Just a quick note to say that, starting tomorrow, my annual binge on my other hobby – the Adelaide Fringe Festival – begins. And that means I’ll have precious little time to write anything non-Fringe-related, let alone play any games!
Please stay subscribed & keep reading – I’ll only be gone a month or so, and (if you were, like, really desperate for something to do) you can follow my exploits on my other blog, Festival Freak.
(It’s OK, I’m not a Street Fighter fan anyway ;)
A return visit by my UK friends led to a rather drunken flurry of gaming on Monday night – the Resident Evil 5 demo, the R-Type Dimensions demo, Ikaruga, Dash of Destruction, and EDF 2017 all got a look in.
My gaming pal, Andy – prior to his backpacking odyssey, he was quite the prolific GS accumulator – was keen to check out Resi 5. I’ve never played any of the series, even the “second best game ever” (according to Edge) Resident Evil 4… “survival horror”, as a genre, doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Mostly because I know I’d have trouble actually watching the screen, such is my scaredy-cat nature (I couldn’t play through the demo of Bioshock, remember?) So it was quite a treat to have a Resi fan accompany me as we co-opped the demo levels.
Our opinions couldn’t have been further apart, either – he loved the graphics, I thought it looked depressingly dry and dusty. He loved the action, I felt hamstrung and helpless. He felt immediately at home, I didn’t have the slightest fucking clue what I was doing – though once I figured out how to knife zombies, I was good. For about ten seconds. Before they ate my brains.
Erm… no. Not buying that one.
R-Type Dimensions will also remain unpurchased; I was never really a fan of it in the arcade (though I recall applying plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to get through the bastard on freeplay during a lock-in at the TimeZone around the corner from my old Uni digs). And whilst the XBLA version certainly looks pretty, and plays faithfully, I can’t deal with the psychological weight of it. Christ, Ikaruga‘s bad enough.
Apart from the abovementioned – and a Valentine’s Day bash through Paradise City with my online chums – nothing else really got played this week… except Majora’s Mask. Which, it must be said, has turned into a mechanical sufferance. The Water Temple (or whatever it’s called) has been conquered, all the fairies therein have been captured, and I step-by-stepped a walkthrough to do it. I’m not proud of that, but the sad truth is that I no longer care; I just want that game off my List soon and forever.
Once upon a time, in a generation of computers several orders of magnitude less grunty than those we enjoy now, ran a game called Prince of Persia. Like its predecessor, Karateka, it was stunning in motion and utterly, interminably boring for me to play. Not enough aliens and shooting and monstrous scores, y’see (oh how those words make me feel old now). But when the Prince of Persia franchise was rebooted in 2003 (with The Sands of Time), popular and critical acclaim led me to at least stickybeak into the demo on the Xbox. Looked lovely – still – and had sweet controls, but a rumoured difficulty spike (and a pile of other games on The List) stopped me short of purchase. Later games in the series allegedly detrimentally tinkered with the gameplay mechanic, according to trusted sources, so the franchise dropped off my radar.
And then Ubisoft Montreal announced another entry in the Prince of Persia series. And lo, did the internet have a field day! “The graphics look stupid and kiddy,” said the fictitious xI HardCoreShooter Ix (amongst others). After release, MetaCritic was filled with comments on the lack of difficulty, the fact you couldn’t die, and the broken combat.
And, in a marked change for internet forum fanboys everywhere, they’re all right – but that actually makes the game more appealing to me.
Opening with a suitably broken and abstract movie, The Prince (who is never actually identified as such) emerges from the desert, and plunges into a short and simple tutorial section. Within minutes, you know all that’s required of you – the difficulty curve is pretty flat, and there’s very little to break up the wonderful free-running platforming and occasional combat. Well, three puzzle sections, and the odd stop to chat with your off-sider, but that’s it.
