Chimpy Chompy on 26/12/2010 at 20:02

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Like Elite\Frontier at first, until you start buying your own factories. Then like Phatose says, it blows up into a huge game of economics. (tho you can still goof around trading, pirating, doing taxi services if you enoy)

I enjoyed my attempt at X2. Although I played for hours, had dozens of factories but was nowhere near having the resources for the really big ships (destroyer\carrier). But it could be I just failed to master the art of profiteering.

And yeah the interface isn't up to the task. In fact it barely uses the mouse.

Dresden on 26/12/2010 at 22:14

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That's why I've ordered a wired 360 gamepad.

Tomi on 27/12/2010 at 13:58

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About the Prince of Persia games (the SoT trilogy and the cel-shaded PoP)...

I quite enjoyed playing them all, although I did have a long break after completing each game, as the acrobatic puzzles and fighting did get quite repetitive.

Sands of Time is the most fairytale-like game in the trilogy, the story is kinda "cute" and there's no blood or gory stuff. It's good, but it's also the oldest game of the trilogy, so it doesn't look as good as the other two, and the next two games also introduce a lot of new moves and actions that make the puzzles a bit more versatile and the combat a bit less repetitive. If you want to know the whole story of the trilogy, then this is obviously the one that you should play first, but you can still enjoy the other games even if you don't, and you should still understand enough about what's going on.

I read a lot of bad stuff about Warrior Within before buying it, about how the new darker style "totally ruined the game", but I thought that was just nonsense. Ok, it does get a bit over the top sometimes and it was a strange decision to change the main character and the whole atmosphere of the game that much, but it didn't bother me too much. Whereas Sands of Time is mostly about the acrobatic puzzles, Warrior Within concentrates a lot more on the action... You get to chop your enemies' heads and limbs off (I can't remember if there's blood too?) which is just what you want to do sometimes, but just like solving one acrobatic puzzle after another, endless fights can get boring and repetitive as well.

So, The Two Thrones tries to find some kind of a balance between the previous two games, and it succeeds pretty well in my opinion. If you're only going to play one game of the SoT trilogy, then I would recommend this. The fighting and the puzzles are just that much better if you ask me. Don't know about the story, but I remember liking it as well (but like someone said before, it was indeed weird that they decided to continue the story from the secret ending of Warrior Within). The Good Prince / Bad Prince thing sounds a bit silly when you try to describe it, but I think it worked.
The only thing that I remember annoying me in The Two Thrones are one or two ridiculously difficult boss fights. I do like it when the games that I play are challenging, it makes you feel like you've achieved something, but I found at least one of the boss fights a bit too difficult (it actually made me quit the game for some weeks/months). It didn't help that I had lost most of my health during the chariot ride thingy right before the battle, but I wish that there had been a way to regain your health before having to fight the bosses... In the end I think I had to load one of my older saves and play upto that point again.


And then there's the cel-shaded Prince of Persia... I thought it was excellent and a lot of fun! It looks very pretty, and even though the game world is even less realistic than in the SoT trilogy, I found it interesting and quite charming. A lot of reviews that I read before buying the game said that the main character is annoying as hell, but I didn't think so, I actually thought that the dialogue between the prince and the princess (Elika?) was funny.
It is indeed a rather easy game like henke pointed out, but not stupid easy like Assassin's Creed 1/2 or something where you can't lose a fight even if you tried to. It's true that you can't die in Prince of Persia, but you can still screw up and your companion has to save you... but at the same time the enemies regain their health as well. I would definitely recommend the cel-shaded Prince of Persia (why couldn't they give a better name for it?!) if you're into platform/action games.

Renzatic on 27/12/2010 at 18:09

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Damn you, Steam Holiday Sale! Making me buy games I already sorta own (Witcher: Enhanced Edition: Directors Cut: Special Selection: Titty Cards).

The way I figure it, in the time it takes for me to install the disc version and apply the Enhanced patch, I could've downloaded 15 gig 3 times over. That's worth five bucks.

Jason Moyer on 27/12/2010 at 19:38

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Holy shit. NWN2 Platinum is on steam now, and it's $10 today. Bought.