Sulphur on 27/12/2010 at 20:14
Quote Posted by henke
As for
Prince of Persia 2008, maybe I was a bit harsh on it earlier because I
am still playing it. Under all the unlikeable stuff I mentioned earlier it
is still Prince of Persia. With all the awesome character-animations and fun platforming-gameplay that entails. And the fact that it's an open world with no loadzones gives the whole thing a wonderful sense of
place. If that makes any sense. For 3,75 it was a good purchase but I wouldn't pay much more for it than that.
That about sums it up. It's an incredibly pretty interactive screensaver with a kludgey piecemeal narrative I wouldn't pay a penny more for.
Sulphur on 27/12/2010 at 20:33
Quote Posted by Tomi
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
Hmm. This is incredibly subjective, but no. SoT may have had really low poly character models, but it understood the liquid lambency of light as much as Ico did, and this is something the following two lost. Plus, a lot of the storybook Arabian Nights atmosphere came from the soft blur filter overlaying the visuals, like you were watching the game from behind a haze of fine silk. Architecturally and puzzle-wise, the next two evolved very little from SoT; I do agree that they got better combat-wise because SoT's combat was indeed shallow and repetitive.
Quote:
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.
See, that's not such a bad thing if you weren't invested in the characters in SoT or didn't pay attention to them. If you did, though -- the interplay and dynamics and the writing of the two were SoT's best asset. They grew as characters - the Prince especially. You could feel yourself get attached to them as they made their smart alec quips and slowly bonded while you watched.
I'm sure most of this came from Jordan Mechner, because he had zero input for WW and T2T, which lost any semblance of depth, subtlety or inspiration when it came to the storyline. So while they might have played better in some ways, WW pretty much gutted everything that was good about SoT's narrative in the worst way possible.
Quote:
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 story was idiot whining tinged with angst and not much else. There was so much potential with the internal dialogue, but they squandered it with stupid bickering and a very hamfisted 'development' of how the Prince overcomes his demons. Yeesh.
I hated it when someone said that the vizier turns into a Final Fantasy boss-thing, but that is exactly what happens here. He's hardly the sly, deceptive foil he was in SoT, he was just this one-note power hungry glowy monster thing.
The gameplay, combat, all of those were fine. Hardly worldshaking or innovative, but good. Worth a play except for those unskippable boss intro cinematics of doom, and those irritating chariot sequences.
And... PoP 2008 is incredibly divisive as a game, so let's just say I agree with none of what you said about it because we come with different mindsets. AFAIC, it's PoP with the gameplay on autopilot, the platforming was ridiculously loose, and the combat was irritating and shallow, and it's not even set in motherfucking Persia.
They should have just called it Prince and The New Power Generation or something and featured 'My Name is Prince' somewhere on the soundtrack.
Nameless Voice on 27/12/2010 at 20:39
Am I the only person who preferred the combat in Sands of Time? It was simple and I liked how you had to finish enemies with the dagger. The later two in the series just focused too much on combat, made it more complicated and had far more of it, and I felt they suffered for it. I ended up trying to toss as many enemies off high places as possible, to get rid of them quickly so I could continue with the platforming.
Pemptus on 27/12/2010 at 21:32
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Am I the only person who preferred the combat in Sands of Time? It was simple and I liked how you had to finish enemies with the dagger. The later two in the series just focused too much on combat, made it more complicated and had far more of it, and I felt they suffered for it. I ended up trying to toss as many enemies off high places as possible, to get rid of them quickly so I could continue with the platforming.
I quite liked the combat in PoP 2 and 3 (lots of options to play around with), but I agree that Sands of Time was probably the best. Simple, satisfying and very fluid. Excellent example on how to make combat that flows gracefully without resorting to gazillion combos and special moves.
gunsmoke on 27/12/2010 at 22:28
I tend to avoid games with 'combos'. There are exceptions, but mostly they annoy me.
Muzman on 27/12/2010 at 22:50
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
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.
Thanks, both of you. I might give it a miss for now. I know I won't get anywhere with any in-depth gaming at the moment (I just finally set aside some time to play Zeno Clash right through so I could delete it. Although now I want to play it again)
Has the interface not changed since X2? I played the demo of that back in the day and found it a bit arcane then. Though we may rag on Freelancer's failings I certainly can't go back to "traditional" space sim controls anymore.
Anyway, on a whim I got (
http://store.steampowered.com/app/67000/) The Polynomial; one of those music visualiser/game things. I heard about it before but didn't really see the point until I saw it move, which is frankly bonkers. It's one of the best visualisers I've ever seen. Very accurate and reactive. I haven't really paid much attention to the game yet. You just fly around and shoot at things, collect other things. Not particularly exciting. It gets updated a bit so they might make it better. But I really only got it to play with the knobs, which is the thinly disguised reason for the whole thing. And yes it gets very (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5e0c3Hqyc8) Dude, my, like, cerebellum is cramming the entire universe OMG!
CCCToad on 27/12/2010 at 22:54
What about a game like blazblue: there aren't any scripted "combo" attacks, but the game keeps track of how many consecutive hits are made and it becomes easier for the person being hit to recover as the count goes up?
Chimpy Chompy on 28/12/2010 at 00:34
I preferred the SoT combat but this may be because A I suck and B: the "off the wall" attack is virtually unstoppable so enabled me to get through fights swiftly. I'd have thought people who like detailed fighting controls would regard it as rather simplistic. Depends how important a part of the PoP experience you think fighting should be, I guess. For me it was just brief bursts of unwinding in between the platforming bits.
Koki on 28/12/2010 at 06:59
Quote Posted by CCCToad
What about a game like blazblue: there aren't any scripted "combo" attacks, but the game keeps track of how many consecutive hits are made and it becomes easier for the person being hit to recover as the count goes up?
Name a fighting game with "scripted" combo attacks.
Malleus on 28/12/2010 at 18:25
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
So far I've bought Arma II...
If you mean only the base game, then here's an OA sale too:
(
http://store.steampowered.com/app/33930/)
(-60% if you already own Arma2)
