By John Walker on December 15th, 2008 at 10:49 am.
The latest reinvention of Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia was out on PC on Friday, a week after the console release, and with rumours of (the shop version) containing no DRM. Having played the PC version all the way through, here’s Wot I Think.
Lipstick on a pig, to borrow this year’s favourite insult, would be slightly too cruel a phrase to apply to the latest reinvention of the Prince of Persia series. It’s more of an oil painting on a donkey. An astonishingly beautiful game, which fluctuates between banal and frustrating, occasionally kicking you in the face.
Much appears traditional. You have a large world of walls and beams to bounce around, and baddies to fight. But not all is familiar. The previous trilogy of PoP introduced a stunning new way to play a platform game. The Dagger of Time allowed the Prince to undo his acrobatic mistakes by rewinding time. It was a revelation, reinventing the reliance on checkpoints and quicksaves. Now the big red reset button has been pressed once again, it’s all gone. It’s replaced by an NPC buddy, Elika.
Elika is a princess of a land ravaged by the Corruption – a malevolent, pulsating disease turning the formerly beautiful world into something morbid and dying. Her father has chopped down a tree and unleashed a terrible god. Together, for some reason, you need to leap and fight through the game’s twenty regions, repeatedly defeating four of its bosses, and finally attempt to restore the Tree of Life. This is mostly achieved by using Elika’s magics to reverse the Corruption and restore the pretties… No one mention Zelda: The Twilight Princess – it might get awkward.
The Prince is awkwardly forced to rely on Elika, whose apparent ability to fly means she can boost him slightly further than the limits of his jumps, and rescue him when he falls, putting him back on the last flat platform. The result is a peculiarly artificial interdependence between them, in a world designed to reach just beyond the Prince’s abilities. However, for reasons unfathomable, Elika needs to be given a piggyback when climbing ivy, and requires help being hauled up to some ledges, despite being able to fly. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come close to replacing the majestic time manipulation in a way that’s a fifth as satisfying. It’s simply an elaborate “loading” screen, as she swoops in and dumps you to the checkpoint. Which is fine – preferable over tortuous replaying of large sections – but they used to have something so much better.
After you’ve de-corrupted an area, you then run around it all over again collecting Light Seeds. Enough of these seeds will unlock a new power for Elika back at the Temple, which means you can use a new coloured “plate”. These are pods on the walls that when used will send the Prince charging through the air, or along Sonic-like pathways, dodging obstacles. These range between automatic, where the game flies you to the next area, to maddening, where you’re asked to psychically dodge objects or be reset to the very beginning of the arcade sequence.
But there are two other changes that are more significant. The first is the combat. The previous trilogy always struggled with this, spoiling the fantastic acrobatic sequences by making you slog your way through repetitive encounters. It’s demoralising to realise how little was learned. The combat is now utterly monstrous. The majority of your fights will be against the same four bosses, over and over and over, and each is more like Mortal Kombat than a third-person action game. Using combos and a variety of attacks (sword, claw hand, and Elika), the aim is more often to get the enemy to the edge of the arena than to kill them. A bit like Bloodsports. Early on it’s far easier just to ignore combos and hammer the sword attack. Once the fights get too tough for that, it becomes so infuriatingly fiddly that combos become almost impossible as you’re incessantly blocked, and you’re left to picking bits of health off here and there. Should you be about to die, Elika will rescue you, and your opponent will regain some of his health bar. Each encounter has your heart sink. And this is made far worse by almost never getting to kill the enemies, but instead watch them slink off for the next fight.
The second change is the nature of how you move around the world. Sands of Time’s fantastic puzzling exploration of the environment is almost entirely abandoned, replaced with a game that’s about a linear series of non-optional quick-time events. Except very intermittent. Slow-time events, if you will. You spend almost as much time wall-running as you do on the ground, and it’s about pressing the corresponding button as you auto-run past the right object. You don’t even need to hold ‘forward’ while running, so automated is the whole design. This is all extremely elementary, and because you can approach the twenty sections in any order you wish, there’s no increase in the acrobatic challenge as you progress, but for the introduction of some annoying blobs on the walls. You’re on level 1 for the entire game.
The Prince is equipped with a metal claw on one hand that lets him haul himself higher on walls, or grind down them (think fingernails and blackboards: the game!), and even – somehow – allows him to temporarily run upside down. But again, this isn’t a tool you can use to improvise routes through the adventure playgrounds. It’s the only option you have to make your way along the single prescribed corridor. The beautiful corridor, with the swift, detailed animations, that looks simply stunning. But the corridor.
Despite resetting you when you fall, Elika is too often a burden. She slows you down with her mad piggybacking, and maddeningly will shove you out the way halfway through a move. Swinging from pole to pole occasionally lets you enjoy the fluidity of the movement, until she tries to land exactly where you already were, and pushes you into a wall. She’ll also occasionally knock into you while you’re getting ready to jump, resetting the animation, and breaking your flow.
The result is something that’s clearly going to appeal to some, and infuriate others (hello!). If you want that illusion of choice that defined Sands of Time, using your abilities to discover the correct route to scale a room, you’ll be enormously disappointed. If you want a feeling of almost flying through levels, embracing the culture of QTE to an almost music-rhythm game level, then the standard movement will appeal.
Sadly the story fails to engage, which wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the enormous numbers of interrupting cutscenes. The heavy-handed suggestions that Elika has a dark secret are as beleaguering as the Prince’s unskippable dickish comments throughout. We get it, he’s a dick. And unfortunately, this builds up to an ending so aggravating that you’ll wonder if the game was an elaborate joke played on you. So while the graphics are never less than breathtaking, and the score is beautiful, it all feels rather despondent.
It’s undeniably one of the most visually stunning games ever. The art is spectacular. The game is by no means a disaster. But when your predecessor was so lovely (although certainly with its flaws), the comparison is going to make you look worse than perhaps you are. This is a game that has forgotten what made Sands of Time so entertaining and interesting, replacing the fun of solving a room with a corridor-like inevitability throughout. And somehow makes the combat worse. It’s big, and it’s functional, it’s too often annoying, and despite the care that’s gone into the presentation, the passion is gone.
15/12/2008 at 10:54 Kyr says:
First thing that came onto my mind with the first scene of “purification of fertile ground” by Elika was Okami. I didn’t mention Zelda, see?
15/12/2008 at 11:01 Smee says:
“But again, this isn’t a tool you can use to improvise routes through the adventure playgrounds.’
One thing all this criticism of this new one does is draw to light the fact that the Prince of Persia games were always like this. There was never any improvisation in the platforming, just trying to find the route the developer had designed and completing it. There was only ever one way to finish any platforming segment in any of the games, and it has always involved, as you say, “pressing the corresponding button as you auto-run past the right object.”
This isn’t to say I don’t like the games; they’re three of my favourite games of the last generation. Proof that quick-time events can be fun, perhaps?
I might have to change my mind when I play this thing when it arrives in the next couple of days, but at the moment I find it a bit odd that everyone is criticising this game for doing exactly what the other three did.
(The combat does sound dreadful, though)
15/12/2008 at 11:03 MeestaNob! says:
I really need to play these games.
Format of choice for all? PC? PS2/3?
15/12/2008 at 11:04 Bobsy says:
Elika? Is it me or does this sound a bit… Engrish?
15/12/2008 at 11:04 Ian says:
Well I was already dubious about this in spite of my <3 for the last three.
This is the nail in the coffin. Well, not the coffin, it’s the nail in whatever-it-is-that-confirms-I’ll-not-buy-this-until-it’s-cheap.
Which isn’t as catchy.
15/12/2008 at 11:05 parm says:
On the other hand, it’s a close contender for Game Of The Year for me, so there you go.
15/12/2008 at 11:08 Captain TinFoil says:
So, Ubisoft have a game that plays like a pale, frustrating shadow of the games that came before it, despite it being pretty as Morena Baccarin wearing only a thong and Chanel No 5. Having evaluated it pre-release they’re not sure it’s going to sell, so they make the decision to release the game without DRM, and state publicly they’re not optimistic about the game’s chances at retail. Thus, if the game fails to sell – and if reviews like this one represent the norm then this is likely – they blame piracy, or that old bugbear ‘the PC is dying’, strengthening the case for ever more DRM and more of the anti-PC, ‘release ‘em on consoles first’, tactics we’ve come to know and love.
As a theoretical exercise I love playing Conspiracy Theory. Except when it seems this real. :(
15/12/2008 at 11:08 Al3xand3r says:
My biggest gripe with the game, all of the 30 mins I managed to play of it, is the combat. Why did they completely abandon the Sands of Time (and sequels) format which was so fluid and right and fitting with all of the rest of the controls, and end up with something that feels like a shoddy dueling mini-game which completely changes the controls you have while out of combat? Sands of Time still has some of the best melee combat action in any game, this game totally doesn’t.
