I wanted to like Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) Online. It seemed like a cool concept. However, what I played was a game released well before it was ready. There was a severe lack of polish in this game that made it nearly unplayable.

I picked up the game after a co-worker had created a character and accepted a few quests. The game seemed to run slowly and the graphics were average for an MMO. I was happy to give the game some credit based on the fact that it was dealing with pirates, which is a fun premise. Unfortunately, there was little story outside the scattered quests and I soon found myself forgetting the idea of fun I had when I began.

When I went to solve a quest, there was no indication regarding when I was getting close to a quest objective. For example, if I was supposed to talk to a certain person in a town, I would have to search through the whole town. In World of Warcraft, there are indicators on the map when your character approaches NPCs relevant to completing active quests. This is immensely helpful when completing multiple quests at once, as you can run into a town and see immediately which few people matter to you. When I completed a quest in PotC, I had no idea where these people were and wasted a lot of time trying to find them.

The game was riddled with bugs. There were camera bugs, where my character was obscured by plants and buildings. The maps were incredibly poor in general and provided little direction. It was really hard to isolate enemies, so many would gang up and I would die quickly. The respawn rate was fast on the enemies, so by the time I returned to the spot, any progress I made on cutting down enemy numbers was lost.

One of the worst mechanics by far was the sailing mechanic. Sailing between two places seemed to take forever. Sometimes other ships would attack, but it was difficult to aim and retaliation was near impossible. I was dying frequently due to my enemy isolation and respawn issues, and, each time I died, I would have to spend five minutes sailing back to that island. Sometimes I didn’t make it, especially when ship was attacked.

PotC Online suffered from a severe lack of adequate development and polishing time. The core mechanics were in place, but the balance was off on much of the game, from sailing times to the enemy behavior. This game may have the potential to be fun, but in its current form, it is too unrefined to be enjoyable.  

What do you do with a new Xbox 360? I had played plenty of games on the 360, but I had never been able to fully explore Xbox Live. I had just read about a new demo of Beautiful Katamari released earlier that morning, which inspired me to download 10 other demos. It was Demo Day.

Once downloading was complete, I couldn't wait to check out Katamari in HD. The manager of an EB Games had told me that the HDMI connection would make a noticeable difference in quality from the component HD cables. He was right – the HD was as clean as any computer monitor. The colors were more vibrant and the text was the sharpest I’ve seen.

I was expecting the Beautiful Katamari demo to begin with a nice little movie of more of the random animals and colors that can make anyone wonder if they’re on some sort of hallucinogenic drug. Sadly, it was just a three-minute level that I easily failed. I am no stranger to Katamari, and I was slightly disappointed by the lack of content. The gameplay itself felt pretty natural. The move from the symmetric PS2 analog sticks to the offset 360 sticks was surprisingly easy. The vibrant world did look even better in HD, but I did feel that three minutes was way too short for me to get addicted again.

The next demo I played was for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. I had heard earlier that the game had captured Johnny Depp’s signature Jack Sparrow walk and I was curious to see what it was like to play as a pirate. The walk itself did look great, as did some of the other movements that obviously used motion capture technology.

However, the walk was highly impractical when most of the demo required running, if not sprinting. The sets and costumes seemed to fit the setting very well, but the camera angles made the game difficult to appreciate. I had to continually adjust my camera, especially to see the highlights on the floor of enemies preparing to attack (necessary to execute counterattacks). The battle system itself felt spontaneous and slightly simplistic, but I felt that it suited the pirate theme. One of the most frustrating aspects was the fact that different voice actors were used than the actors from the movies and the story lay slightly outside the movie. I didn’t quite understand what was going on and the demo seemed to end suddenly.

I then moved on to another movie game: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I am a fan of the Harry Potter series, but I have never played any of the games due to their typically mediocre reviews. I never wanted to ruin the magic of the series, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try a demo.

The world of Harry Potter looked very accurately represented in the game – visually, it was practically a digital version of the movie sets, props, and characters. Many of the voice actors seemed different, which bothered me immediately, but I was still willing to look past it if the gameplay was strong. I began in a courtyard and could talk to many people. Unfortunately, the first person I chose to talk to happened to initiate a game of gobstones from which I had no escape. I played the game for several minutes and lost. It was a close match, but I had no desire to play again when there were so many other things to explore.

I wandered around the courtyard, trying out a couple of spells and talking to a few people. The spell mechanics felt slightly clumsy compared to the apparent elegance of using a wand. Also, I found that talking to people became a bit disturbing – the faces were so similar to the actors in HD that they had begun to cross into the uncanny valley. About two minutes after finishing my game of gobstones, the game flashed a one minute demo ending warning. I raced around, trying to do something so I could figure out what this game was all about. I had just learned about another area of the school when my demo ended. If the game is at all like the demo, it seems like you just walk around and talk to people most of the time. That has never been my favorite part of games. Although this game seemed to faithfully recreate much of the book, I felt that it failed to capture the same sense of fun.