My first glimpse of the protagonist annoyed me, for The Prince’s head scarf is annoyingly off-kilter. That drove me mad. I’m arsed if I know how a poncey, buffed-up thieving Prince could bounce around the place with one eye almost completely covered – surely that would affect his sense of spatial awareness, of balance? It doesn’t seem to bother Our Prince, though, as he hooks up with his hot magical playmate, Elika.
Now, I like female game characters. Really, I do. They don’t all have to look like Vanessa Z Schneider (although some of the Burnout Bikes girls do), but a decent, strong female character is always a treat. And, whilst Elika is easy on the eye, I’m not sure that her character design is what I’d call strong – she readily morphs from flippant to ponderous, flirtatious to prudent. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to her mood – but, given the open manner in which you can tackle the various areas in the game, that’s kind of understandable. And game-engine cutscenes are, generally, far from horrible – though there’s a ton of typical talking-torsos, some of the mouth and eye animation is delightful. I swear I saw a sparkle in Elika’s eye as she flirted, a dullness when she felt glum, and The Prince’s usual cheeky grin loses its edge with dialogue of weight.
And the dialogue… well, it’s a mixed bag. Some of it’s quite wonderful – touching, emotive. Some of it is dire – the “you should buy her a pony” line that pops up early on is, thankfully, not representative of the rest of the game. There’s some common threads – a constant luck-versus-fate debate, and repeated lewd, tongue-in-cheek references to The Prince’s relationship with his donkey. Rarely does the incidental dialogue get annoying – and, indeed, occasionally it generates some corkers. “This isn’t such a bad view,” said The Prince, with Elika’s arse parked just above him as he climbs a fissure. I laughed, then agreed.
As previously mentioned, it’s surprising that the central plot to Prince of Persia seems to have been “acquired” from Bullet Witch – but let’s face it, the story is merely a means to an end here. What we’re here for is platforming and combat – and what we’re given is slick, polished, and gleaming.
The combat is combo-based button mashing, limited to certain areas, and not very frequent. In fact, there’s only really six enemies in the game – four bosses which are tackled six times each, another recurring character, and the soulless soldiers of darkness that guard the paths between levels. Sure, they gradually increase in difficulty over time, but – as mentioned above – the curve is very gentle. And the combos themselves are almost as much as a delight to perform as they are to behold; it’s possible to string together massive links of sword slashes, Elika bashes, jumps, and throws that are pretty bloody impressive to watch. Mistakes are mostly inconsequential; as soon as you’re in perilous danger, Elika magically appears and yanks you to safety.
The platforming is pretty much the same; watching someone else play is like watching a well-choreographed free-running movie, even if the player is in far less danger than they’d think. Initial plays saw me prodding the action buttons with rampant fury, jerking the control stick to and fro in an attempt to keep The Prince on track; acclimatisation leads to the understanding that you can get by with just a tap here, a nudge there. But it really does look impressive, and in many ways is a perfect demonstration of style over substance: the end sequence (with slow-motion fly-bys lighting the monstrous Ahriman in the dark) evokes great exhilaration, even if the danger is largely imagined. There’s another sequence, in the north-east level of The Warrior’s City, that is absolutely stunning – sure, it’s scripted to all hell, and only requires one real decision of timing to succeed. But I’ll be buggered if my heart wasn’t beating like a drum, holding my breath in anticipation, as I pushed through that sequence – brilliant.
At game’s end, you’re offered the choice – leave the world as it is, or destroy it, undoing all your work. And the Achievements encourage you to both consider the emotional weight of the story progression, as well as wreaking carnage; the player winds up fucking the world for those 80 points of GS. Whether intentional or not, it’s an appreciated mental engagement; as is the dialogue of The Concubine (with the only references to The Prince’s… erm, princeliness) and the final fight with The Warrior, flames lighting the arena in an eerie setting to the hulk’s demise.