15/12/2008 at 11:10 dust says:
Arrrh, now I hope I really don’t win that auction on eBay.
Maybe a replay of Sands of Time would be order this holiday season.
15/12/2008 at 11:11 rob says:
An Ubisoft game with stunning graphics offering an ultimately shallow experience with limited interactivity coupled with a host of annoying features – not least the terrible story you are forced to sit through? I think I am starting to see a pattern develop.
15/12/2008 at 11:11 Ginger Yellow says:
I’m in two minds about this one, so I’ll probably pick it up if it gets really cheap in the January sales. On the one hand, I don’t mind QTEs half as much as most people do, so PoP sounds a lot like Mirror’s Edge without the stop-start gameplay – no bad thing, surely. Similarly, I hated the combat in the previous PoP games, so the fact that it’s relatively rare outweighs the purported crappiness of the latest incarnation. On the other hand, what I loved about Sands of Time was the “puzzling exploration” aspect – working out how to navigate a particular area, not the mechanics of actually doing it. So, in the end. I’m not sure I want Mirror’s Edge-lite.
15/12/2008 at 11:12 subedii says:
Yikes. I’d heard murmurings about linearity, but if it doesn’t have the puzzle aspect to the acrobatics anymore then I guess it’s not really the game I was looking forward to.
It’s also a shame in that outside of the Prince’s brief emo stint in Warrior Within, he was also a pretty well realised and sympathetic character. Hmmm.
Any word on if there’s going to be a demo?
15/12/2008 at 11:21 Dan (WR) says:
Aww. I was really looking forward to this too. I don’t mind linearity if there’s a bit of impetus, but this just sounds a bit pretty and vapid.
Could they have just made another game with the time-rewind mechanic though?
15/12/2008 at 11:25 Wurzel says:
Finished the game on 360 recently, and liked it. Still have to say it’s missed the point of the previous trilogy, though; platforming is no longer a puzzle, about deducing the correct way of “solving” an area, and more about following a linear corridor, pressing the right buttons at the right times. Even more galling is that it’s never unclear what button you need to press, and the timing is so forgiving that you don’t even need to worry about pressing the right thing at the right time.
Even so, would have been a great, flowing experience if the story held up. Unfortunately, it chose to restrict you to 4 (maybe 5) bosses over about 27 or so boss fights, without giving them anything like character development, reason to like or dislike them, or even changes in how the battle takes place. To top it off, the final twist hinges on you developing an emotional attachment to Elika, and due to poor writing most people are instead just going to feel cheated.
Ah well, at least it’s beautiful to look at…
15/12/2008 at 11:26 John Walker says:
Smee – you’re absolutely right that the previous games didn’t allow you to choose your own path. I describe this as the “illusion of choice” above, because it at least asks you to figure it out. Which this new game doesn’t. The only decision you’ll ever have to make is which direction to go in, which Elika’s magic orbs will show you (fnarr). There’s one cylindrical building you need to scale up and down, which comes as close to SoT as anything in the game, but isn’t particularly satisfying.
So while I agree you weren’t picking your own route, you certainly weren’t playing it like a Rhythm Action game. You were playing it like a platform game.
Ginger – the combat is certainly not rare. It’s all too often. You can avoid some of the intermittent scraps with non-bosses if you’re quick enough, but often this won’t be possible.
Meesta – the PC versions have all been great. However, I have had trouble getting SoT to recognise a controller properly – it won’t detect the D-pad of any I plug in, and it doesn’t quite know how to handle the analogue stick, making the Prince walk when you least need him to. PS2 might be the best way to play the earlier ones.
TinFoil – this article in no way reflects the consensus of reviews for this game, as it happens. Despite a number of my colleagues having the same experience, its Metascore is in the stratosphere. Which is interesting.
15/12/2008 at 11:27 Meat Circus says:
I found this game to be *easily* the best Prince since Sands of Time, though this game is really nothing like it. It does succeed in evoking the otherwordly feel of Sands, however. And in keeping with Assassin’s Creed, is astonishingly pretty.
As many have pointed out, including John, the game is more of a rhythm game than a platformer in any sense that matters, including the runny-jumpy-climby, and the stabby-stabby.
The game is at its best when you are able to settle into its rhythms, and string together impressive *looking* series of jumps and swooshes, or shiny combos stringing swords and gauntlet and Elika attacks.
In as far as it goes, I thought the combat was particularly effective: way, way less annoying than anything the Sands of Time had, and slotted well into the rhythm mentality that Prince of Persia had, thus feeling part of the game rather than the more traditional ‘bolted on’.
It’s a game about rhythm. If you enjoy settling into rhythm, you should enjoy Prince of Persia, and find yourself in a comfortable beta-wave response sort of place.
If you have no rhythm, or are bored by the game’s lack of challenge at the way it plays itself much of the time, then leave well alone.
15/12/2008 at 11:28 unclelou says:
This is all extremely elementary, and because you can approach the sixteen sections in any order you wish, there’s no increase in the acrobatic challenge as you progress, but for the introduction of some annoying blobs on the walls. You’re on level 1 for the entire game.
Having played it for a couple of hours, I fully agree with this. It’s maddening. Each area is exactly the same.
Developers need to stop trying to shove buzzwords like “non-linearity” into their games when they are clearly not suited for it. “Linearity” is not a four-letter word, and it allows for a balanced learning and difficulty curve.
But by God, like you said, the game is stunningly beautiful.
15/12/2008 at 11:40 John Walker says:
It frightens me when you agree with me, unclelou.
Meat – I’m really surprised by your unhating of the combat. I replayed SoT this weekend, and while the combat is a pain in the arse, it is at least about you being the more powerful one. It’s never more maddening than when you lose a fight because Farah stood still next to the monster repeatedly hitting her, and the stupid thing wouldn’t let you hit the one attacking her. Nu PoP never hits that depth. But most of the time in SoT it’s a case of ploughing through until it’s over. Whereas here it’s about being the victim of a bully, who you can occasionally poke, over a painfully long time.
15/12/2008 at 11:40 James G says:
Awww, SoT is one of my all time favourite games, and I was hoping to see this reproduce some of that magic. Unfortunately I couldn’t even enjoy Warrior Within, as the dark style, and annoying boss battles clashed with everything I loved about the first game.
I’m tempted to go for one of the new Tomb Raiders instead. For someone who loves exploration, and the puzzle path-finding of SoT, which would be the best in the series to go for? (Boss battles which amount to little more than a grind are a big no-no)
15/12/2008 at 11:44 Meat Circus says:
I know what you mean, John, about it feeling like you’re being bullied. Most irritating is the way that the gauntlet attacks never seem to work later in the game, even when the baddie is in PINK MODE, and you can’t hit them any other way.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because apart from the Warrior, a couple of well-timed Elika-sword-elika-sword combos and they go down like everything else.
15/12/2008 at 11:46 Wurzel says:
Yeah, another thing annoying about the combat is that it seems the only things they could do to make it more challenging as the game went on is impose arbitrary restrictions: whoops, now the enemy can only be hit by your gauntlet (or only by elika, or only by your sword). Add on to that that they start unavoidably blocking every other move and forcing you through a barrage of QTEs to avoid dying, and all sense of flow in the combat is removed.
Also, about the increasing difficulty; the areas are handily divided into at least three tiers, and yet if anything difficulty decreases as you go up the tiers, due to increased reliance on the power plates that essentially just put you on a guided tour of the level. This is especially true of the boss areas.
15/12/2008 at 11:47 Meat Circus says:
@James G:
All of the new Tomb Raiders are excellent. Legend is a little easy, with puzzling in bite-sized chunks interspersed with rudimentary action.
Anniversary is big and scary and old-school, with forboding, lonely tombs and complex puzzles, and occasional platforming sections that border on the psychotic. It’s a remake of the original Tomb Raider with shiny modern graphics and controls.
Underworld exists almost halfway between the two, and achieves an excellent, if formulaic sweet spot.
15/12/2008 at 11:48 John Walker says:
James G – the latest, Underworld, is the one you want. It’s entirely about huge-scale exploration puzzles, and there’s not a single boss fight in the whole game.
15/12/2008 at 11:48 Ginger Yellow says:
“Ginger – the combat is certainly not rare. It’s all too often. You can avoid some of the intermittent scraps with non-bosses if you’re quick enough, but often this won’t be possible.”
Huh. All the reviews I’ve read up till now have said that combat is much less frequent than in the old trilogy.
15/12/2008 at 11:52 Jake says:
I finished this game over the weekend. I’ve been a fan of the series ever since playing the original game on my EGA monitor. The graphics are absolutely stunning but it’s another case of style over substance. I think there is a lot of improvement over the previous games on the micro scale.
