Gaming Time-stealing
There’s nothing quite like electronic gaming to time steal. Apart from a few random games of Desert Combat with Paul, I hadn’t played any PC games lately. My two games in progress, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time required more concentration, effort and time than I was prepared to give.
I didn’t mind leaving KOTOR because, as an RPG, it does require attention, and long sessions of playing to get the most out of it. You can’t rush it.
I started playing Sands of Time while I was on holiday back in July. I breezed through 80% of the game in about 3 days. Then I got to a damn sequence in an elevator in which I had to defend a princess, and myself, while fighting reanimating corpses and trying to charge up my super-power. I repeatedly failed, and left the game for a month. On Thursday evening, I tried once more, and, unbelievable did it. By the next day I had finished the game. Although I felt the ending, though clever, was a bit flat (the final fight was anti-climatically easily), the game itself is the best action-adventure of the platformer tradition in the past 4 years (American McGee’s Alice came out in 2000). The diverse locations are beautiful, the dialogue avoids cheese and the absolute best thing about the game are the character animations – the prince’s acrobatics (especially the wall-running) are enjoyable to watch and addictive to perform.
So on Sunday I reloaded Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, SOT’s 2004 sequel. Having got probably a fifth of the way through the game on PS2, I’m playing it on Easy on PC because it is helluva lot harder, and more frustrating than Sands of Time.
The character animations are still excellent, and the button-mashing Mortal Kombat-style fighting (complete with combination finishing moves) is a lot of fun. Although the grungy castle interiors tend to look the same after a while, the exterior locations, such as the ship intro sequence, and castle gardens, are striking.
However, having played SOT, I now see the disappointment Gareth pointed out. The first game was impressive in its freshness and little touches of detail. Warrior Within lacks its predecessor’s uniqueness and polish. There are even annoying little bugs that pop up now and then.
Apart from the difficulty frustration (which means doing things repeatedly), a major annoying is the sacrifice of certain features for others. The very useful ‘prediction’ feature of SOT, that would help with the more challenging climbing and jumping puzzles, is gone. Now you simply fling yourself into a gulf and use the Time Rewind power if you are killed. In Warrior Within, you also simply cross the same terrain over and over again as you move from present to past and back again, meaning you have to redo puzzles repeatedly. SOT was entirely linear.
Plot and characterisation are also much weaker than in Sands of Time. They bear little to no relation to what was established in the first game. At the end of SOT, the prince had resolved everything and received a relatively happy ending as a result. He was still the same young goateed Persian prince with a hefty amount of arrogance and snooty, apparently English, accent, who started the game.
With Warrior Within, the prince emerges suddenly as an older, darker, guttural, scarred Yank (the stereotype you see in pretty much all ‘mature’ action games at the moment). Presumably this is as a result of being chased by the Diahaka, the guardian of time, but a filler scene is really necessary to explain the prince’s transformation. Apart from the threat to his own life, he hasn’t lost any loved ones. They should still be sitting happily at home in Babylon while he is driven only to save his own skin.
The only thing I can think is that the prince of Warrior Within is actually the ‘Dark Prince’ of the third game in development. While the carefree, honour-hungry prince of SOT restored order, a second time stream was created in which the troubled Dark Prince was sent on his quest. It would be a nice twist to know you played the whole of the second game as a villain.
That’s what I would like to see, although I doubt that kind of creativity can be expected when Warrior Within centres on a totally conventional brooding hero, big breasted, mysterious femme fatales and features horribly stilted dialogue.
However Warrior Within is a challenge and a marvellous procrastination activity (especially when you spend hours repeating your attempts to escape the Diahaka). I currently have to work on two assignments, start research for a third and mark the damn essays of my English 102 tutlings. Then there’s the writing I wanted to do, my Girlz N Games comic strip and the eventual revamp of my Michelle Pfeiffer website- which I redesigned last year, and have yet to implement.
I didn’t mind leaving KOTOR because, as an RPG, it does require attention, and long sessions of playing to get the most out of it. You can’t rush it.
