Review (Xbox One)

Recently Microsoft added backwards compatibility to the Xbox One, bringing some 360 classics like LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean to the next generation console and I couldn’t resist picking this title up when I got a Xbox One for Christmas.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean features all those classic moments from the 4 movies including the sequels, On Stranger Tides, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End. All the main iconic LEGO game aspects are in this game, break stuff, build stuff, beat enemies and solve puzzles.

All the great LEGO comedy moments are in here, little odd touches that make you laugh, though not having any dialogue or text for the cut scenes did seem a little confusing (I’ll be honest I did check my settings to see if this was right). But TT Games does manage to give you a gist of what’s happened in the movies but without seeing the movie, it would be easy to get lost. There are also moments where it can be tricky to get the platforming sections right as not balancing properly and dropping off the edges is very easy to do, adding to the frustration.

With classic characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swan and many more, with different abilities and fighting styles, which I think the TT Games team did a great job is toning down the fighting for the target audience, as enemies break down into toy parts when defeated and it never feels overly violent. With so many characters, I’ll be honest, I naturally reverted back to Jack whenever that was possible.

While the game tends to guide you through the puzzles with on screen displays, it sometimes doesn’t, resulting in spending a while running around and breaking everything in sight, in the hope that you find the right object required to move on.

The music can get a little repetitive, while I adore the score from the movie, it does seem to replay over and over again.

Compared to many of the newer LEGO games, POTC is pretty simple and keeps to the winning formula of LEGO games, that I find is part of the charm and if you like one LEGO, you’ll like them all.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean is a lot of fun and a great pickup for anyone who hasn’t already played it and a major reason why backwards compatibility can be a great thing for newer console owners. I’ve had a blast playing LEGO POTC and would happily recommend it to any LEGO fan, especially if jumping into Dimensions is out of your budget.

Check out this gameplay video of the Xbox 360 game running on the Xbox One:

Have you played POTC LEGO?  What did you think of it?