I appreciate how when you jump onto a pole the Prince’s default orientation is to swing around to the other side automatically. There were a couple of other minor things like this that shows the developers are thinking about how to improve the player experience.
However, the dialogue is maddening. I actually quite relished the ending. Can game designers please hire some professional writers? They don’t even have to be that good :/ I thought Fallout 3 was bad, but this is downright cringe worthy.
One of the things I liked about SoT was that each enemy required a specific tactic to overcome. Here all the enemies are basically the same with slightly different animations.
And the dialogue.. Did I mention the dialogue? The banter between the Prince and the Princess could have been written by a 12 year-old. And the things the concubine said didn’t even make any sense. Formulaic.. It would have been better if no one said anything at all.
15/12/2008 at 11:54 Meat Circus says:
@Ginger:
You have to battle one of the four bosses before you can purify each fertile ground (for a total of 20 battles).
Then there are the BATTLE ROYALES with each boss when you unlock their lairs.
*Occasionally*, when traveling between different levels you meet one of the soldiers. If you’re quick, you can stop them from spawning, but they’re ridiculously easy to kill anyway. When they’re at the edge of the arena or by a wall, you can one-hit them with your sword.
There are also a couple of boss battles with
.
So, frequent combat really.
15/12/2008 at 11:57 Meat Circus says:
@Jake:
I thought the banter between the Prince and Elika was quite well done.
The Prince is a dick, Elika knows this, but because he has a nice arse, she’s wondering if he can be changed for the better.
There’s certainly some interesting musing between the two about why the prince is doing what he’s doing.
15/12/2008 at 11:58 James G says:
@Meat and Walker
Excellent, thank you. I got that impression from the reviews I had been reading, but wasn’t sure. I shall treat myself after Christmas.
15/12/2008 at 11:59 toni says:
I dare to argue peggle kids gives you more joy and fullfillment than DragonsLair, aehm, prince of persia the interactive movie. and combat is just as dull as the movement. if I wanna hit buttons in rhytmic sequence i play senso.
15/12/2008 at 12:03 John Walker says:
Oh lawks, the banter between the Prince and Elika was the worst thing my ears have ever heard.
15/12/2008 at 12:06 AbyssUK says:
Although I want to buy this to support the fact they have taken out the DRM.. am sorry but this is a console game. I bought my 360 for a reason…
15/12/2008 at 12:06 Jon says:
Hm, I had high hopes for this POP. That and the recent piracy article is making me feel less than festive!
On the other hand, someone seems to have the album cover of Somethin’ Else as their avatar on a gaming site, which is pretty awesome.
15/12/2008 at 12:12 Lu-Tze says:
Where is the mark out of 10?
15/12/2008 at 12:23 subedii says:
@ AbyssUK: People said the same thing about Devil May Cry 4. Didn’t stop it from being a just as easily played and great PC port (plus a few not insignificant enhancements). Well, assuming you like the style of game anyway.
Although it looks like I also might be forgoing this one in favour of one of the Tomb Raider games now it seems.
15/12/2008 at 12:24 Ben Abraham says:
This reads awfully like a review. Just sayin’ ;-)
15/12/2008 at 12:47 Tom says:
There’s none of the magic of the first PoP – that magic has been missing in all the games since imo. For example, that scene when you’re running around a room adjusting the position mirrors so that the light bounced to the desired location? When i watched the new PoP trailors I had images of that but on a much larger scale with all those balloons and things hanging around. I had ideas of truely large scale scenery manipulation in order to get to where you needed, but you’re right John, it’s just about running around and pressing the right buttons on an entirely static enviroment.
Shame really. With those gfx, it could have been stunning.
I think this new PoP is a victim of this current trend of reducing a game to it’s core mechanics and reiterating from that.
15/12/2008 at 13:18 Mika says:
How well does this control with mouse and keyboard?
15/12/2008 at 13:21 unclelou says:
It frightens me when you agree with me, unclelou.
Heh. Hm. I hadn’t noticed we have such different opinions all the time. Maybe it’s because I mostly only post when I disagree with something.
Do you have anything specific in mind? :)
15/12/2008 at 13:21 rocketman71 says:
Everybody should buy this. Ok, it’s not about the game, I just don’t want to listen to Ubi saying “see? the sales were low because it was pirated because it had no DRM”.
Perhaps they knew the game was not up to par and they dropped DRM to try to make those sales, but I just don’t care. It’s about time to show that DRM doesn’t stop piracy one bit and is stupid (as stupid as Rockstar, BTW… had to say it).
15/12/2008 at 13:29 unclelou says:
How well does this control with mouse and keyboard?
Very well. I had the 360 pad plugged in, but then switched to mouse&kb although I’ve played all other PoPs with the pad. You don’t really need many buttons. Vertical mouse sensivity is too high, but once you realise you can turn it down because you never need to turn around quickly (so don’t need the horizontal sensivity), it all works perfectly fine.
15/12/2008 at 13:32 manintheshack says:
It’s all a little disappointing, this feedback. First the PCG review, now this. Just remembering how incredible SoT was when it came out and how exciting and innovative it was. It’s a shame to hear the series go this way. Spect I’ll pick it up when it’s on budget.
You know, the Prince was much better when he sounded like Derren Brown. Bring Prince Derren back!
15/12/2008 at 13:34 John Walker says:
unclelou – the olden days on EG : )
15/12/2008 at 13:40 Simon says:
So not as good as Sands of Time, I assume it’s definatly better then Warrior Within. How does it compare to The Two Thrones? The forgotten game of the last ‘trilogy’, a sequel I thought was actually damn good when I played these three games back to back a few weeks ago.
15/12/2008 at 13:42 SH4RKY says:
18 quid for the 360/PS3 versions on play at the moment… (Monday deal 15-12-2008)
I predicted it would take a week for prices to fall for this Ubi game, but 3 days is a bit extreme, haha.
15/12/2008 at 13:43 Matt Kemp says:
It tries to be so cinematic that occasionally it falls flat on its face.
With the combat, I’ve had it on many occasions with the lesser enemies that I’ve hit them mid air and they’ve gone off the edge of a platform, and so it’s immediately jumped back to a static view of me stabbing them in the chest, standing on the edge. It’s so set on showing everything in a stylish way that it actually breaks the flow in the process.
I’m not a big fan of quick-time events anyway, but the implementation seems to be a little shoddy in PoP. I can’t really mash the X button on my controller fast enough to win some of the buttonmash contests, which when they’re the only way to defeat a boss (see: warrior) makes for some maddeningly thumb-ruining arthritis sessions. Not to mention that doing anything in the QTE periods results in failure. I can understand when I’m supposed to be pressing B and I press X i’m going to get a problem, but releasing (note releasing, not engaging) the block before pressing it button is an error? Maybe I’m an idiot with this one but I don’t like taping my finger to the block trigger because I have to hold it in for all the QTEs.
Speaking of blocking, I don’t like that enemy combos seem to be so long they can knock you from one end of the platform to the other, give you a quick-time event on the edge of the stage and then precede to continue almost immediately afterwards. I reckon my block-to-combat ratio is roughly 70-30 in favour of blocking. Not to mention that the enemy design isn’t exactly pushing boundaries – each area seems to have one set ‘goon’ and then the boss, which means even the simplest of fight just becomes wishing they’d just fall off the fucking edge already and show me the cutscene.
The platforming is fun to watch, but doesn’t feel like a challenge, except in the circumstances where you need to time wall runs to land on moving obstacles, at which point it becomes a trial of patience when I have to account for a moving blob about three jumps away.
15/12/2008 at 13:44 John Walker says:
It’s interesting, and more complicated, to compare it to WW and TTT. The difference between those three and this game are the same, however: they are action platformers, while this is primarily rhythm response and MK combat.
15/12/2008 at 13:49 Meat Circus says:
What people seemed to forget about Warrior Within, because of all the goth metal ‘tude and “you bitch!” and rubbish combat, is that it had some of the best platforming of the entire series.
15/12/2008 at 13:51 unclelou says:
unclelou – the olden days on EG : )
Almost suspected as much – even then, I only really remember one (stronger) disagreement, though I’ve forgotten about what. Like I said, it’s probably less obivous from my point of view because I often agree silently. ;-)
As for PoP – I thought Warrior Within wasn’t bad at all – dubious angsty Prince and some related artistic decisions (music, for example) aside. I’d kill for a game with WW’s combat and platforming in the new PoP’s engine.
