Strange Dreams
I was definately having some wierd dreams last night, notably inspired by recent gaming endevors.
To start, I've been playing the 2nd in the recent Prince of Persia games, Warrior Within, which I've only heard poor reviews. In particular, Vinay gave it SCATHING reviews, down playing and critisizing its gameplay, its music, its writing... really, I can't think of anything he had fond words for.
Now, I'm getting close to the end of the game. Frankly, Vinay? You're wrong. Not completely, but you're wrong. POP:WW is a fairly quality title in my opinion. It's not up to the Sands of Time in terms of quality, no. The design has its flaws, sure. But I'd not give it a failing grade. Its design needs work -- considering that the two women who show up in the game give scantily-clad a run for their money. The costume design and style is interesting, but its also far too gratuitous.
One thing that's worth a note is that the game emphasizes combat. When I heard about that, I thought 'Great!' because the first game had really boring combat. It was a matter of learning one or two moves that worked, and then spamming them. The Combo system they developed for Warrior Within is decently smart, but its not perfect -- the enemies themselves are consistantly too tough and several have moves that can do rediculous and near-unpreventable damage (The ninja women come to mind). I find that you get in to combat and often you're stuck there for a while -- quick win or flight tactics aren't always available. However, there are several combat styles that a player can adopt, which is interesting. I'm a big fan of the availability of acrobatics in combat which brings me to another issue.
Context sensitive controls can ONLY GO SO FAR. For anyone who doesn't know, context sensitive controls are where I can press the same button in two situations to do two different things -- thus, more intuitive (normally) and more complicated controlls can be merged for more fluid control. However, if one button combination can potentially perform two maneuvers in the SAME situation, you've got a problem. Case being -- in Warrior Within, if you press X and a direction in combat, you roll. Very good for getting around your enemies strikes and repositioning yourself. But, if you press X and towards an ENEMY, you try to vault over them (which can be followed be various combo hits). This is normally fairly handy, except one of the more common flavors of enemies (the ninja girls again) will knock you down if you try this, then move in for a free strike, which doesn't always hit, so long as you roll out of the way quickly.
When there is one or two enemies, this isn't a problem. But when you're running low on health (because, especially towards the end, save point are farther and farther apart) and you want out of combat, you may not be able to walk out -- you'll have someone perform a quick attack that'll tear you down that last few points. So you roll. But one of those girls is off screen, and she tosses you back in the middle and flays you. It sounds like a rare occurance, but it happens more frequently than I'd like. It's annoying as hell. Now, granted, you could always learn to fight differently, but by the time the habit is formed, you're kinda screwed. It's a problem, though one I'd overlook.
Controls are normally pretty good. The camera does some bad things on occassion -- like switching position without warning during the middle of a chase sequence. That killed me on more than on occasion, but only because a sudden change of camera is also an alarm to me that the situation has suddenly changed and I react to nothing. (The biggest of which is being chased during a wall-run towards a rope. So long as you don't jump off the wall or stop running, you'll be safe, but my instinct is to jump when the camera changes.)
The only other significant complaint I could make is about the contrast -- the game is dark, litterally. It's very difficult to see what's going on in several of the areas, it's just too dark. I've taken to playing the game in the dark with my blinds pulled so that it doesn't get any more washed out than it needs to be.
But really, the issues I've had with the game have been... fairly trivial. Frustrating at most. I can forgive a lot of them because they are problems that conflict minorly on the point of where form and function cross over.
What I do quite like is the story. It's not complicated -- I've second guessed it accurrately from the start -- but it's still well written. The Prince is really overwhelmed and it comes through in his character. It falls in to line with the small handful of games that actually have exceptionally good voice acting, and it's very rare that it shows something in a cinematic that can't otherwise be done in the game. The areas are a bit linear, but less so than the first game, (which was actually a problem early on. Before I knew what I was doing, I ran around in circles for a while.)
Overall? I think the game earns a B, or maybe a B+. It's quite good, even if it's not as well put together as the first. I'm looking forwards to finishing it and seeing the third.
Oh, and I object to the mini-cinematic at the start which has the express purpose of having the Prince yell 'Bitch!'... it was uncalled for.
Anyhow, as I mentioned, I had a very unusual dream last night -- it was something of a restless night, so that might be why. It was me, and a group of people, modern setting in something of a fantastic abstraction of Toronto, or some metropolitan center, but with enormous buildings and a huge, sprawling landscape. The angle was extremely cinematic. The beginning was blurry... all I recall were plants that somehow (virus, I think) gained a small ammount of mobility and became predatory. It was like, weeds and shrubs at first, but as they consumed animals, the animals were sorta plant-zombified, they took a green tinge, then began to hunt down other animals for the plants.
The problem escelated from a bizzare natural occurance to a disaterous epidemic as people began getting infected. A small group of people stuck with me, some were people I know, like Kris, some were presumbably invented or adopted from other places. We were trying to find a way to safety, nothing more, which lead us to this odd bar/lounge that we knew of with a secured back room. The room was sort of like a luxury bomb shelter (though it was dozens of floors off the ground, in some larger building) and it was stocked and furnashed. We also learned that there were more rooms like this particular one around the city which also offered the unique ability to swap places, sorta like teleporting the whole room together. We later had to make use of that ability when zombies broke through the barriers, though there was an epic confrontation. Since they aren't like Day of the Dead zombies that only have to bite you to zombify you, we could safely fight them in hand to hand -- I recall finishing one off by throwing it in to a glass window, where he then exploded in to a green misty smoke.
Anyhow, I can't recall to many more details, only that as the story continued we became more haggard and our numbers dwindled. Then at some point, the survivors got separated, and then it blurs out again and it's morning in the real world.
