Prince of Persia aka "It's the shit"

If you read some of my other articles in this blog you'll find one dedicated to the Prince of Persia series, in which i'm praising it as one of the new millenium's more worthy game franchises. Well, as it stands, it looks like UbiSoft has joined the LucasArts bandwagon in what i can call either "milking the dead cow strategy" or "the Final Fantasy syndrome". Which basically implies that after a succesful game or series of games, you make another game with the same name, similar setting and mechanics, but completely different storyline and characters. So far, it works: the game takes some of its fame from the previous series, which almost assures great expectations (and big sales at the start), while keeping many of its previous fanbois. Because NOTHING that has "final fantasy" written on it can EVER be bad, amirite boys?
Well, i just finished it (and by "it" i meant the PC version) a few hours ago, and i'm impressed. I'm impressed at what lengths UbiSoft will go to when making a complete shiny failure is involved.
Let's be frank, however: it's not the game that is a complete failure, it's the execution. The game has incredible potential and a very artistic style (that vague reminds me of Suicide Girls), but its casual-friendliness and cracks in immersion ruin it thoroughly.
Let's start at the beginning, though: the story. This game's story is about some guy (who would be twice more mysterious and interesting if the game wouldn't tell us who he is from the bloody title) walking around through the desert storm looking for his donkey, named... Farah. That's a negative point from the start for taking the name of one of the most important and deep characters of the series and giving it to a fuckin' donkey that we never even get to see anyway. Suddenly he falls down a pit, gets hit on the head by a falling rock and accidentally finds an old, deserted kingdom which is on the verge of collapsing to a god of darkness. Well, no. What he finds is a girl who's getting chased by some very cowardly soldiers. So the prince chases the girl to this temple thing where her father slices a tree in half and starts the end of the world, spreading the land with a thing called "corruption" (which i will, from now on, call "shit"). Apparently the tree was a prison for the Dark Lord of the Shit, and now that dark lord is spreading his shit across the land in an attempt to destroy some ancient... things (called Fertile grounds - incidentally, they say the word Fertile about 100 billion times over the course of the game) that once destroyed will allow him to spread shit across the world as well. Utterly coincidental, the girl discovers that she has magic powers of light that allow her to clean up the shit. Well, whaddya know.
So the prince and the girl must now thread through the shit-infested lands, reach the ancient things and clean the shit up. Once they clear an area, strange floating orbs of light called "light seeds" (which i will subsequently call "points") appear and make the girl (which i will subsequently call Elika, because that's her name) feel better. Even more, if you collect (or, more precisely, bump into) lots of points, you can buy yourself a special power with them. And you get to choose this special power out of 4 total. The powers are there only to help you reach areas and you can only use them in special locations marked by different colored plates on walls, and are, in order: jump, jump, fly and run on walls. So your goal will be to run around cleaning up shit, then collect points which will allow you to buy powers to reach more areas where you run around and clean up more shit, and consequently get more points. Once you clean up all the areas in a specific quarter, you get to kill a boss and once you've killed all 4 bosses you get to kill the last boss which will finish the game. Easy.
Now that i'm through with the presentation, let's talk mechanics. The game is similar to the other games, but different. First off, there is no time power. You will never be able to rewind, stop or slow down time in this game (unless the game does it for you for increased dramatic effect). The prince gains some new abilities such as crawling on ceilings (Spider-prince, spider-prince, does whatever a spider-prince does. Can he shoot - from a web? No he can't - he's a prince), climbing on cracks in a wall and sliding down walls with his metal gauntlet that he just happens to have (and you're not supposed to ask why, because the game doesn't talk about that sort of thing).
Add to this the power of having Elika at his disposal at all times, which about doubles his overall effectiveness. First off, he can't die. Whenever he's about to fall into a pit of shit or an abyss, Elika teleports him safely away to the last place where his feet were on solid ground. This instantly replaces the rewind time feature, and makes the game freakishly casual to boot. No longer will we get the satisfaction of seeing the prince being sliced to pieces, bludgeoned to death or going SPLAT against the bottom of the pit. For one, the game doesn't have any sharp obstacles (unless you're one of those people who thinks that shit is sharp), for two, Elika saves you every damn time - even when she's supposedly incapacitated. You even use this "power" to solve a puzzle, for crying out loud.