15/12/2008 at 13:52 Link says:
I might be in the minority here, but I too thought that it was the best PoP since Sands of Time. The comment earlier about ‘rhythm’ was on the money; once you get used to it, the entire game flows very nicely. Granted, some might consider this all too much hand-holding when compared to the sands mechanic of the previous trilogy – but when you string together an entire series of elaborate acrobatics getting from one end of the world to another, that’s a pretty cool feeling.
The combat was a welcome change from the Sands trilogy; all too often while playing the previous games I would either run past all the enemies or use up my sand powers to take them all out as quickly as possible to get back to my fancy platforming. Warrior Within aggravated me with its combat so much that it almost turned me off from playing Two Thrones entirely. Here, even if your enemies block your attacks, you can chain the blocks into deflects, counterattacks and combos of your own (once again, with rhythm) – so once again, I find combat flows very nicely without devolving into the infuriating stop-start hack-n-slash of the previous trilogy.
I agree that the story is rather weak – Sands of Time was a perfect storybook adventure that could have ended satisfyingly after just the one game, and yet still provided a serviceable out for the developers to continue the story through sequels. In this one, the developers have already planned an entire new trilogy (they have, haven’t they?) and from that perspective, the ending was disappointing – but you could see it coming a mile away. The main characters are alright, nothing spectacular. Shades of Han Solo and Princess Leia (cheesy dialogue intact as well, but without Harrison Ford’s inherent charm ;).
In the end, for me, whatever quibbles and niggles and lack of challenge the game offered did not dissuade me from picking it up. It really is a stunning-looking game; the art direction, the beauty of the world, and the fluidity of the animations make it a pleasure to experience. If you’re looking for a challenge, and if QTE’s annoy you to no end, then it’s probably not for you; otherwise, give it a shot. Pick it up when the price goes down if you’re on the fence about it if you must, but I haven’t had as much fun with a gravity-defying acrobatic showboat of a protagonist since the very first Sands. YMMV.
15/12/2008 at 14:05 Link says:
@ Matt Kemp – that’s odd, my block rate during combat is practically nil ever since I found out that if you timed it right you can deflect an enemy’s attacks even in the middle of a combo. In fact, I practically invite them to attack me, then just deflect and chain it into a combo of my own. If they deflect my counter, I deflect their counter-counter (does that make sense? erk), and chain it into my attacks again.
I find myself prolonging combat just to chain together some elaborate and spectacular combo for self-awarded cool points. Considering how much I hated the Sands trilogy combat, I find it almost comically illogical when I stop to think about it. But that’s just me :p
15/12/2008 at 14:07 Bobsy says:
Meat’s right on the money there. It’s something of a tragedy that Warrior Within was an excellent game dressed up in the duds of your annoying teenage nephew.
LET US SEE WHO IS MASTER OF THE IRON THONG
15/12/2008 at 14:11 John Walker says:
UncleLou – Lost In Blue pops up in my memory : )
Meat – I’m tempted to replay WW now. I remember being furious with the combat at the time, and how bloody annoying the sword/chain thing was in fights. But I also remember some wonderful rooms.
15/12/2008 at 14:15 Meat Circus says:
Also, the Dohaka sequences were ace. There was one area where you have to make the Dohaka chase you four times so you can raise a platform to get to the mask that makes you become the Sandwraith. That was brilliant.
15/12/2008 at 14:20 Bobsy says:
The chain was in Two Thrones FYI. Which I’ve still not played!
15/12/2008 at 14:26 RLacey says:
I’m kind of happy that they’ve changed the combat, but only because I was completely and utterly useless at the stuff from the last PoP incarnation. It prevented me from getting anywhere near the end of SoT and, I’m embarassed to say, prevented me from getting past the FIRST LEVEL of WW. Then again, I am useless at anything that requires me to master combos, so I was never going to be any good at any PoP games.
15/12/2008 at 14:35 Ian says:
About Warrior Within, it had some of the best and some of the worst of the series. As Meat said, it’s got same fantastic platforming. The Dahaka sequences are still some of my favourite things in gaming as I may have said in comments for another article. The way they get you to assess the environment ahead while navigating the stuff at your feet and making you do spectacular things without having much chance to think about it is almost peerless in the making-the-player-feel-awesome stakes.
However, the boss fight (or fights, if you got the wrong ending like I did) against Kaileena are some of the most infuriating, terrible boss fights I’ve had the misfortune to encounter.
I liked The Two Thrones as well, with positioning yourself to get the most out of the QTE kill combos (i.e. lining up as many enemies as possible) good fun.
15/12/2008 at 14:53 Down Rodeo says:
I loved SoT, I completed that game so many times. I might have to pick the other two up now. It’s a shame that they have removed the time aspect; although I can appreciate attempts at innovation and the changing of game mechanics the time travel was a bloody good idea.
Thinking of this game’s engine and say, SoT but about twice as long makes me wet. I say twice as long because I managed to get my completion time down to just over 4 hours. And I appreciate that the combat could have been better; I remember one point where I became stuck beneath three of the enemies with hammers rhythmically whacking on my block position. Of course I had just murdered one of their friends before that so couldn’t rewind, and had to load.
15/12/2008 at 14:56 The Poisoned Sponge says:
I checked the box of the PC version of PoP today at work, and it says that it requires at least the disc and a cd-key, so it’s definitely not without DRM, but there’s a chance that’s all that there is.
As far as the game itself goes, I played a demo of it a month or two back at the Eurogamer Expo, and I could tell just from that that I didn’t want to play, just because I don’t think I could stand a whole game of listening to the Prince (who isn’t apparently a Prince) bitch and moan and be a total arse.
15/12/2008 at 15:11 Link says:
@ The Poisoned Sponge – The package designers didn’t get the memo it seems. I own the retail box version, and while the box states that the game “contains technology intended to prevent copying”, I can confirm it has no DRM whatsoever, not even a disc check. Part of what sold me on the game. Goodness knows I’ve saved enough money skipping Bioshock, Mass Effect et al since the current incarnation of Securom pitches a fit when trying to read a disc off my DVD drive.
Installed it, put away the disc, and played it on a completely offline PC with no issues whatsoever. Even made a backup disc, and I haven’t done that since the days of Planescape. Ah, Planescape …
15/12/2008 at 15:12 Simon says:
Quick bit about WW: everything that was good about SoT was reduced in this game. It still managed to not be a bad game because the standard set by SoT were so high. The platforming sequences were very cut & paste and it had the worst sort of backtracking where you had to do the same puzzles over and over again. Combat, I feel, was actually worse then SoT since some of the time manipulation moves were removed and it had horrid move buffering without beingable to cancel out (I did the leap over enemy move, hit the button to attack but before he could do the move he hit the wall behind the enemy, and with the button already buffered he did a move where he launched from the wall, past the enemy, into the abyss).
Boss fights were the worst sort of pattern attacks.
Also, huge plot holes.
Also, indistinctive, anonymous areas with only a few memorable set pieces.
Only thing it did well was to pace out the enemies rather then doing waves of them at certain points. So the player was never really confronted as much with the direness of the combat.
Quick bit on the TTT: Plot wise it was excellent, focussing on the growth of the prince’s character as he has to learn to actually take responsibility for his actions. It also managed to make WW work in the storyarc. Which was a very good trick.
Combat was a bit better since it found a way to make platforming part of it. Or it part of the platforming, through the quick or stealth kill thing. You could drop down and fight waves of enemies, or you could figure out some tricky platforming and only need to take down a few. One of the things the devs said about the SoT was the intention to make the prince like a ninja. Well, he really is in TTT.
There’s also no backtracking and tons of setpieces (though the opening part is a bit bland). It has some incredible platforming moments. It doesn’t always get everything right, but because it’s linear and keeps moving, it keeps those short.
It’s not as good as SoT because as a sequel it can’t stand on it’s own as a singlular piece. Also because of that it is a bit messy to try and follow up on something that was created as a singular piece and a mess of a sequel that preceeded TTT. It just couldn’t be such a careful construct as the SoT was.
15/12/2008 at 15:23 Icey says:
Why do people keep complaining that the Prince is not an actual prince? In the original PoP (and by original I mean NOT Sands of Time) the Prince was a BEGGAR thrown into a dungeon at the beginning. He only became a prince at the end of the game after marrying the princess he rescued. If this is some new trilogy, I’ll bet he’ll become a prince in more than just name by the end.
15/12/2008 at 15:29 Matt Kemp says:
Icey: I don’t think anyone’s complained so far about that lack of prince-ness. However, it doesn’t stop him being a little bit of a smarmy git.
As a sidenote, I quite like the ‘optional’ character development between Elika and the ‘Prince’. I put optional in quotes because the game tells you so much about this optional stuff that you may as well watch it just to shut the game up. I do however, play with the sound off – I can’t comment on how inane the voice acting is or on the true smarminess of the Prince.
