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Prince of Persia 2 On Store Shelves
The second game in the revival of the Prince of Persia series has made it to store shelves. Gamespot has a review available on the recently released hack and slash puzzle game. From the article: "while Warrior Within's new combat and satisfyingly long campaign improve on last year's game, the now darker tone falls somewhat flat compared to the storybook atmosphere in The Sands of Time."
PA has a great review of PoP:WW, and a really funny comic on this.
comic
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Prince Of Persia 2 was released about 10 years ago, it was a great game but it's a bit late to announce its release on slashdot.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
The original Prince of Persia game was released back in 1990 and was one of the greatest games of all times. It featured THE best character animation to date. Good times, good times.
There was the original Prince Of Persia, its sequel Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow and The Flame with better graphics, Prince Of Persia 3D, Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time and the finally the new one Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Why is this game referred to as Prince of Persia 2? The actual Prince of Persia 2 (The Shadow and the Flame) was released in 1993.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
OMG SERIOUSLY. ;D
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
how long has the torrent been out for?
I was actually really disappointed by this game... The combat is repetitive, and well, there is too much of it! The thing that I liked about Sands of Time was that there were so MANY cool rooms to try and navigate, and there was combat to give me a rest from the puzzle based rooms (very balanced if you ask me). Also, the 'banter' from the characters in the game during combat made my ears want to bleed.... Speaking of which, what's with the new prince, the prince from the first was a likable character, this prince seems like an angst ridden cliché... Anyone else feel this way?
I am full of goo... black evil goo
Ubisoft, in their rush to get the big numbers on the end of fourth quarter conference call, pushed out a number of A-rate titles in 2003 like PoP and Beyond Good & Evil in the midst of an extremely competitive season. Because these were neither well known franchises or sequels, none sold comparatively well.
So what does Ubisoft do? Instead of admitting that their mistake was not in game design but in scheduling, they push their Quebec developer to redesign the game. This time, in Warrior Within, combat is the focus, not puzzles. The Prince is no longer naive, he's pissed at, presumably, something. Nix the tasteful ethereal mid eastern fuze guitar rock, sub straight up in your face grind rock. Because that's what the mainstream wants. Jagged. Edgy. Rough. Mean. GTA.
Warrior Within is an excellent example of a company trying too hard to cater to this mythical "mainstream." But the best games are ones that pioneer game design, not play to the crowd. That's not to say that Sands of Time was the most creative thing since the invention of paper-rock-scissors, but rather that Sands didn't have focus groups dictating its design. Warrior Within obviously does, and it suffers for it. The reason for Sands' poor sales had nothing to do with gameplay, and everything to do with timing. This isn't surprising. Release something like the Sims, and instead of everyone emulating the creativity of the Sims, they emulate the gameplay.
And it's happening again. I loved Sands of Time. But from what I've read of Warrior, it's not good enough for me to spend money on it right now when there are literally half a dozen must-own titles out right now. Even with their insistence of game redesign, I still would've picked Warrior up if they'd released it more strategically. The movie industry has learned that you don't stack it your Matrix on the same weekend as Phantom Menace, even if it is a better movie. You bide your time, and release your good stuff when there's room to breathe.
That was, like, almost insightful.
That is, until I noticed you hadn't actually played it yet...
Indeed Prince of Persia: Arabia Nights was not originally titled as an official sequel in the series.
However, the game from the start was heavily inspired by Tomb Raider, which in turn is little more than a 3D iteration of the classic Prince of Persia game series. Then the publisher sought to license the PoP name for the game as the material was so very similiar. These coupled with the fact that the development team imagined this as a sequel and designed it as so makes it quite close to being as real a sequel as possible without actually involving the original development crew.
That, and it's (if you'll pardon the puns) leaps and bounds better than Prince of Persia 3D though somewhat more difficult.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
I bought it. I (mostly) regret it. It's still got the game that I loved in SoT in it, but it's buried in a heap of garbage. Well, maybe not 'garbage', but it's certainly at least hidden under a pile of dirty laundry.
... I plan on finishing it, because despite all the crap, it's *still* got the core cameplay that I really liked in SoT. I like the new elements that they've added to the platforming portion of the game -- the tapestries, the new ropes, new types of switches and such. But why oh why did they have to screw it up so bad? It's like a Snickers bar that's coated in mud rather than chocolate -- the stuff inside is still good, but you have to *really* convince yourself that you want it.
I like how the opening sequence had a solid 5-second full-screen ass shot. I wonder what focus group thought that'd be tasteful?
I mean, I can certainly *see* where the same talent that worked on SoT went. The art is very well done, the music is well done, the story is sorta well done, but it's all SO GODDAMN GENERIC that is's a huge turnoff.
I'm not one that usually cares that much about a game's story, so long as the game itself is fun, but SoT had an *excellent* story with a clever twist at the end. (One of the best endings I've ever seen, IMO) I actually cared about the characters right away, even though the prince was a reckless hothead -- the narration made you actually like the guy. Warrior Within, though? Story is crap. Writing is crap. Cliches abound -- "Your task is impossible! You cannot escape your fate!", "You bitch!", and that's just in the first 45 minutes or so that I've been able to stomach.
Swordplay? More like button mashing while you're mobbed by annoying enemies that are faster than you are. I really liked how in the first one, there were the drawn-out battles, followed by a large section of platform navigation/puzzle solving. In this one, you're reminded every 3 or 4 minutes that yes, there are in fact people who want to kill you (for whatever reason). The 'soul shattering' bosses that the back of the box mentions have so far been thoughtless "I'll hold block for 15 seconds until there's an opening, then try to get a few whacks in, then resume blocking." Nevermind that I'm barely into the game and I've already fought one boss twice.
Oh, and speaking of repetition -- what the hell were they thinking when they decided to make you keep revisiting areas? I mean, once you've figured out how to get from point A to point B in a room, doing it over and over again *really* isn't that much fun, it's just time consuming. The marketoids must have read some focus group that the game needs to have X hours of gameplay to be fun and sell well...
I bought it
In a nutshell: The PoP team did an outstanding job realizing the game that the marketing team said they should create. The marketing team did a really shitty job defining the game that PoP team made.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I understand people complaining about the clothing in the game and i think penny-arcades new comment puts it fairly well. Some of the ass shots etc really weren't needed, however i dont see why people complain so much about the "You bitch!" comment. It's not exactly foul language or anything and she did just cut his face, i dont think anyone in his position would have come up with something nice to say back. I dont see how anyone enjoyed the sword fighting in the original game, like i said earlier all you end up doing is using counter attack alot, meaning you block until they almost hit you and then hit e to retrieve them immediately. This one is slightly different admittedly i used counter alot to start with but later on find it doesn't work so well and actually have to use more advanced techniques. The repetition is alittle annoying, however i didn't find that annoying till later in the game rather then doing similar areas in different time periods. The levels themselves are alot more complex and well put together then the ones in SoT, having different paths through the same level depending what time/direction you're going i thought was kinda nice. Also i like the story in this one, it's not told anywhere near as well as in the first one, but thinking about it the first one didn't have the greatest story during the game but the ending twist was just so good it reflects well on the whole game. I think people are complaining too much about this game, so there's a few things people dont like about it but the gameplay is still amazing and worth the money for the game.
I dont see how anyone enjoyed the sword fighting in the original game, like i said earlier all you end up doing is using counter attack alot, meaning you block until they almost hit you and then hit e to retrieve them immediately.
Funny, I played Sands of Time all the way through and hardly used counter attack at all. I basically used the jump slash, on the enemies that didn't pound you for it, and the wall-jump/attack, on those who did.
Of course, that was still pretty repetitive...