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seriousficSo, it turns out that the computer problems are just a blown power supply. Which, naturally, is on the 13th month of its 12-month warranty. Who built that thing, Catbert?
But onto the review.
Prince of Persia - XBOX360
As a big fan of the last-gen Sands of Time trilogy (well, the first one and the third one - remind me to write "Ten Things I Hate About Prince of Persia: Warrior Within"), I was excited about a next-gen PoP game. The trailer, showing jaw-dropping visuals of the new Prince and a female partner teaming-up to save the world and set to Sia's "Breathe Me", did nothing to diminish that. Thank God, a game that advertises itself with a fitting, unique, almost Spike-Jonze-music-video sense of wonder instead of butt-rock and obnoxious catch phrases!
Wisely not messing with the happy ending of The Two Thrones, Prince of Persia Next-Gen picks up with the Prince (no relation; here he's a thief who's just nicknamed the Prince, perhaps for his propensity for singing Batdance) lost in a sandstorm. He stumbles across Elika, a beautiful, secretive waif, and saves her from the pursuit of some nasty-looking heavies commanded by her father. In short order, things go from bad to worse, with the god of darkness making a prison break (why can't these ancient heroes, with their time-lost magic and incredible technology, ever finish the job instead of passing the buck?) and the god of light nowhere to be seen. With Elika's city covered in “Corruption", a slimy pollution that looks like the end result of Venom starring in a sequel to Supersize Me, it's up to the Prince and Elika to find the “Fertile Grounds” which will restore the city to its former glory.
Once you activate a Fertile Ground, the surrounding level transforms from Little Mordor into the Garden of Eden, an effect that is stunning, but gets old. A little variation and added artistry in the transformations would be more rewarding. Once a level is saved, you can collectcoins rings Light Seeds by exploring the level. Find enough and you can "buy" a special power for Elika, which you use by hitting a corresponding power plate and activating it. You can fly through the air, run up walls, all sorts of things. Each level requires a different power, so you have to get them all to finish the game.
Gameplay is mostly the same as the previous PoP games, with the Prince running and jumping his way through the devastated city like David Belle on meth. The key changes are that the traps which provided much of the antagonism in the other games have been dropped, and Elika serves as a faithful sidekick. She can help the Prince cover longer distances in jumps, fight beside him in combat, and if the Prince takes a fall or is about to be killed by an enemy, she'll save him. In effect, she's kinda like the Sands of Time from previous games, only cute.
The deepening romance between the Prince and Elika is at the heart of the game, born through in cute touches like them playing a game of "I Spy" when the Prince talks to her with nothing else to comment on, and them getting by like Fred and Ginger as they traverse the landscape. Elika rarely gets in the way, stepping aside with a sweet animation and occasionally a wry comment, although the mandated pause where the Prince will catch her at times after he's made a jump is frustrating, especially in later levels where you're being chased by Corruption. It's very commendable that Ubisoft has made a game where the romance is woven into the gameplay rather than kept confined to cutscenes. And in another cool touch, the game world is persistent like in the Grand Theft Auto series: At times, you can ascend to great heights and see other levels, giving you a look at the beauty of what you've already freed and what's still corrupted. Very motivating.
Unfortunately, while Prince of Persia is a great Prince of Persia game, it's only a good game. Warrior Within was an absolutely abysmal PoP game, with the “Prince” running around dicing up people and calling people bitches while listening to Godsmack. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A Prince of Persia game should be more Thief of Baghdad than 2 Fast 2 Furious, ask anyone. So while the new Prince of Persia feels right, has the right atmosphere, the right story, the right characters... the gameplay just isn't as good as previous games.
The controls are so simplistic that at times they're counterintuitive. If you jump into a wall, you'll automatically run up it, even if you want to slide down it. Why can't you press R when you hit a wall and slide down, or have to hit Up on the joystick when you hit a wall to run up it? Another niggle is that at any time you can converse with Elika by pressing the L-trigger, but the game basically pauses into a cutscene while you listen to them talk. Why can't you listen to these conversations while you're running around collecting Light Seeds? It'd go a long way toward lightening up the repetition.
But most damningly, from a storytelling perspective, is that the game is nonlinear. You can beat the levels in any order, and thus get the corresponding interaction between the Prince and Elika in any order. Now, as an author, I'll play around with scenes, shorten some, add more details to other, smush some together, and yes, sometimes reorder them. But leaving the story structure of the plot entirely to the reader (or, in this case, the gamer) is far too hampering. Imagine if I had to write every chapter of Before You Let It Go (pimp, pimp) so that the reader could click on anything between the first and last chapter in any order they wanted and it would still make sense. The plot would be stagnant, the character arcs would be slow as molasses... I shudder to think about it.