15/12/2008 at 15:37 Icey says:
He does tend to be a smarmy git, that I agree on. I’ll still take him over WW emo Prince anyday however
15/12/2008 at 15:38 unclelou says:
Not that I think it’ll be of too much use for most here, but while I usually never do this, I switched PoP to German. The voice-acting, particularly the prince, is better, and he’s using an obsolete German form of address, which gives the game a stronger fairy-tale vibe than the 20th century-US-teenager vibe of the English version. Highly recommended if you speak German.
15/12/2008 at 15:43 Heliocentric says:
“A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we’ll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine“~Easton
But judging by the quote they are sacrificing this game to cement their position with nasty mean drms.
So, not lovely? I’d have gotten far cry 2 for full retail if its DRM looked anything like this, but i’ll never care about nupop enough to pay full retail. Hell, at least i know a second hand copy will work. So, yeah, dumb move. When the game is a short limited experience limited activations would at least discourage second hand sale (btw I think activations etc are fine when the game is awesome enough to want anyway, but not needing the disk will get the game in second hand while the seller is still playing it). I’d never buy mass effect second hand, i’ve seen it drop to £10 so i’ll likely pick it up some time soon. But if it hadnt had that drm? I’d have grabbed it 2nd hand for less than a tenner by now.
I hate saying this of course, i love that you dont need the disk, its bullshit for everygame where you do need the disk (cracking can risk invalidating multiplayer keys so its not a total solution).
My battlefield 2 disk is in a sorry state, i read about mini images, i’m going to have to get one.
[/rant][/unfocused]
15/12/2008 at 15:53 Link says:
Don’t want to derail this into a DRM discussion, but I find it odd that Ubisoft are not promoting the whole “No DRM” thing better. Considering the furore about DRM schemes nowadays, you’d think that advertising the fact that PoP has none would sway honest customers who were turned off by DRM.
Instead, they sort of semi-leaked the information on their forums and most of the news has been brought into the wild by forum-snoopers. Like I stated earlier, they couldn’t even get the packaging right! If I were a hardened cynic by now I would imagine that they somehow wanted this no-DRM plan to fail miserably in the sales stakes.
15/12/2008 at 16:00 PHeMoX says:
I had little confidence in this title anyways, although I must say it looks very cool.
Prince of Persia: SoT is still my all time favorite.
15/12/2008 at 16:13 Francisco says:
I don´t know why people bashed WW so much. For me it was one of the most entertaining one of the series and I did love that combat.
Replaying it knowing that you are going back to time and etc is such a nice thing. And all the Darraka´s (prolly mispelt) scenes that you had to run were AMAZING.
15/12/2008 at 16:39 Calabi says:
So, on a scale of say, one to ten, how good would you say it is?
15/12/2008 at 16:55 DBeaver says:
I played it, didn’t finish it yet, and I do enjoy it. It’s a lot like anime. Alien plot, weird characters, really cool action scenes, and you just sit and watch.
I agree on it being beautiful, and if you enjoy watching good action, it’s actually pulling you on. But after creating Assassin’s Creed, with a huge beautiful nonlinear world, this one is feels like watching someone else play.
15/12/2008 at 17:01 CubicU07 says:
Actually, I found this game to be great. While it’s admittedly easy, I do not think the fighting to be frustrating or the storyline to be weak or poorly written. Quite the contrary, in fact.
While the combat mainly revolves around the four same bosses, each boss have unique strategies to fight against and gets increasingly difficult with each fight. And it’s definitely possible to combo even in the harder fights, you just need to judge your distance from your enemy correctly, and maybe to start with a counter to break the enemy’s defense.
The story in my opinion was pretty good in fact, despite being a bit predictable at times and I feel that the development of the relationship between Prince and Elika, through various aspects in the game, is very well done. The game probably has the most amount of dialog amongst all the PoP games since SoT and these dialogs can be witty, funny, emotional, provides a strong backstory (of Ahriman, Ohmazd, the four bosses and the Ahura) and builds up to a fitting finale at the end of the game.
The fact that these dialog are optional (activated by pressing the Talk button), would lead me to believe that most gamers who played the game and commented on a weak story probably missed most of them (there are easily more than 5 dialogs that can be triggered per location).
Also, while the piggy-backing does slow down the action a bit, it sort of builds a “closeness” both physically and emotionally between the two main characters. There are also subtle touches throughout the game which gives the same effect, like how Prince would catch Elika when she drops down in front of him, the spinning move (coupled with a witty comment on occasion) when the two swap positions when standing on a beam. These, in my opinion, highlighted that the developers understood clearly that character development and interaction is not merely done through dialog, but also through physical experiences – something not many games are able to convincingly create.
The plot events, the optional and compulsory dialogs, the subtle interactions between Prince and Elika throughout the game all culminates in the ending where
***SPOILER***
the usually witty Prince becomes solemn and silent, his final decision stemmed from the entirety of the game – his experiences with Elika, and allowed the player (or at least myself) to empathize with Prince in his decision.
***END SPOILER***
15/12/2008 at 17:07 CubicU07 says:
Oh. One last thing, the only gripe I had with the plot and characters was that of Elika’s father. His role in the whole story was only partially revealed and several plot issues related to him and Elika can be found. I’m fairly sure, though, that the sequel(s) would address these.
15/12/2008 at 17:17 ophois says:
I reckon I’m just under half way through the game at the moment (I’m on PS3 but for general game play comments and visuals/cut scenes that should be close enough) and so far I am thoroughly enjoying it.
I’ll agree its not the free roaming adventure of Assasin’s Creed or (to a lesser degree) Mirror’s Edge but I never expected that from a next gen platform game. I almost consider it a 2.5D game (rather than a 3D game) you go from left to right timing jumps, swings and slides to build up a free flowing momentum all in glorious graphics. The articles comparison to a rhythm game is not that far off and when it works it really works, even if it never achieves the sense of immersion and speed of Mirror’s Edge.
As for combat. I think the move away from endless horde of mooks to more meaningful encounters with a series of named bad guys that get harder over each encounter as you push them back towards their safe holds is a good one, even if it doesn’t always work. You do end up blocking a lot, but if you just block then get in a few attacks and then block again your not really grasping the combat system. Once you break their stance the combo tree system often allows long cinematic combinations that look visually impressive and make me smile when they stretch out. I’ll admit it could use a bit of tweaking to tone down the amount of blocking you have to do though and the fact that the “Immune to all but throw” stance cuts down what you can do in the combo tree as part of the break attack a bit too much (throw only branches to air attack unfortunately).
(as an aside, don’t try pushing the Alchemist to the edge of the arena as he’ll just teleport through the taint to get away from you).
Elika does get in the way sometimes nocking you out of the position you want to be in. When it happens its bloody irritating, but I don’t remember it happening too often. It does appear to happen more if you slow down or stop when on a pole or small platform, if you keep up the speed of your movement she rarely catches up. I think the choice to have the prince carry her on vines or to catch her is a nice way of showing the working relation ship between the two. The little animations when you move past each other on a beam or ledge are a nice touch.
I’m not 100% on the “on demand dialogue” system yet. It’s hard to tell when there are actual new things to hear the two talk about or when there just going to fall back on generic banter. I have noticed a progression in the princes dialog from complete selfish git to actually thinking he should be helping stop this.
While I’m no where near finished the game, and their is plenty of scope for it all to fall apart, I don’t think it’s as bad as the OP makes it sound.
15/12/2008 at 17:47 Schadenfreude says:
My favourtie PoP moment has to be scaling the Tower of Babyl at the end of of TTT (On the outside no less). Really made the game for me that (And couldn’t be more welcome after that boss fight with Smashy and Stabby).
15/12/2008 at 18:26 Radiant says:
This is a shame I was looking forward to this game.
This whole series has seemed to be about taking the gentleness and fluidity of Sands of Time and filling it with hatred.
Or making it more ‘badass’ or whatever.
15/12/2008 at 18:50 Pags says:
Will most likely end up getting TR: Underworld to satiate my platforming appetite. Playing Mirror’s Edge recently makes me realise that Dice were intent on making the most frustrating game possible, while it seems PoP assumes the player is an idiot. In a bizarre twist, it’s Tomb Raider that’s seemingly getting the actual platforming bit right. Plus we can actually dress Lara properly! God knows the girl needed someone to inform her of the magic of wearing layers.
15/12/2008 at 19:56 Duoae says:
Wait, wait….. John you thought the banter between the Prince and Elika was bad? Seriously? I think that there are the most realistic and flowing conversations in PoP that i’ve heard since The Sands of Time. What other videogames have done better? Mass Effect? I can’t think of another one.
