Slashdot Mirror
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."
Oh, don't be all kidding, be proud! You just managed to sum up what's wrong with video game reviewers(and most of the market).
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
???
prince of persia was highly regarded BECAUSE of the control system, you had to time your shit carefully and know beforehand what you were going to do, not just go blazing forwards sonic style. if it hadn't had the control scheme nobody would have remembered the game - and the newer pop titles would have been titled otherwise(and the setting maybe different too). it wasn't just a platformer, as a jump'n'run it would have sucked, but that's not what it was.
and.. the colors didn't really matter, it was good looking on hercules as well - equally liked by people who had never even seen it in color.
you might have not liked it, but for you there were consoles and their itchy marios.
the original pop has had a fairly succesfull j2me port too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Saying you didn't like playing Sands of Time because of jumping puzzles is sort of like saying you don't like playing FPSes because of all the violence.
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.
I think I'm going to listen to Tycho on this one. He's been pretty lined up with me (which I only find out AFTER the fact) on just about every game that we both have an opinion on this year.
Wish I would have listened when Star Ocean and Tales of Symphonia hadn't taken the place of my hundred bucks...