Second, Elika can throw him around (i.e. a double jump) and the game is designed to make it seem like they're working together. You can even use her as a weapon in combat (suddenly, the awesome thought of bashing an enemy with her comes to mind), but we'll get into that later.
The graphics are grade A, and if it's not a masterpiece anywhere else, then the game truly is a graphical one. The levels are littered with sublime views that will leave your eyes wide open and gently massage your soul. Or something. However, the level design breaks the immersion somewhat. The actual amount of running you do in this game is about 5% of the ground you cover, and the levels are designed to have a way to leave them, and a way to come back. This is where the immersion starts to fail as i seriously doubt that any big old kingdom would have conveniently placed bronze rings that you can get a hold of right after doing a wall run, among other things. The zones are big and outdoor-ish, which is better than what the other PoPs offered us but i can only raise an eyebrow when i see this. I won't comment on the cell-shaded graphics because they never bothered me.
As with any PoP game, there must be combat. This game has combat. Problems are, it's not nearly enough combat, it's impossible to die in combat, it's so easy that you might as well let a monkey play it and most of the times it's over in about 5 seconds. You fight 1, max 2 enemies per level, and sometimes that includes the boss aswell. Let me explain: the combat style and mechanics are solid, and very VERY flashy, with combos out the ass. But when it comes to execution, normal enemies are insta-killed AS SOON AS THEY REACH AN EDGE OR A WALL. Ironically, all your attacks will push the enemy back somewhat, and as soon as they're near a wall/edge the prince instantly plunges his sword in their chests and kills them like the big hero he is. If the prince reaches the edge, the enemies will simply throw him to the other side. If it so happens that the prince takes too much damage, Elika will jump in and "save" him (an act which also restores some of the enemy's health). There's a certain strategy required for some bosses but in all cases it's so easy that you start to wonder what the producers were bloody thinkin'.
Also, there are quick time events. Like any self-respecting next-gen franchise, PoP HAD to copy quick-time events from god of war or whatever. I thanked god that the pseudo-quicktime events from Two Thrones were just that, pseudo, but it looks like Ubi took it to the next... level. Yes, it is very interesting to watch flashy animations on my screen while looking for a button that's supposed to appear and hurrying to press it before it disappears. Not.
As for the characters, the prince is a cross between an angsty teenager and Indiana Jones, and Elika is... well, a cross between bitch, drama queen and sensitive flower. The game tries to make you like her, oh, how it tries. But as much as it tries, it fails horrendously (AVAST YE, MATEYS! SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READIN' IF YER LANDLUBBER ARSE DON'T WANNA BE SPOILT). I checked even the official forums and it confirmed my suspicions. You see, the game ends with Elika dying. And if you wait it out on the end credits, there's a final sequence in which the prince, defying all logic and morality, revives her but destroys all they had worked for so far, releasing His Shittiness upon the world... again. You see, you're supposed to develop such great affection towards her that in the end, you'd even forsake the world to get her back. Here's where the idea fails, because the prince does, BUT YOU DON'T. I did the last sequence reluctantly, while half-searching for a way i could get out of that place and into the desert. I didn't find it, but man did it feel wrong to negate her sacrifice just because i'm some sort of spoiled brat who dun care bout the world -or her duties and what she wanted to do- and simply fucks it all and gets her back. I said i checked the forums: there were fanboi topics saying that the ending affected them deeply, commenting on Elika's humanity and trying to find a reason for the revival, but not one of them said "yeah i liked elika so much that i would have done the same if i was the prince". Because the prince and Elika never share a serious moment of chemistry, because whenever Elika raises a hand, the prince is always lookin' away, because whenever the prince gets sentimental, Elika turns around and acts like a cold-hearted bitch. Everything they do share is smart-ass one-liners, ilke him saying "stop staring at my ass" and her saying "i thought you said it was a donkey". In conclusion, Elika will never reach the standards imposed by characters like Alyx Vance or even the old Farah.
A potentially great game, but one where (in my friend's words) the original developers seemed to be sleeping and the rest of the team quickly hurried to make the game in their absence, and finished it so as to give them a chance to show them how it's done. It's far from a bad game, but not too close to a good one either. If you're an adventure game fan, there's no big reason not to play and finish it other than the annoying hunt for points. Let's hope they wake up next time and design a game that doesn't make you collect stuff just to get it over with.