Now, the developers could've used Elika's powers as a canny way to force the player onto a linear progression of the story, letting them visit levels whenever they wanted, but only being able to save the Fertile Grounds in the order the game demanded. That way, the romance could properly grow and, just as important, the difficulty could ramp up so the game stays challenging all the way through instead of getting repetitive (which it does). I mean, there is some variety in each level's solution, but I was mostly playing the game for Achievements. Those are supposed to be for replay value, not play value.
Instead, they went with complete open-worldliness. Okay, that's a defendable position, letting the player choose how the story goes... Then, in the final level, you're given a choice and to finish the game, you can only do one thing! Complete rejection of the previous game ethos! It jerks you right out of the game, takes you from living the story to watching the story. The developers said they did this so players wouldn't be disappointed when the sequel followed “Ending A” instead of “Ending B”, having been burned when The Two Thrones followed the “secret” ending of Warrior Within. However, there the ending was so secret that you could only know about it by reading a strategy guide. Here, the ending choice is binary, it's right there! Gamers are used to fighting games where the “canon” is that a certain character won or RPG sequels where only one of the multiple endings is continued. In the Dark Forces series, they give Kyle Katarn a choice between Light Side and Dark Side in the second game, and in all the following games they say “okay, he's a good Jedi.” They should've given you the option to end the story how you wanted.
I hate to be “that fan,” but in making the game accessible to the casual gamer... no, not even the casual gamer, the Wii gamer... Ubisoft has made a beautiful game that is more fun to watch than it is to play. I'm not completely soured... I'd still be willing to check out the sequel, especially with the new wrinkle to the Prince and Elika's relationship that logically follows from the ending, but I really hope the designers step things up and remember they're making a game, not one of those horrible FMV things we used to get for Sega CD and such.
Final analysis, if you can live with the problems I've mentioned and especially if you're not a hardcore gamer, go for it. Otherwise, wait for it to go down in price. It's part of a trilogy anyway, so you might as well wait until you can continue the story once you're finished the first game.
But onto the review.
Prince of Persia - XBOX360
As a big fan of the last-gen Sands of Time trilogy (well, the first one and the third one - remind me to write "Ten Things I Hate About Prince of Persia: Warrior Within"), I was excited about a next-gen PoP game. The trailer, showing jaw-dropping visuals of the new Prince and a female partner teaming-up to save the world and set to Sia's "Breathe Me", did nothing to diminish that. Thank God, a game that advertises itself with a fitting, unique, almost Spike-Jonze-music-video sense of wonder instead of butt-rock and obnoxious catch phrases!
Wisely not messing with the happy ending of The Two Thrones, Prince of Persia Next-Gen picks up with the Prince (no relation; here he's a thief who's just nicknamed the Prince, perhaps for his propensity for singing Batdance) lost in a sandstorm. He stumbles across Elika, a beautiful, secretive waif, and saves her from the pursuit of some nasty-looking heavies commanded by her father. In short order, things go from bad to worse, with the god of darkness making a prison break (why can't these ancient heroes, with their time-lost magic and incredible technology, ever finish the job instead of passing the buck?) and the god of light nowhere to be seen. With Elika's city covered in “Corruption", a slimy pollution that looks like the end result of Venom starring in a sequel to Supersize Me, it's up to the Prince and Elika to find the “Fertile Grounds” which will restore the city to its former glory.
Once you activate a Fertile Ground, the surrounding level transforms from Little Mordor into the Garden of Eden, an effect that is stunning, but gets old. A little variation and added artistry in the transformations would be more rewarding. Once a level is saved, you can collect
Gameplay is mostly the same as the previous PoP games, with the Prince running and jumping his way through the devastated city like David Belle on meth. The key changes are that the traps which provided much of the antagonism in the other games have been dropped, and Elika serves as a faithful sidekick. She can help the Prince cover longer distances in jumps, fight beside him in combat, and if the Prince takes a fall or is about to be killed by an enemy, she'll save him. In effect, she's kinda like the Sands of Time from previous games, only cute.