Maybe this game just isn’t for you….. maybe you’re more of a 300 sort of person rather than a Sin City guy ;)
Oh yeah and i had no problem with combat either – it’s just like assassin’s creed in the sense that the four buttons are indicative of the action you will take…. never had any problem with ‘hitting’ an enemy when i was in range and they were vulnerable to a specific attack or whatnot.
Also, not sure if maybe the PC version is different but most people i have seen that are ‘down’ on the game have said it was too easy…. which doesn’t seem to be the case in this review.
I agree that there’s a terrible lack of puzzles in this game… which is a damn shame…. still IMO the new PoP is far better than the mess that was Two Thrones and has better story and characters than Warrior Within.
15/12/2008 at 19:59 Duoae says:
@ Pags:
Personally i think that Legend and Anniverary are superior in movement and camera controls – which seem to have been placed back into the former Tomb Raider categories of infuriating and twitchy. It makes me wonder how they manged to mess up the game in that one respect (playing on 360 so if it’s on PC the experience might be different).
15/12/2008 at 20:25 Ginger Yellow says:
“I think that there are the most realistic and flowing conversations in PoP that i’ve heard since The Sands of Time. What other videogames have done better? Mass Effect? I can’t think of another one. ”
I wouldn’t call it realistic, but the dialogue is pretty good in Mass Effect. I mean it’s cheesy, but no more so than a good Indiana Jones film. Incidentally, I think Drake is the same voice actor as in the new PoP.
15/12/2008 at 20:39 Ginger Yellow says:
D’oh. When I said Mass Effect, I meant Uncharted.
15/12/2008 at 20:47 John Walker says:
Maybe this game just isn’t for you….. maybe you’re more of a 300 sort of person rather than a Sin City guy ;)
How DARE you sir!
Oh, the dialogue was such self-inflated drivel!
most people i have seen that are ‘down’ on the game have said it was too easy…. which doesn’t seem to be the case in this review.
No, like I say, it stays at Level 1 throughout. The combat becomes increasingly irritating, but not increasingly challenging.
For those supporting the piggy-backing on ivy, etc, I really want to know the rationalisation for the fact she can FLY! Argh!
15/12/2008 at 21:03 BrokenSymmetry says:
Just as the overwhelming majesty of Assasin’s Creed’s viewpoints made any other flaws of the game irrelevant to me, the sheer beauty of this new Prince of Persia overrides any other objection. I loved Sands of Time, and I love this game.
15/12/2008 at 21:03 Duoae says:
@John:(Wow, i got a response – wasn’t really expecting one, thanks!)
Maybe this game just isn’t for you….. maybe you’re more of a 300 sort of person rather than a Sin City guy ;)
How DARE you sir!
Oh, the dialogue was such self-inflated drivel!
Okay, okay, maybe the 300 reference was a bit below the belt…. But seriously my point stands. How many games have you played that actually had good, dynamic and (semi) realistic conversations with actual, honest to goodness feeling and flow to them?
Certainly not Fallout 3…. probably GTA 4 and Mass Effect. It’s a rare thing. The conversational quips may not have been your cup of tea but that doesn’t make them bad. IMO, they were no worse than those in The Sands of Time…. and the ‘evolution’ of the relationship between the Prince and Elika mirrored that between the Prince and Farah almost identically.
15/12/2008 at 21:05 Duoae says:
Oh, missed the last bit of your post.
The reason why she doesn’t just fly everywhere is because she can’t. The same reason why she doesn’t just blast the enemies during fights…. those things are a last-ditch effort that she involutarily activates when she’s highly stressed or worried etc. She doesn’t have control of her powers and (avoiding spoilers) is trading something for using them at all.
15/12/2008 at 21:23 redrain85 says:
About the packaging stating that the game has DRM (technology to prevent copying). It seems obvious to me that Ubi originally had every intention of using DRM on the latest PoP on the PC. At the time the boxes were being printed, that was their decision.
But for some reason, at the last minute, they decided to drop the DRM. Rather than throw away the boxes and print new ones, or even slap a sticker over the DRM notice, they decided to just use the boxes as-is. Makes sense to me.
So the question becomes, why did Ubisoft change their mind? It’s hard to say. But I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the fact that they’re trying to avoid future lawsuits. Since EA has been hammered with several. One of the lawsuits is even seeking to declare all implementions of SecuROM on games as illegal.
For everyone who has ever said that these lawsuits are frivilous and do no good . . . I don’t think so. I think Ubi’s decision is a direct result of the lawsuits. This is a big win for the consumer. Together with Gabe Newell’s comment saying that there’s a “groundswell to abandon” current restrictive DRM approaches, I think we’re nearing a turning point.
15/12/2008 at 21:30 jalf says:
So, for someone who hasn’t played a PoP game since the first one (the original DOS game), which one should I play if I just want the best bit of the new games? :D
15/12/2008 at 21:43 Duoae says:
@ Jalf – The Sands of Time is probably the best…. though it’s probably improved with the fond blurring associated with Nostalgia. If you can get the new one cheap then start with that…. otherwise go for The Sands of Time.
15/12/2008 at 21:47 Link says:
@ redrain85 – Logically-sound assumption I would say. Still, for all of their pandering regarding how they’re going to observe if releasing this game without DRM would see an increase in sales and a reduction in piracy (which I think is hogwash, most pirates will pirate regardless of DRM – because they don’t ever deal with it!), they’ve done a piss-poor job of advertising the fact.
Every article I’ve seen either attributes it to hearsay or links to the same forum thread where one of Ubisoft’s community managers posted that they’re releasing it with no DRM. Maybe they don’t want to make a big deal about it, but why not when it’ll win you some goodwill with consumers tired of all the DRM malarkey?
15/12/2008 at 22:12 Link says:
@ jalf – Like Duoae says, the first Sands game will probably be a fine place to start (and it remains my favourite of all the ‘current’ PoP games) – but since you’re someone that hasn’t played any of the new ones, this most recent PoP is pretty good as well.
I also agree that nostalgia has probably elevated Sands of Time to a rung higher than when it was first released … which makes comparisons of the new game with Sands a bit unfair. Warranted, but a little unfair nonetheless. If Sands had not been made, and this was the first reboot of the franchise since the original, I think people would’ve given it more of a fair shake and would’ve been able to better enjoy the game for what it is – a fun romp through a beautifully realised and visually stunning world.
15/12/2008 at 22:20 RandomEngy says:
The only really weak part for me was the platforming. A little too auto-pilot like. Everything else: the graphics, sound, music, combat, dialogue I loved. If you’re getting frustrated with the fights, remember that they are about countering and follow-up combos.
Hopefully the sequel will make the platforming a bit more intelligent.
15/12/2008 at 22:38 Radiant says:
Nostalgia has nothing to do with it.
Sands of time was a fantastic innovative platform puzzler that had an abysmally generic fighting mechanic attached to it.
The current developers seem to be on some sort of mission to re-state their point by emphasising the fighting and all but removing the puzzling platforming.
If the pattern stays true next they’ll add more weapons and then maybe give the prince wings.
15/12/2008 at 22:38 Radiant says:
btw I hated the sequels.
About as much as they hated me.
15/12/2008 at 22:57 Saflo says:
Next person to chalk something up to nostalgia gets a swirlie in the official RPS toilet.
15/12/2008 at 23:11 Pags says:
You only think swirlies are a suitable punishment because nostalgia is clouding your judgement.
15/12/2008 at 23:20 Robyrt says:
The combat MECHANICS are actually excellent, with a great sense that fights mean something, and lots of possible combo options that don’t boil down to “press X when you see a red enemy” like Sands of Time did.
It’s the LEVEL DESIGN that is at fault here, by forcing you into cramped arenas where you need to push the enemy into the wall over and over, and you can’t use your best combos.
The OPEN-WORLD DESIGN is also a culprit, by making you fight the same boss 6 times, and only twice will they have inventive and fun abilities like clouding your view or reversing your directions.
15/12/2008 at 23:27 Max says:
I got Sands of Time after seeing it pop up on so many “Best Game Evar” lists. What the hell. Okay, the platforming was decent, but the combat was horrid and the fact that the developers kept throwing you into it over and over again was a crime. Yeah, the going back in time thing was cool but was offset by how utterly linear the game was.
It seems to me like this is a series that was never really anything special to begin with and the developers never had a clue as to why people liked their games. I’m not surprised this iteration didn’t turn out so good.
15/12/2008 at 23:45 unclelou says:
“I got Sands of Time after seeing it pop up on so many “Best Game Evar” lists. What the hell. Okay, the platforming was decent, but the combat was horrid”
I loved the combat in Sands of Time (and even more so in WW, althought SoT was a much better game). That aside though, I am surprised you can’t see how that game appears on so many “best of” lists. Guess it’s a bit like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, in that it has a certain atmosphere you need to be susceptible to – and if you are (and fortunately I am), you can only pity the people who aren’t. ;-)
16/12/2008 at 01:05 GothikX says:
several responses off the top of my head:
@John Walker
It’s interesting, and more complicated, to compare it to WW and TTT. The difference between those three and this game are the same, however: they are action platformers, while this is primarily rhythm response and MK combat.