Apocalypse Evolved: a Fallout rant

No surprise that i'm writing this since Fallout 3 went live several days ago, so i'm gonna cut it short on the intro. This is both a review, and an old gamer's perspective on Fallout 3 versus its predecessor.
Let's chill out a bit and go way back, to the era of games that didn't have million-dollar budgets, when consoles didn't each have their own code and when people made games because they had a passion for it rather than to gain popularity. That was the era in which i started gaming, and the time when i experienced some of the best moments of my life. Let's go back to when a tiny little company called Interplay got it into their heads to make a game about a post-nuclear dystopia where everything was ruined, desecrated and basically fucked up. But they did more than that: they added 2 of the most basic yet defining elements a game can have: violence and humor.
So take a really violent game with lots of humor set in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic universe, and you have something that kinda follows the idea of Fallout. Make that game have one of the best atmospheres, settings and feelings that ever graced the history of gaming and you have Fallout. Now i didn't play the first Fallout, and this is why i won't be talking about it here and now. However, its sequel, Fallout 2, i have finished a total of 4 times and still consider the best game ever made for the PC. Let's get this straight: it was not perfect. It was far from perfect, in fact it had craploads of bugs, the story wasn't the size of Legacy of Kain or even Baldur's Gate, but the game flowed on through all its problems. The bugs were more game-making than game-breaking(well if you saved a lot), to the point where you actually used some of them to have fun. The story was not the best there could be for its setting, but because of that very setting it was perfectly balanced. And the universe sucked you in, it dragged you down to the point that it was no longer a game. It was beyond a game. And that oppinion has been shared by countless people who have waited for a sequel ever since.
Enter Fallout 3. At first, everyone was dismayed that Interplay had dropped its own F3 project, but people continued to hope. Not until the license was brought by Bethesda did people start to fear: fear that Fallout would not in fact be Fallout, but rather a cheap Elder Scrolls copy. But you know what, The Elder Scrolls was a nice series, which proves they aren't totally idiots when it comes to games, and if they keep the Fallout essence intact, there's a nice chance it will be Fallout. So up until i finally got to play it, there was this burning question in my gut: will it, or will it not be Fallout?
So is it a cheap Elder Scrolls copy, in the end? Yes, and no. More like an incredibly well-done Elder Scrolls copy, because it's better than Oblivion, but NOT better than Fallout.
Let's start with the basics of what makes Fallout Fallout: mechanics. I think everyone who's played Fallout 1 or 2 remembers the interface's ease of use (when you mastered it) and the useful, fun options you had to customize your char. Well, how about Fallout 3? I can't possibly explain this without writing a wall of text so let's make a list.
Fallout 2:

1. Skills can be raised up to 300% and get more expensive to raise starting at 100%
   
2. Skills can be used frequently in a variety of unconventional situations
3. Tag skills get raised twice as fast and a tag increases the base skill by 20 points.
4. Background traits can drastically modify the way you play
5. Each point in a stat contributes to a very important aspect
6. Perks are gained once every 3 levels (by default) and offer unique, powerful and game-changing bonuses
7. There is no maximum level, and you can still play the game as you like after finishing the main quest
8. Weapons/armor don't degrade, and you can get your own travelling "stash" in the form of a car.
   

Fallout 3:

1. Skills can be raised to 100, after that, fuck you.
2. Skills are rarely used in dialogue, and very rarely used outside of dialogue with the exception of using them exactly for what they're supposed to do. If Fallout 3 was Fallout 2, you could not repair the well in the first village.
3. Tag skills are a 15 point bonus for that particular skill and nothing else.
4. Background traits do not exist
5. Each point in a stat gives a measly contribution to 2 or 3 skills and a non-skill feature (like weight limit)
   
6. Perks are gained every level and 90% of them offer either a skill bonus, stat bonus, exp bonus, more dialogue options, accuracy bonus, money bonus, damage bonus (both situational and usual), action point bonus or a combination/variation of the above. The only truly unique perk is Explorer, but getting that means throwing away other good perks.
7. The maximum level is 20 and it's only attainable if you stray far, far away from the main quest for a long time and no apparent reason. After the game ends, you can go fuck yourself because you're not going back, no matter what ending you chose.
8. Weapons break themselves like you were hammering them with a super sledge instead of pulling a trigger. Not much different from Oblivion, that is. This wouldn't be so bad if you didn't need copies of the same weapon to repair them. The car is gone, replaced by Oblivion's fast travel. Surprisingly, fast travel doesn't have a fucking trunk.