Three demos later, I was not sold on any game. Beautiful Katamari is probably the only game I would consider buying, but I should probably finish the original game first. Despite the disappointment I felt while playing some of these games, I feel that playing demos is hardly a waste of time. I can learn so much so quickly about a game by being immersed in it and playing through several minutes. I was glad to experience three games from series I enjoy without the pressure or expense of a rental.  

After a stressful week, I find that playing a video game can be rather therapeutic. You can project your enemies onto the plethora of monsters you must fight and gain a sense of satisfaction from completing in-game tasks. While the individual tasks in a game as long as an RPG can be quite nominal, they are fairly easy to complete. I am a person who makes lists and loves to cross things off of them, so it is fun for me to go through with a strategy guide and mark my progress.

Richard Bartle would probably classify me as an achiever for this reason. I do thoroughly enjoy running around the levels and collecting items. I like playing independently – I enjoy competition most if it’s against the game or myself. I don’t mind leveling up at all, but there could be two possible motivations for this. The first would be that I enjoy gaining levels, another form of achievement. I find that higher levels make boss fights a little bit easier, and I am a fan of low-stress games. My second motivation is that I enjoy killing monsters. As I mentioned earlier, I can unleash any pent-up aggression on the virtual monsters. If a monster scares me, it shatters that line where I feel safe (like when I jumped and screamed after the sudden appearance of a monster in Doom). This takes me out of the play and I would much rather fight monsters when I can see them clearly.

These two motivations are not mutually exclusive, however. While Bartle’s ideas apply mostly to MUDs, I do think that it is possible that people can fit multiple classifications, and these qualities may be seen more clearly in different games. I believe that I do have a bit of a killer in me – I’ve been known to shout Bartle’s “Die! Die! Die!” (a killer classification quote) when excited about any fight. However, I think that my neurotic collecting and leveling up would classify me as an achiever, even if I do decide not to go after EVERY ultimate item at the end of these games. (Usually, at the end of RPGS, I am at such a high level that it really does not matter if I get all the items since it would not make it significantly easier to beat the game.)

I had been neglecting my RPG addiction in an effort to spend time with my mother during her recent visit and get my homework done. However, once I had a few spare hours to myself, I decided it was time to jump back into that genre I love and give Kingdom Hearts II another try.

I was so excited to play again, thinking that after my first five hours, the game would really take off. I had regained control of the original party (not the main character’s doppelganger and his friends). I was thrilled to have to chance to run around and collect items, and maybe slay a few enemies along the way. Unfortunately, I had triggered a story point before I saved that cleared the area of monsters. How disappointing. While it was nice to run around quickly, I missed the satisfaction of slaying the monsters. I told myself not to get too upset, as I would soon enter a new area that was sure to offer more enemies.

I was bitterly disappointed when I played for the next two hours, when I encountered fewer than 20 fights (lasting about 15 seconds each) and more and more movies. The movies were obviously being used as a crutch to patch together an overly complicated story. I was in control of the characters for less than half of the time again. I found that the play mood was interrupted and I was rudely thrown outside this game “magic circle” each time a new movie appeared. There were so many that I kept wondering how long it would be until I would get to play again. This game me the felling that I was not invited to my own party – they didn’t need me, the player, to help them tell the story. I was just there to hack up the occasional enemy (ridiculously easy) and move along a very clear path in order to trigger more movies. It not longer felt like play.

Even if the killer in me could not be satisfied by the fights, I had hoped that the achiever part of me could find satisfaction. However, the collection of items didn’t even seem fun anymore. After eight hours of gameplay, you could collect synthesis items to synthesize better weapons but you didn’t have enough to actually improve weapons yet. Even the ready-made weapons were (what I considered) worse than what I already owned. Plus, I did not have enough money because I had barely been allowed to fight. The only other way to gain money in the game was to complete ridiculous mini-games and I really did not want to waste my time re-playing games that were ridiculous when I completed them earlier as the doppelganger.

After all this, I really thought that I would give the game one more shot or at least play it until I got to the Pirates of the Caribbean level. Unfortunately, my strategy guide walkthrough showed me that it would be at least 5-10 hours away, and I simply did not have the patience to wade through so many movies for a level that I heard wasn’t nearly as cool as it seemed.

The magic circle was shattered and my needs as a player were not met. I decided to send this game back and stop wasting my time being disappointed by a game that would not satisfy my player types.