The deepening romance between the Prince and Elika is at the heart of the game, born through in cute touches like them playing a game of "I Spy" when the Prince talks to her with nothing else to comment on, and them getting by like Fred and Ginger as they traverse the landscape. Elika rarely gets in the way, stepping aside with a sweet animation and occasionally a wry comment, although the mandated pause where the Prince will catch her at times after he's made a jump is frustrating, especially in later levels where you're being chased by Corruption. It's very commendable that Ubisoft has made a game where the romance is woven into the gameplay rather than kept confined to cutscenes. And in another cool touch, the game world is persistent like in the Grand Theft Auto series: At times, you can ascend to great heights and see other levels, giving you a look at the beauty of what you've already freed and what's still corrupted. Very motivating.
Unfortunately, while Prince of Persia is a great Prince of Persia game, it's only a good game. Warrior Within was an absolutely abysmal PoP game, with the “Prince” running around dicing up people and calling people bitches while listening to Godsmack. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A Prince of Persia game should be more Thief of Baghdad than 2 Fast 2 Furious, ask anyone. So while the new Prince of Persia feels right, has the right atmosphere, the right story, the right characters... the gameplay just isn't as good as previous games.
The controls are so simplistic that at times they're counterintuitive. If you jump into a wall, you'll automatically run up it, even if you want to slide down it. Why can't you press R when you hit a wall and slide down, or have to hit Up on the joystick when you hit a wall to run up it? Another niggle is that at any time you can converse with Elika by pressing the L-trigger, but the game basically pauses into a cutscene while you listen to them talk. Why can't you listen to these conversations while you're running around collecting Light Seeds? It'd go a long way toward lightening up the repetition.
But most damningly, from a storytelling perspective, is that the game is nonlinear. You can beat the levels in any order, and thus get the corresponding interaction between the Prince and Elika in any order. Now, as an author, I'll play around with scenes, shorten some, add more details to other, smush some together, and yes, sometimes reorder them. But leaving the story structure of the plot entirely to the reader (or, in this case, the gamer) is far too hampering. Imagine if I had to write every chapter of Before You Let It Go (pimp, pimp) so that the reader could click on anything between the first and last chapter in any order they wanted and it would still make sense. The plot would be stagnant, the character arcs would be slow as molasses... I shudder to think about it.
Now, the developers could've used Elika's powers as a canny way to force the player onto a linear progression of the story, letting them visit levels whenever they wanted, but only being able to save the Fertile Grounds in the order the game demanded. That way, the romance could properly grow and, just as important, the difficulty could ramp up so the game stays challenging all the way through instead of getting repetitive (which it does). I mean, there is some variety in each level's solution, but I was mostly playing the game for Achievements. Those are supposed to be for replay value, not play value.
Instead, they went with complete open-worldliness. Okay, that's a defendable position, letting the player choose how the story goes... Then, in the final level, you're given a choice and to finish the game, you can only do one thing! Complete rejection of the previous game ethos! It jerks you right out of the game, takes you from living the story to watching the story. The developers said they did this so players wouldn't be disappointed when the sequel followed “Ending A” instead of “Ending B”, having been burned when The Two Thrones followed the “secret” ending of Warrior Within. However, there the ending was so secret that you could only know about it by reading a strategy guide. Here, the ending choice is binary, it's right there! Gamers are used to fighting games where the “canon” is that a certain character won or RPG sequels where only one of the multiple endings is continued. In the Dark Forces series, they give Kyle Katarn a choice between Light Side and Dark Side in the second game, and in all the following games they say “okay, he's a good Jedi.” They should've given you the option to end the story how you wanted.
I hate to be “that fan,” but in making the game accessible to the casual gamer... no, not even the casual gamer, the Wii gamer... Ubisoft has made a beautiful game that is more fun to watch than it is to play. I'm not completely soured... I'd still be willing to check out the sequel, especially with the new wrinkle to the Prince and Elika's relationship that logically follows from the ending, but I really hope the designers step things up and remember they're making a game, not one of those horrible FMV things we used to get for Sega CD and such.
Final analysis, if you can live with the problems I've mentioned and especially if you're not a hardcore gamer, go for it. Otherwise, wait for it to go down in price. It's part of a trilogy anyway, so you might as well wait until you can continue the story once you're finished the first game.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 12:30 am (UTC)How can they be annoying when they're so HILARIOUS?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 04:45 am (UTC)62 and 155.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 04:50 am (UTC)Tycho-Analogue: What's this?
Gabe-Analogue: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.
Tycho-Analogue: How's it going?
Gabe-Analogue: I'm fighting ancient Persian Bondage Ninjas.
TV: "So much pleasure in pain..."
Tycho-Analogue: Is that good?
[beat panel]
Gabe-Analogue(angrily): [bleep]ing Bondage Ninjas, dude!
Tycho-Analogue: So...no.
Gabe-Analogue: From [bleep]ing Persia!