There are lots more i could add, but we're talking about game mechanics here. Bethesda has changed Fallout's skill and stat system to a state which would have been unrecognisable if the game didn't throw the word S.P.E.C.I.A.L. on our heads every fucking time, and if the game didn't make use of the same names for perks/skills. Which leads me to the next bit: if you ever play F3 after F2, you'll clearly see that Bethesda has tried hard to keep the Fallout humor and atmosphere. Sometimes, i think, too hard. First off, F2 never told us anything about SPECIAL, i remember discovering that the stats make up that word by myself. Second, some things seem exaggerated. For instance, the sound. Fallout 1 and 2 each had (if i'm not mistaken) ONE single old-school Jazz song attached to them. One GOOD song, which made sense in their given setting and were right on the spot where they should have been: the intro. In Fallout 3, you can choose to listen to a radio station that plays a crapload of these songs. And while i've been watching the Fallout 2 intro over and over just to listen to Armstrong's "a kiss to build a dream on" one more time, there's only SO many raiders i can kill while i'm "hackin' and whackin' and smackin'". So eventually i really feel the need to turn that shit off because it actually cripples the atmosphere instead of making it more integrating. And that's just an example... there's vaults everywhere, you use the same drugs (even though Jet was invented by the Mordino family far away on the west coast), but it just doesn't do it as good as Fallout did.
Then there's VATS. Vault-tec Automated blah blah. Basically, a very cheap re-enactment of the old turn-based action-point-based system. It's overpowered enough to make you use it (how i was able to shoot a gun 16 fucking times with pinpoint accuracy in what could qualify as half a second is beyond me), it feels awkward, it looks awkward, and it pretty much takes you away from the FPS experience and into the RPG. It completely eliminates all idea of tactics and using your action points in a smart way, making the game a "click the body part and shoot" thing, but at least it's entertaining in the form of violent slow-motion deaths.
I remember one particular pattern i used to follow in Oblivion: ride around, find dungeon, enter dungeon, kill everything in dungeon, loot dungeon, exit dungeon, find more dungeon. Then i played Fallout 3: walk around, find dungeon (cave/factory/office building), enter dungeon, kill everything in dungeon, loot dungeon, exit dungeon, find more dungeon. To the point where it's becoming pretty clear that they only put those dungeons there to extend the playtime. There's only 3 vaults of any significance in this game, the 3-4 remaining ones don't have any story to them and aren't related to the main story in ANY way. Sure, one is full of clones while the other is messing with your brain but overall it's just the same sequence i outlined earlier.
Which makes it kinda sad since that was the element that alienated me from Oblivion in the first place, and it's coincidentally also why i got bored of Mass Effect. Are people losing inspiration so much that they have to take simplistic MMORPG elements (aka the dungeon with no soul) and insert them into single player games as a way of extending playtime? Well, wake the fuck up and stop calling yourself game designers. Get a new name, like FAIL designers.
Ok, i've nitpicked the bad parts of the game long enough, and i think we can all agree that it ain't Fallout by now. Yet the fact that it ain't Fallout doesn't mean it can't be a good game, all things considered. Let's start with the obvious: the game is gorgeous. I've looked closely at the details and they've recreated the game pretty close to its predecessor. The first-person view is fine when you get used to it, and it doesn't obstruct the morbid beauty of the Wasteland. The soundtrack is good despite what i said about the old songs (well, as good as depressing music can get, i guess). The dialogue is nothing compared to Fallout 2, but it's vastly improved over Oblivion, as is much of the storyline and many of the quests. I finished the game, but reloaded and went back into the waste to see what i've missed, and i'm still not bored with it yet. At one point while i was exploding ghoul heads with my shitgun, i suddenly realised something: i was actually having fun. And i had as much fun during the robot sequence near the end of the game: you know what i'm talking about if you got there, and i dare say it's one of the most exhilarating experiences ever felt in gaming. So as non-fallout as it is, the game will still be worth a shot, especially if you have no idea what fallout is and/or played fallout but didn't like it (in which case i welcome you to the museum of rare people). So that's mostly it... i hope they don't decide to push the franchise further because i really don't want a Fallout 4 now. And if they do make Fallout 4, then let it be this. Take a look at it and see what the true Fallout 3 looked like. This, with all its ancient and fucked up graphics, is Fallout.
And despite what's happened to the game, it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. Fallout, no matter what happens, will still live on in our hearts and in our minds as the game that gave us one of the best adventures in gaming. Because even if Fallout itself may change, we all know war... war never changes.