In fact, more than once the Prince of Persia evoked memories of Ico – which is horribly unfair to both games. Ico is a stone-cold classic, the quality of which Prince of Persia could only dream of attaining; but the fact that those memories were brought forth at all is, I think, a good thing… it means that companies are trying to conjure something better.
Now, I’ve been waxing lyrical about Prince of Persia for awhile now, but I want to make one thing clear: I don’t think this is a brilliant game. That statement may seem contrary to the rest of this post, but I’d like to think I can maintain a critique of the work separate from my enjoyment of it. And, truth be told, Prince of Persia has too many flaws to be truly considered “great”; some of the dialogue is atrocious, and the essentially western characters don’t exactly evoke the feel of Persia (though incidental tunes and the curves & spires of the world do create a mid-eastern feel). A lot of people claim that the combat system is… well, “shit”, but I had no problems with it. Mind you, I neglected pretty much every attack combo button except “X” most of the time.
The second play-through was fantastic – familiar with the levels, I was able to romp through the game in little more than a handful of hours. And it was only then that I figured out the impact of the deflection in combat; boss battles turned from death-filled wars of attrition to simple romps. The initially daunting “Be gentle with her” achievement (awarded for only requiring Elika’s resurrection ability less than 100 times) took just over six hours, and less than thirty deaths.
And I reckon this was the right game for me at the right time. After subjecting myself to N64-era Zelda games for a month, to be blasted by a game of such visual delight (hey, I love the cel-shaded-lite look) was a joy; to feel compelled by such a straightforward collection quest was a surprise. Prince of Persia hit all the right buttons – visually and sonically impressive, above-par writing, a fantastic ending, gettable Achievements, a cheeky adolescent sense of humour, and – with Elika donning the delicious “Farah” skin – some cute white knicker flashes.
And that’s just fine by me.
The week started with my traditional games of Archon on Australia Day – after digging up my Stelladaptor and firing up VICE-64, the first game (playing as Dark) was a little dicey – my usual teleport-the-Basilisk-into-the-backlines technique only yielded a dead Basilisk, a panicked resurrection, and soon thereafter my Shapeshifter went MIA. A war of attrition followed, but exploiting the silly C64 AI yielded a win. Playing as Light was a much more conventional – but no less enjoyable – affair, and Archon once again proved itself a wonderful game.
A fair bit of work has been done on Majora’s Mask in the last fortnight, too – pretty much everything up until the final two dungeons is done, save the Town Shooting Gallery heart-piece (which looks like it will be a Gerudo’s-Archery-level of frustration). All the Mask quests are done and, whilst my attitude to the game has softened somewhat due to the touching nature of the Kafei & Anju side quest, it’s still a bane, still a thorn in my side; I suspect I’ll be finishing Majora’s sometime next month and never touching it again.
Finally, I had some wonderful guests from the UK staying with me over the last couple of days; and, as a “thankyou” for the accommodation amidst their backpacking odyssey, Andy & Jax treated me to a copy of Prince of Persia. Andy and I created a new account on the 360, then started playing with interest – we joked “let’s see how long it’ll take for the first Achievement.” And colour us surprised when the first toast appeared within two minutes, with another handful appearing at regular 2-3 minute intervals. Inside an hour we’d netted over a hundred GS, but at that point we stopped caring – because the spectacle of Prince of Persia is really something to behold.
For starters, it’s gorgeous to look at – the cel-shading-lite is delicious, owing a lot to Crackdown. The audio is lovely, but bemusing – I’m genuinely undecided as to whether the voice acting is brilliant, or shit! Having played a lot more of the optional cutscenes (that provide a lot of backstory to the Prince and Elika) I’m prepared to lean to the former; there’s a lot of humour and sensitivity buried in there, but it’s tempered by the fact that the plot appears to be a rehash of Bullet Witch (and yes, that’d be a spoiler… if anyone had actually played Bullet Witch ;)
So – next week sees more Majora’s and Prince of Persia; realistically, I’m expecting to Complete them in February and March, respectively.