I beg to differ. The entire game was one big QTE, MK would have been a refreshing change.
(there are easily more than 5 dialogs that can be triggered per location)
Actually, there’s more like dozens of them per location, 5 per every other platform you land on. Quite a lot of them are simply inane and illogical (most are annoyingly disconnected, as in the prince asking a question and Elika saying… something completely unrelated and irrelevant – at least that’s how I remember it) and very few are mildly interesting. Trust me, I listened to each and every one of them once I’ve figured out there are more when the icon flashes.
No, like I say, it stays at Level 1 throughout. The combat becomes increasingly irritating, but not increasingly challenging.
For those supporting the piggy-backing on ivy, etc, I really want to know the rationalisation for the fact she can FLY! Argh!
1. Aye, that would be just about hitting the nail on the head.
2. Not to support anything, but I do believe it’s about her getting… er, tired? after performing said feats, although I found myself shouting ‘just fly/teleport [me] up there you stupid cow’ on one or two occasions.
Platforming? Weak, and several others have already pointed out all the flaws, and reminded me of how much better Tomb Raider Underworld was – funny that, I have more stories about platforming in TR-U than in this entire PoP game thing.
Story? Overall bland, and given the ending I don’t even really want to comment on it.
Characters? Meh. Not even the prince and Elika are given proper characterization, although that may be on account of the dialogue.
Fighting? For me it was a large shock to encounter so few enemies, after the slaughterfests (well almost) that were the previous games; the small ones were just idiotically easy once you figured out the winning move, and the bosses were… plain. Except the wordy courtesan who was so insane, I was left staring in disbelief every time she appeared, plus she seemed to cast a Grand Spell of Idiocy +9 on both Elika and the prince, because every line of dialogue in that area of the game I remember as completely nonsensical.
Puzzles? I played SoT some four years ago, and I remember many more puzzles from that game than from this one (finished roughly 24 hours ago). They’re few and weak – so weak I was desperately thinking up complicated and convoluted solutions only to despair at the plainness of the slapstick dumb answer.
Oh and the powers? Come on.
To put it simply, this is not a Prince of Persia game; I can’t blame people who like it, as I enjoyed it enough (apparently) to finish it, and of course I’ll admit it looks and sounds well enough, but that can’t make up for content and feeling. And proper combat (you call those combos?!). If it had any other name, few would have been THAT harsh on it – and more favorable to the cooperation between Elika and the prince, the healing of the lands, the atmosphere changes… er… I’m struggling to find more decent points to the game but anyway… with the legacy of three exceptional games (yes I’m placing WW in the exceptional camp)… nuff said.
btw: any feelings you may have towards SoT, rest assured they are mostly stemming from nostalgia. I tried it again recently and I must say it hasn’t aged that well. IMO.
btw2: the very first wtf moment in the game was when I did the first ceiling run. I mean, I don’t require any game to be physically correct or anything, and I can understand a lot, but the prince shuffling about the ceiling, completely defying gravity, without as much as sticking the glove claws an inch in the woodwork or something, looked awfully stupid to me. I guess I’m siding with John Walker in needing to ‘rationalize’ things somewhat :)
16/12/2008 at 01:08 azwipe says:
amazing how divided opinion is on the new pop.
i would love a remake of pop:sot with the new art style, but at this point i would just expect ubi to botch it.
16/12/2008 at 01:34 Charlie says:
Well I’ve just been playing this. Thought I would offer my views. It is indeed a lovely looking game but I also am finding it a bit of a chore. The combat is horrible, I just find myself randomly bashing buttons. But the thing that I think is most wrong is the sense of achievement in the game.
In Sand of Time you solved a puzzle and got through loads of difficult platforms etc to be rewarded with a gorgeous view for example. It made the views and sights seem all the more epic because of what you had to do. The world in this game is so easy to get about you never get that feeling of an epic view because it was easy to get there.
16/12/2008 at 01:50 The Shed says:
I think those words are maybe a little strong to describe what was a good game mechanic.
Also, the fact that Elika can only fly to save the prince is because of precisely that. (As far as I can tell,) she can only control her powers to a certain extent, they seem to come and go when she needs them, not when she wants to use them. Although I agree the saving animation is ridiculously awkward, especially for something you see so much of in the game.
Also, on the combat, for the first time reading this blog, I was forced to say out loud “What the fuck is he talking about?”
The combat for me, while not (as with everything in the game) challenging, is incredibly cool, awesome to look at, and pretty darned fun overall. In some respects it’s a step backwards from the Time series, but the sheer amount of combinations you can make, and learning them over the course of the game, is brilliant.
Haven’t finished it yet, so I can’t say on the story, but it seems alright. Seems like a very good game so far.
However, the main reason I bought the game was because the Spec Ed Box art was simply sublime. Absolutely beautiful. Was an instant buy.
16/12/2008 at 02:46 Erlam says:
“(of Ahriman, Ohmazd, the four bosses and the Ahura) ”
Do you learn about the aftermath of his Rubric?
(ba-dum-pssh!)
16/12/2008 at 02:46 jackanator87 says:
epic gg prince, EGG.
16/12/2008 at 02:49 SuperNashwan says:
This is a game that has forgotten what made Sands of Time so entertaining and interesting
As if there was ever any doubt. If anyone from RPS interviews someone working on the next PoP game and they mention it being ‘closer to SoT’ please just punch them in the face.
On the DRM thing, I’ve started a thread in the forum if anyone wants to talk about that rather than the game itself.
any feelings you may have towards SoT, rest assured they are mostly stemming from nostalgia. I tried it again recently and I must say it hasn’t aged that well. IMO.
I find myself playing it at least once a year and it’s still brilliant in many, many ways. I could write thousands of words on what it does well in comparison to the latest game.
16/12/2008 at 04:25 Anthony Damiani says:
But….
But….
It’s…. so…. pretty….
I feel like you’re telling me the stunning blond cheerleader might not actually be a great conversationalist.
16/12/2008 at 06:15 Spd from Russia says:
duh. combat was good fun in warrior and 2thrones
I actually preferd the combat over the platforming (but its me – I like slashers) anyway it was well done,
in new PoP the combat seems rahter easy, combos are fun, you just need to learn and practice a bit mr John Walker
16/12/2008 at 06:26 Spd from Russia says:
also John Walker please dont call a simple 1-button mechanics QTE
QTE is an arbitrary key sequence wich has no underlying mechanic or consistency at all, just “press this shit I tell you NOW! quick!”
here we have an action universaly used throut the game – its not quite the same
16/12/2008 at 11:35 Psychopomp says:
Speaking of QTE’s, does anyone know a place where sailors hangout?
16/12/2008 at 12:38 CoAX says:
One of the best reviews I’ve read in a long time. Witty, very well written and not just a PR operation.
Thank you very much John. Talent!
16/12/2008 at 12:52 Matt Kemp says:
“here we have an action universaly used throut the game – its not quite the same”
In the combat, the buttons you need to press to save the prince are completely arbitrary, save that x is the only one pressed rapidly.
The platforming is essentially a very lax rhythm game, since you don’t even need to press appropriate button anywhere near the object, or even first, to continue. They may as well have just had him swinging through the environment on his own and occasionally you have to press a button they tell you to. There was no need to the prince to even have free movement, because he couldn’t go anywhere other than the route.
16/12/2008 at 12:55 Psychopomp says:
Damnit, now I want to dig out my Dreamcast and play through Shen”The Quest for Sailors”mue again…
And the first disc is scratched beyond repair.
16/12/2008 at 13:58 Adrian says:
I been playing the game for the past couple of hours and i ahve to say that i realy enjoy this game! besides that it looks great i think the level design is great to and i dont care that i cant spend hours figuring ut how to solve an area because the climbing and jumping just works great in this game and you have big levels with a lot of climbing thats just fun
16/12/2008 at 14:08 Mman says:
“any feelings you may have towards SoT, rest assured they are mostly stemming from nostalgia. I tried it again recently and I must say it hasn’t aged that well. IMO.”
How could SOT have not aged well? Its still got solid mechanics for what it is and many action-adventures today are still plagued by crappy combat (apparently this new POP is exhibit A), so it’s not special in that way at all. Yet it also has much better storytelling than most subsequent games of this sort.
I’m not sure whether I personally consider it a “classic”, but I don’t find it hard to see how other people would. While “nostalgia” might have boosted it slightly (though the influence is likely massively overrated), the idea that it has outright aged badly is just… what?