A Challenge

Still ... if i`m thinking about a challenge ... there`s no point in NOT to add a little review here about the most challenging game i ever played : Devil May Cry 3 : Dante`s Awakening - The PC version of course :)

DMC3 can be easily described as a Hack&Slash game, with tons of monsters to kill, some interesting bosses and the occasional puzzles to progress. To put it simple : Dante has to pass through a series of missions ( which are nothing more than levels ). At the end of each mission the player has to face his ranking, the players performance is ranked from D ( lowest ) to S or SS (the biggest). The rank is based on the orbs collected during the mission, the red orbs (currency used to buy items or to increase weapon/attack levels ), the time taken to finish the mission, the damage taken and the items used and stylish points. The stylish points are gained during combat by performing a series of unfuckingbroken combos on the nearby enemies. This is where the cool part starts ... thought it`s an action game and Dante has to be pretty aggressive to get from point A to point B .. you must have at least one tactic when fighting ... because not all the enemies will fight the same and surely you can`t expect to finish a level using the same attack. When attacking a stylish meter will appear on the screen, if you want it to grow from Dope to "SSStylish" you`ll have to keep attacking the enemies without taking any damage whatsoever and without repeating the same combo :)
But that was all about the fighting ... After defeating a boss Dante usually gets a new weapon, during the missions Dante may carry two meele weapons and 2 pairs of a ranged type of weapon .. guns to be exact :D. Besides the nice variety of weapons Dante can also choose a fighting style, because i`m way to lazy to type all the shit about the styles here`s a nice quote : Style selection is available at the start of each level, as well as during gameplay at checkpoints. The styles available are: Trickster, for dodging and agility; Swordmaster, with extra abilities for swords and other melee weapons; Gunslinger, which has more techniques for firearms; Royal Guard, which allows the player to repel attacks with a properly-timed button press, and thereby charge energy for retaliation; Quicksilver, which slows down enemies while the character attacks at normal speed; Doppelgänger, creates a shadow double that fights alongside Dante. I personally liked the Swordmaster style, pure hack & slash and a lot of nice effects and style points ;)

I guess this is all just bullshit, bullshit which can be applied to any other hack&slash action game. Devil May Cry had something special (besides the fact that it is the special edition playable on PC ), the more you play, the harder it gets. For example to unlock the HARD difficulty level you had to finish the game (storyline) in the with the "normal" difficulty, and because of the nice variety of weapons,levels and styles ... the game actually becomes replayable. The harder it gets, the stronger my will to play it. When it comes to DMC try not to underestimate the meaning of the word HARD: if at the normal level you encountered dumbass blue projectiles then you can bet you sweet keyboard that at the ultimate "Dante must die" difficulty level that monster will launch those projectiles (which are now homing or i think they are homing - i didn`t really get to watch them closely since every time i had to fight the EMOs shooting them you can be sure that the other mobs nearby had my full attention) a lot faster. Since the game offers a slight chance of boredom DMC has a nice "Bloody Palace" for all those mob killing action loving gamers :D. The Bloody Palace is actually a medium sized arena where mobs just keep spawning at 3 varieties of difficulty leves, as the player desires , but still hard. It`s really hard to get bored of Devil May Cry, even the game`s soundtracks can make you wanna kill something . Also if you finish the game at harder difficulties, besides the bonus features which will be unlocked, at some point you get to play with the evil character in the game, Vergil, Dante`s twin brother. Unlike Dante who kills for fun apparently, Vergil only seeks power, the power of Sparda. Here`s a little history lesson about devils going good: Sparda apparently was a demon who turned against his own kind for the sake of the emo world, sealing the demon world, but by doing so he sealed his mofo demon powers too, thus .. turning into Jesus. 2 more characters appear in this game, it seems that Dante and Vergil aren`t the only two members from a family here, for the first time appearing in the Devil May Cry series Lady also gets sucked into the story, a bit too much even, as Dante has to fight her at some point, Lady trying to be a BOSS ... trying indeed and also Lady`s dad appears giving Dante an unfriendly "invite". While Lady only appears only in some cinematics, Arkham, Lady`s dad tries to get the power of Sparda thinking he`ll turn into Christ or something and also turns Dante, Vergil and Lady against each other. Though as a nutjob he`s pretty tough, appearing a few times as a clown and fights Dante a few times and also appearing as and end game boss as the BLOB, a testicular like boss who, after taking some nice damage, turns into a few dozen sperm like leeches draining Dante`s health. I guess that it`s good to mention stuff like : against the blob Dante and Vergil fight together ... hard to control both at the same time but hey ... they`re brothers :D

