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Avoiding Wasted Time With Prince of Persia
Zonk pointed out an interesting video presentation by Shamus Young on the importance of the new Prince of Persia, calling it the most innovative game of 2008. Young brings up the fact that many of today's games punish failure by wasting the player's time; being sent back to a check point, the beginning of a level, or sometimes even further. This cuts into the amount of time players have to enjoy the meat of the game — the current challenge they have to overcome. Unfortunately, as Young notes, modern controllers are designed for players who have been gaming since they were kids, and have evolved to be more complicated to operate than an automobile. The combination of these factors therefore limits or prevents the interest of new players; a problem Prince of Persia has addressed well through intuitive controls and the lack of punitive time sinks.
If you don't repeat the game's content, then how are you supposed to get good at the game? You get killed, you try again, and you get better. If you're not enjoying the challenges that the game is giving, and you spend all of your time composing poorly-thought-out diatribes against the game, then the technical term for your state is "burned out", and you're better off moving to different activities in life other than video games. Trust me, you'll be happier when you're not clicking on a Skinner box.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
avoid the new prince of persia entirely. Well lets not be too harsh I bought the game for several reasons, I loved the recent three installments of the series and I loved the fact it had no DRM.
The good point about this game is that the graphics are amazing, but that is the only good point.
Well not dying is an issue which I personally do not despise because you cannot die but at the same time you do, by being transported back to the last platform or by resetting the boss to the start point.
This is a no issue on the positive or negative side, but that is the last positive I have to say about this overrated boredom.
The reason why I call it despite the load of work which obviously went into the game is following.
The game is more or less the easy version of dragons lair, the entire game mechanics are without thinking just pressing the correct button at the correct time. Gone are the days of having to think your way through the surrounding, gone are the days when it was hard to trigger the right button at the same time. Think of it as a jump and run which forgives everything within a timing of 3-4 seconds and which has almost all the puzzles removed which made the series great!
Add to that the voice acting which seems to be straight out of the Zelda cartoons, gone are the days of having a rather depressive british speaker, and it is replaced with an actor who sounds exactly like the one who seems to have spoken the dreadful zelda cartoons (excuuuse meee princess)
Ok now to the second bad part, the boss battles, dont get it wrong they are boss battles, but the designers tried hard to make the game more like a gods of war and again failed. The reason this time, you constantly have to fight the same bosses again and again, they almost do not change their strategies, so you have to fight for instance the dreaded concubine 5 times at the end of each section, while the first fight is fascinating you want to throw your mouse back into the moonitor the fifth time. No change in pace no change how to fight her, the same lousy in fight jokes nothing new.
Now to the level design, while excellent graphically it bored me seriously to death, they basically used the same 10 different types of background obstacles ad nauseum.
Well the two good points i am not sure if they can hold up against the myriads of bad points the game has to offer. That it still got mid 80 ratings while the far superior Tomb Raider Underworld got 10% less does not really speak for the reviewers nowadays. I personally think while Tomb Raider Underworld has probably the better game mechanics and is a master of environmental puzzles it has some small graphical glitches PoP does not have but it is an excellent game which should be rated way higher than the new PoP.
Overall the new PoP probably is the Asassins Creed of the Prince of Persia while graphically highly impressive, the game behind it is highly boring and repetitive...
Second try Ubisoft second faile with the same engine! Same high ratings of reviewers who probably seem not to get it, that a good game needs more than impressive graphics!
Please UbiSoft do us a favor, hire the old voice actors again and do a decent (non idiot user) remake of Sands of Time with the new engine!
Or get Jordan Mechner back on board, he seems to know how to do a decent Prince of Persia!
You obviously have the talent in programming and some good ideas but you need some serious overhaul in the game design departement!