I started playing Sands of Time while I was on holiday back in July. I breezed through 80% of the game in about 3 days. Then I got to a damn sequence in an elevator in which I had to defend a princess, and myself, while fighting reanimating corpses and trying to charge up my super-power. I repeatedly failed, and left the game for a month. On Thursday evening, I tried once more, and, unbelievable did it. By the next day I had finished the game. Although I felt the ending, though clever, was a bit flat (the final fight was anti-climatically easily), the game itself is the best action-adventure of the platformer tradition in the past 4 years (American McGee’s Alice came out in 2000). The diverse locations are beautiful, the dialogue avoids cheese and the absolute best thing about the game are the character animations – the prince’s acrobatics (especially the wall-running) are enjoyable to watch and addictive to perform.
So on Sunday I reloaded Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, SOT’s 2004 sequel. Having got probably a fifth of the way through the game on PS2, I’m playing it on Easy on PC because it is helluva lot harder, and more frustrating than Sands of Time.
The character animations are still excellent, and the button-mashing Mortal Kombat-style fighting (complete with combination finishing moves) is a lot of fun. Although the grungy castle interiors tend to look the same after a while, the exterior locations, such as the ship intro sequence, and castle gardens, are striking.
However, having played SOT, I now see the disappointment Gareth pointed out. The first game was impressive in its freshness and little touches of detail. Warrior Within lacks its predecessor’s uniqueness and polish. There are even annoying little bugs that pop up now and then.
Apart from the difficulty frustration (which means doing things repeatedly), a major annoying is the sacrifice of certain features for others. The very useful ‘prediction’ feature of SOT, that would help with the more challenging climbing and jumping puzzles, is gone. Now you simply fling yourself into a gulf and use the Time Rewind power if you are killed. In Warrior Within, you also simply cross the same terrain over and over again as you move from present to past and back again, meaning you have to redo puzzles repeatedly. SOT was entirely linear.
Plot and characterisation are also much weaker than in Sands of Time. They bear little to no relation to what was established in the first game. At the end of SOT, the prince had resolved everything and received a relatively happy ending as a result. He was still the same young goateed Persian prince with a hefty amount of arrogance and snooty, apparently English, accent, who started the game.
With Warrior Within, the prince emerges suddenly as an older, darker, guttural, scarred Yank (the stereotype you see in pretty much all ‘mature’ action games at the moment). Presumably this is as a result of being chased by the Diahaka, the guardian of time, but a filler scene is really necessary to explain the prince’s transformation. Apart from the threat to his own life, he hasn’t lost any loved ones. They should still be sitting happily at home in Babylon while he is driven only to save his own skin.
The only thing I can think is that the prince of Warrior Within is actually the ‘Dark Prince’ of the third game in development. While the carefree, honour-hungry prince of SOT restored order, a second time stream was created in which the troubled Dark Prince was sent on his quest. It would be a nice twist to know you played the whole of the second game as a villain.
That’s what I would like to see, although I doubt that kind of creativity can be expected when Warrior Within centres on a totally conventional brooding hero, big breasted, mysterious femme fatales and features horribly stilted dialogue.
However Warrior Within is a challenge and a marvellous procrastination activity (especially when you spend hours repeating your attempts to escape the Diahaka). I currently have to work on two assignments, start research for a third and mark the damn essays of my English 102 tutlings. Then there’s the writing I wanted to do, my Girlz N Games comic strip and the eventual revamp of my Michelle Pfeiffer website- which I redesigned last year, and have yet to implement.
Comments
*Spits*
Gawd I hate marketing people.
Glad you've seen what I was talking about now. Its a very different game, one I feel was "dumbed down" for the masses, and I felt a very real sense of sadness over that. Its too rare these days to find something with such artistry and style as Sands of Time. Its horrible to see the game that provoked such wonder and awe in me trampled into the mud like that.
I agree that the ending of the first one was relatively easy though. However I really liked the way it was pulled off, how you finally hear the princes name, and the fact that he doesn't "get the girl". A happy ending, but not in the corn-dog romance mushy way. And Farah was one of the best female characters I've seen in a game. Not the cliched busty damsel in distress or the equally cliched tough street-wise firecracker chick. A real women, I felt.
I think they must have shot the designer of the original game, or locked him in a closet, because I can't imagine he'd be pleased with what they did to his creation.