DMC leaves me speechless, just thinking about it makes me wanna play it, so .. to end this : combining great action with a nice story about a cool devil somehow growing up you get Devil May Cry 3 : Dante`s Awakening.

Gaming History: Prince of Persia

You're probably wondering what "gaming history" is all about. Well, i'll keep it simple: during the past years, i've been missing on newer games very much because my PC was so crappy that it couldn't even run games which required Pixel Shader 1.0. So now that i got a monster of a PC, i decided to play and finish all the games which i feel i've been missing out on. I started with the PoP series.
Now i haven't been a total stranger to the series, playing a bit of each of them at a friend's house a long time ago, but i didn't quite get to feel the whole of them either. This is changing.
I started with Sands of Time. Most of you probably know the story, since this game isn't a stranger to most people (and if it is, you should be damn well ashamed), so i'll get you the short version: you're a prince who steals an artifact called the Dagger of Time from some conquered kingdom and gets tricked by the vizier to stab it into a huge hourglass (another conquered relic) therefore unleashing madness the likes of which the world has never seen since ol' man Freeman pushed the crystal into the beam back in Half-Life 1. The game(s) is an(are) action platform games, which rely on the main character (the prince) doing spectacular gymnast feats as he maneuvers through destroyed and soon-to-be-destroyed buildings. Most of the puzzles in the game are requiring you to get from point A to point B like this, and if you see a big, missing bridge connecting the entrance and exit from the room, you know full well that you're going to slide along that ledge, jump from it to another ruined ledge, then to a column, then to another column, then to another ledge, then run along the wall jumping at the last moment only to grab hold of a wooden beam you can walk on, then do another 2342847 feats, circling the room 3 times before you get to the other fucking end of the bridge. But that's fine, the puzzles aren't repetitive nor are they boring (to some extent), and the prince's infinite stamina and flawless grabbing of ledges is something you get used to quite fast.
The other part of the game is fighting. Sands of time had a nice, yet relatively simple fighting system in which you can block, do combo attacks, jump on enemies and even jump from walls in powerful lunge attacks. Yet it was flawed because it could be abused. Most enemies could be easily killed by jumping over them and hitting them mid-air (meanwhile, they couldn't hit you because you were a bit out of reach) over and over again, and the ones who were immune to that (swinging their swords at you the moment you wanted to climb them and jump over their shoulder, resulting in you falling and taking damage) were easily killed by another abusable trick: the wall lunge i mentioned earlier. You basically jumped backwards toward the wall, then hit the attack button and it would be an instant 1-shot-kill. Well not really kill, since the enemies just laid on the ground waiting for you to impale them with the dagger of time (getting up again if you didn't), but it was the closest thing to a 1-shot kill you could ever see in PoP. Basically, wall was my friend. When enemies were near, i looked around for the nearest wall and hugged it tighter than druids hugging a tree. The battles are made a bit more complicated by you having a sidekick for more than half of the game, which is an indian princess (or whatever she was) who shoots arrows. And it's a bit difficult in keeping her from dying when she's surrounded by 4 enemies and the only thing little miss Sitting Duck can do is shoot. I mean, i've never seen her dodge or move AN INCH in combat... i guess she's too retarded. Of course, the game also follows a little childish love story with miss sitting duck, resulting in some amusing dialogues here and there, but the end is a bit disappointing for the poor prince since you get to turn back time before the pincess even meets you, thus getting you into the awkward position of being asked who the hell you are after you spent the whole game with her. I kinda like that since it deviates from the whole "good defeats evil, the guy gets the girl, everybody fornicates and the universe is happier" type of endings you usually see in games.