So yeah, wierd dreams.
- Kagirinai
To start, I've been playing the 2nd in the recent Prince of Persia games, Warrior Within, which I've only heard poor reviews. In particular, Vinay gave it SCATHING reviews, down playing and critisizing its gameplay, its music, its writing... really, I can't think of anything he had fond words for.
Now, I'm getting close to the end of the game. Frankly, Vinay? You're wrong. Not completely, but you're wrong. POP:WW is a fairly quality title in my opinion. It's not up to the Sands of Time in terms of quality, no. The design has its flaws, sure. But I'd not give it a failing grade. Its design needs work -- considering that the two women who show up in the game give scantily-clad a run for their money. The costume design and style is interesting, but its also far too gratuitous.
One thing that's worth a note is that the game emphasizes combat. When I heard about that, I thought 'Great!' because the first game had really boring combat. It was a matter of learning one or two moves that worked, and then spamming them. The Combo system they developed for Warrior Within is decently smart, but its not perfect -- the enemies themselves are consistantly too tough and several have moves that can do rediculous and near-unpreventable damage (The ninja women come to mind). I find that you get in to combat and often you're stuck there for a while -- quick win or flight tactics aren't always available. However, there are several combat styles that a player can adopt, which is interesting. I'm a big fan of the availability of acrobatics in combat which brings me to another issue.
Context sensitive controls can ONLY GO SO FAR. For anyone who doesn't know, context sensitive controls are where I can press the same button in two situations to do two different things -- thus, more intuitive (normally) and more complicated controlls can be merged for more fluid control. However, if one button combination can potentially perform two maneuvers in the SAME situation, you've got a problem. Case being -- in Warrior Within, if you press X and a direction in combat, you roll. Very good for getting around your enemies strikes and repositioning yourself. But, if you press X and towards an ENEMY, you try to vault over them (which can be followed be various combo hits). This is normally fairly handy, except one of the more common flavors of enemies (the ninja girls again) will knock you down if you try this, then move in for a free strike, which doesn't always hit, so long as you roll out of the way quickly.
When there is one or two enemies, this isn't a problem. But when you're running low on health (because, especially towards the end, save point are farther and farther apart) and you want out of combat, you may not be able to walk out -- you'll have someone perform a quick attack that'll tear you down that last few points. So you roll. But one of those girls is off screen, and she tosses you back in the middle and flays you. It sounds like a rare occurance, but it happens more frequently than I'd like. It's annoying as hell. Now, granted, you could always learn to fight differently, but by the time the habit is formed, you're kinda screwed. It's a problem, though one I'd overlook.
Controls are normally pretty good. The camera does some bad things on occassion -- like switching position without warning during the middle of a chase sequence. That killed me on more than on occasion, but only because a sudden change of camera is also an alarm to me that the situation has suddenly changed and I react to nothing. (The biggest of which is being chased during a wall-run towards a rope. So long as you don't jump off the wall or stop running, you'll be safe, but my instinct is to jump when the camera changes.)
The only other significant complaint I could make is about the contrast -- the game is dark, litterally. It's very difficult to see what's going on in several of the areas, it's just too dark. I've taken to playing the game in the dark with my blinds pulled so that it doesn't get any more washed out than it needs to be.
But really, the issues I've had with the game have been... fairly trivial. Frustrating at most. I can forgive a lot of them because they are problems that conflict minorly on the point of where form and function cross over.
What I do quite like is the story. It's not complicated -- I've second guessed it accurrately from the start -- but it's still well written. The Prince is really overwhelmed and it comes through in his character. It falls in to line with the small handful of games that actually have exceptionally good voice acting, and it's very rare that it shows something in a cinematic that can't otherwise be done in the game. The areas are a bit linear, but less so than the first game, (which was actually a problem early on. Before I knew what I was doing, I ran around in circles for a while.)
Overall? I think the game earns a B, or maybe a B+. It's quite good, even if it's not as well put together as the first. I'm looking forwards to finishing it and seeing the third.
Oh, and I object to the mini-cinematic at the start which has the express purpose of having the Prince yell 'Bitch!'... it was uncalled for.
Anyhow, as I mentioned, I had a very unusual dream last night -- it was something of a restless night, so that might be why. It was me, and a group of people, modern setting in something of a fantastic abstraction of Toronto, or some metropolitan center, but with enormous buildings and a huge, sprawling landscape. The angle was extremely cinematic. The beginning was blurry... all I recall were plants that somehow (virus, I think) gained a small ammount of mobility and became predatory. It was like, weeds and shrubs at first, but as they consumed animals, the animals were sorta plant-zombified, they took a green tinge, then began to hunt down other animals for the plants.
The problem escelated from a bizzare natural occurance to a disaterous epidemic as people began getting infected. A small group of people stuck with me, some were people I know, like Kris, some were presumbably invented or adopted from other places. We were trying to find a way to safety, nothing more, which lead us to this odd bar/lounge that we knew of with a secured back room. The room was sort of like a luxury bomb shelter (though it was dozens of floors off the ground, in some larger building) and it was stocked and furnashed. We also learned that there were more rooms like this particular one around the city which also offered the unique ability to swap places, sorta like teleporting the whole room together. We later had to make use of that ability when zombies broke through the barriers, though there was an epic confrontation. Since they aren't like Day of the Dead zombies that only have to bite you to zombify you, we could safely fight them in hand to hand -- I recall finishing one off by throwing it in to a glass window, where he then exploded in to a green misty smoke.
Anyhow, I can't recall to many more details, only that as the story continued we became more haggard and our numbers dwindled. Then at some point, the survivors got separated, and then it blurs out again and it's morning in the real world.
So yeah, wierd dreams.
- Kagirinai