Was Keira Knightley’s character Elizabeth Swan the stupidest woman on the planet? There she was, marooned on a beautiful desert island with a horny sexy pirate and a lifetime’s supply of rum, and what did she do? Burn the rum to get a ride home to see her daddy and snog that lankey wuss who played a pointed-eared pixie in some Australian film.

Some people eh? But personal grievances aside, what first strikes you about the Dead Man’s Chest is the awful menu screen. This might sound pernickety, but it does make the game feel unfinished and sets the scene for this "Ooh eugh!" adventure.

The game itself looks a lot better, with bristling palm trees and treasure chests on the island levels, cobwebs and rickety wood underground. Unfortunately the lava looks a bit like an old pizza, not to mention the dodgy collision detection. It’s when you get to play and see how it moves that the whole thing completely falls down. The gameplay is a mixture of tedious puzzles and one of the simplest and most uninspiring combat systems ever. It’s so bad that you’ll end up dying if you try to enter a move, rather than hammering the button they tell you to on screen. We found ourselves repeatedly using the single hit kill weapons just so we could avoid using the combat system. There are no combos or targeting; most of the time Jack Sparrow will be chopping up masonry and getting poked in the back by natives. Oh and the natives, you first see them in the second level. They judder about in three frame loops that make you feel sea sick just fighting them – that is when you’re not stabbing a nearby barrel accidentally.

When you’re not attacking inanimate objects you’ll be looking for skull-andcross- bones symbols where Jack can do something “piratey”. Bet you’re all thinking things like dig up buried treasure at X, down rum, pull wench? Nope, apparently “piratey” things are slide down rope, pick up keg and pull lever. Jack himself is voiced by a camp man who sounds a bit pissed. Okay, so does Keith Richards, but no, this guy is way more camp and a lot less drunk.

Admittedly the multi-player can be fun, after you’ve waited nearly ten minutes for gameshare to load, but it doesn’t save this from being all at sea.

Henrietta Rowlatt