Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow

Pirates May Be innately cool, but they're no guarantee of quality. For every Monkey Island, there's a Tortuga, and for every drunken, loveless Johnny Depp, there's a stupid, romantic Errol Flynn. Look, you pirates - Dr Who doesn't go around falling in love with lady Timelords; you lot would do well to behave with similar decorum.

Now I love pirates, and hearing Depp recreate Jack Sparrow on my computer is a fine way to get my hand reaching into the wicker basket of Classic medals we keep in the office. Sadly, Depp's involvement adds buggery-nuts to the gameplay here. Even that sense of guilt that goes with bitching about a game aimed at children doesn't make up for the scurvy rot in Jack Sparrow's marrow.

On first inspection, it looks great - and once you've got your head around the controls, which are unnecessarily linked to a series of icons rather than keys, you'll settle into some lip-stretchingly repetitive hacking. Legend Of Jack Sparrow really wants to be Devil May Cry or God of War - with lots of fighting, soft-heavy attack combos and regular attack upgrades - but the upgrades are barely noticeable, and the combos are so watered down as to be just another way of attacking. It's neither swash nor buckle.

The script and acting is great, but the imagination going into the levels is hugely lacking - the first two bosses are killed in identical ways (simply throw axes, no timing required), the lack of colour is unexciting, and I'd like to think that children who play Jack Sparrow will be annoyed by the strong sense that they're being patronised by someone who hasn't even proved his own intelligence.