I might be interested in the new POP, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for a simple “everyone wins” game at the moment, I might pick it up when its cheap or something though.
16/12/2008 at 14:26 Ian says:
@ Spd from Russia: He didn’t actually call them QTEs.
16/12/2008 at 14:31 Meat Circus says:
Sands of Time has aged beautifully. It’s still as splendidly lovely in that polished otherworldly way I fell in love with half a decade ago.
16/12/2008 at 14:33 Caiman says:
I didn’t see anyone ask this question. If this wasn’t called “Prince of Persia” would it be worth getting? I see a lot of unfavourable comparisons with the older games, but then a lot of games compare unfavourably with the way Sands of Time did things.
16/12/2008 at 16:50 Resin says:
I loved the sands of time. This PoP looks like it kept everything that I found slightly annoying about it though, and tossed out everything that was good.
16/12/2008 at 17:36 Al3xand3r says:
Psychopomp, I think you’ll find them @ the port!
16/12/2008 at 17:36 Al3xand3r says:
Oops, sorry, I was supposed to send you to that bar first :(
16/12/2008 at 21:58 Darthus says:
Came late to the discussion here, but I have to agree with the people who find this game refreshing. It seems to me that the majority of people who find serious flaws with the game are doing say because they’re upset because they liked the way the first 3 games handled things and this one is different. This is a series reset, so inevitably the gameplay will be different.
I applaud Ubisoft for making this game simply because it challenges so many core concepts of gaming. It’s an attempt to evolve gaming in my mind from the days of arcade games where you had lives and game over screens to get you to put more quarters in, now there are no loading screens, no unnecessary repetition, very few mandatory story sequences (but many optional ones) etc. People see a lot of this as removing the difficulty, but really they’ve only attempted to remove frustration and barriers to enjoyment. For some people frustration and forced repetition is the same as challenge, but not for me.
Also, yes, the game plays more like a rhythm game than a puzzle platformer. You pretty much always know where to go, and getting there is a matter of pressing the appropriate button with the right timing. As others have mentioned, when you’re doing this well it achieves a feeling of flow that I believe games like Mirror’s Edge are going for. Mirror’s Edge was at its worst when you had to stop and look around for where the heck you were supposed to go and how to get there. They removed those elements from this and made it more about the feeling of continual movement. I guess for some those moments of trying to figure it out were part of the fun, but not for me. Oh, and they do include something similar, when the orbs appear, it turns into a puzzle platformer, but they’ve elegantly made it optional at that point if it’s not what you’re into.
Anyways, I think ignoring all the risks this dev team took in an attempt to evolve the platformer as just irritations because they’re not like games that have come before is shortsighted. I find this game a refreshing breath of fresh air and can’t wait to see where they go from here.
16/12/2008 at 22:16 Wedge says:
All I can really say is, I hope this trend of severely watered down highly repetitive gameplay with faux/pointless “open” worlds coming out of Ubi (this, AC, FC2) doesn’t end up ruining BG&E2 =/
16/12/2008 at 22:42 Man Raised By Puffins says:
Had a play of this today and yesterday, by my guesstimation I’m currently about 2/5 of the way through.
It’s a bit of an odd one. Personally I find the controls and the platforming a little too pared down and streamlined. That said getting into the rhythm of the movement and free-flowing from one end of the map to the other with the music kicking in as you string moves together is quite something. There’s also some compensation for the paucity of puzzle rooms in winkling out the harder to reach light seeds.
In regards to the combat, at its worst it’s a trudge; it’s very easy to just block most of the time and spam sword attacks early on. When the game forces you to start deflecting attacks and building combos though it develops a pleasing back and forth rhythm. Still not a great fan of it yet though.
I’m also suprised that I’m not finding the Prince irritating like John is. I acknowledge that he’s a colossal penis, but for some reason that, and his repeated declarations that his trousers are in fact new, doesn’t bother me. The relationship between him and Elika also suffers in comparison to SoT, but it’s nice to see the effort put in and they do have their moments.
Oh yes, and it pretty much goes without saying that the game is bloody gorgeous.
17/12/2008 at 00:37 Mister Hands says:
Hmm. I’ve yet to play this (Christmas Day, I’ll be all over it), but I did come across this.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/06/prince-of-persi.html#previouspost
It’s an odd one, to say the least.
17/12/2008 at 00:45 Psychopomp says:
Do you know the way to Wan Xai?
17/12/2008 at 10:22 Sylus says:
No fun at all Assasins Creed was better
18/12/2008 at 00:34 SuperNashwan says:
I find it odd that anyone could consider completely removing all challenge from a game ‘evolution’. Also, a challenging game is not necessarily frustrating, the ideal is something that is challenging but fair. Cf the yellow power plates where quite regularly it is impossible to tell which side of an obstacle you’re meant to dodge, with the only way to progress being trial and error; or the boss fights where you have to push the boss to a particular position, only the camera control is taken away so you can’t actually see where that position is. Frankly if you took Elika’s infinite rescuing away you’d be left with an extremely annoying game, not for being more challenging but for being badly designed.
18/12/2008 at 04:41 DerangedStoat says:
It seems the combat in the previous trilogy is a love/hate thing.
I loved SoT. The story, the characters, the graphics (lightbloom!) and the platforming. But I was pretty much nonplussed by the combat, although it did give me the precious sand, and in hindsight broke up the gameplay enough to keep the platforming from ever getting stale.
I still remember reading the reviews for WW and hearing everyone getting excited for it containing more and improved combat, and just thinking ‘ugh, that’s the bit I least enjoyed about SoT’. Nonetheless, I bought WW but sadly only got about 1/2 through it before I just got sick of being attacked/interrupted every single time I completed a tiny section of platforming, and stopped playing (not to mention the emo prince really grated with me after loving his character and the atmosphere in SoT). When TTT was announced with it’s new gimmick/chain, which promised ‘even more exciting combat’, I just lost all interest in it.
It may be nostalgia, but there have been very few games that upon completion have left me thinking ‘wow… that was breathtaking, I wish it didn’t have to end’ like SoT did.
As for the new one, I love when a game provides a really flowing sequence of play, but that’s mainly because of the feeling of accomplishment usually associated with achieving that, and QTE’s do not provide this for me.
Nonetheless I’ll probably still pick up this new iteration of PoP, since I’ll willingly sit through some horrible gameplay if a game provides some beautiful art like this appears to have (as much as I hate to admit it, since I’d rather not encourage graphics>gameplay at all).
18/12/2008 at 06:29 Mister Hands says:
“Nonetheless I’ll probably still pick up this new iteration of PoP, since I’ll willingly sit through some horrible gameplay if a game provides some beautiful art like this appears to have (as much as I hate to admit it, since I’d rather not encourage graphics>gameplay at all).”
I think it’s justifiable here, because you’re supporting the artistic design, rather than just saying “Oooh, slightly shinier human face! Me want!” :)
22/12/2008 at 00:01 Cargo Cult says:
Well, I liked it.
22/12/2008 at 14:05 deadManWalKing says:
I see a lot of people complaining about the combat in this game and saying how the sands of time was so good. But if you check out any of the old reviews for the game, you’ll see that the biggest (only?) complain against the game was the combat system. And it was NOT nice (though rest was absolutely wonderful). I’ve played all POPs since sands of time. Combat only picked up with POP2. Betting that many here have seen only screenshots/videos of the old game.
22/12/2008 at 15:00 James G says:
Nostalgia is definately not the cause of my SoT love, as I played the first game around a year or two ago, and instantly added it to my ‘favourite games’ list. This is part of my attempt to play all the well regarded games I’ve missed. Oddly, this means that in my mind, the last couple of years of PC gaming have been the best ever.
25/12/2008 at 22:03 mack says:
I know youll hate me but the new pop is good and the ending is prettty dark.
BTW its never boring with the prince(both sot and the new one)
17/02/2009 at 04:03 Fegli says:
You know what? I’ve really enjoyed this game! Much more than I enjoyed SoT (although I played that YEARS ago and would probably like it better now). But I played this after Gears of War and Halo, and while obviously those are the better games, PoP is such a nice change of pace. Being able to chill and watch the fluid looking actions instead of freaking about General Raam handing my ass to me every two seconds is really quite nice. And while the writing is not stellar, I enjoy the chemistry between the Prince and Elika (p.s. I don’t care how much you hate her, she’s STILL more useful than Dom). It’s just a great-looking, easy, fluid game, and it may just be because of my gamer mentality at the moment, but I’ve really enjoyed it. :)
24/02/2009 at 06:24 blog hosting says:
blog hosting [url=http://wordpress.com]blog hosting[/url] blog hosting [url= http://wordpress.com ] blog hosting [/url] (added by Mobile using Mippin)