The other bad thing about combat is the targetting system: the game basically chooses your current target (the monster you turn and face) based on who it THINKS you want to hit, and it's not always right, resulting in the situation of trying to finish off a downed mob only to have him get up moments later when you find yourself frantically pressing E on the wrong enemy. A manual targetting system would have fixed that, but there is none.
The special part about the game is the prince's ability to use the dagger of time to do some nice stunts based on manipulating it, such as slowing down time, rewinding time (which you'll find yourself doing very often, since in PoP it's awfully easy to find yourself falling to your doom), getting visions into the future (basically shows you fractions of the prince doing puzzles and jumpin' around), combine slowing time with rapidly teleporting from one monster to the other, killing them (loved this one) and a big, stupid AoE attack which i don't quite get: how the hell do you make sand "explode"? But i guess it HAD to be there, action platform games with intense combat sequences wouldn't be complete without a big area of effect explosion after all.
Finishing Sands of Time, i couldn't wait to move on to the next one on the series, thinking it would solve lots of problems and knowing the combat system to be better and improved.
So i ventured into Warrior Within, only to put on my "wtf" face when i found a completely different atmosphere from the other game. Whereas Sands of Time was mostly childish and non-dramatic (except in some cases), Warrior Within was... well the opposite. The prince dyes his hair black (either that or his hair starts growing as black as fucking tar), puts on black leather clothes, adopts a "i wanna kill you right now" type of look in his eyes, starts cursing and turns into the most determined motherfucker this side of Faerun. Basically, whoever opened the sands of time is supposed to die, but the prince turned back time before the sands were opened, so he didn't die. But he's still supposed to die. So now a huge, invulnerable, ugly... thing (see right) chases him around and tries to make him meet his destiny. So the prince goes to the island where the sands were first created in an attempt to... honestly i don't know what he meant to find there, the place was obviously deserted. But still, he's in luck as his ship gets sunk by some bitch (pretty much the biggest whore-antagonist you'll ever see) and he follows her trough some time-portal going back before the sands were created.
First thing that i liked was the music. Warrior Within has one of the best soundtracks ever made for a game, hands down. The music fits the atmosphere perfectly, the songs comprising almost entirely of heavy-rythm rock songs, most of which are bad-ass. Hell, while the big bad black ugly thing (game calls it the Dahaka) is chasing you, you can even hear the instrumental of I Stand Alone, by Godsmack, and all the other songs are similar to it too.
Moving on... well, the combat system was improved, i.e. it had more combos and animations built into it. I had faith that Ubisoft would learn from their past mistakes... but they didn't. The targeting system was the same, the enemies still would attack you when they weren't supposed to (did i mention that?), and the number of times you would die just because you had bad luck was still the same. Well maybe the number of nice combat moves and stuff makes up for it... barely. They removed the visions and the slow time + teleport maneuver (why?), introducing a gay-er version of it (i.e. you turned into a sword-machinegun while your enemies stood still), the sand bomb is still there though, and it's improved too.
The difficulty curve on this one was pretty rough for me, as i was at one point supposed to activate two towers which were full levels in their own right, so i chose a random one of the two and ended up choosing the HARDER (the game never tells you the sequence in which you're supposed to do them), and after much sweat and annoyance in finishing that level, i found the other tower to be easy as piss.
The bosses are a little bit harder here, and the game even has 2 endings, one being available only if you got all the secret health powerups. Speaking of health, i found it pretty dumb to not have any health items in the game, or even more spots with water (your normal healing point), sometimes finding myself with only 3 enemies until i hit the next save point but only 10% health left (save points are 90% of the spots in this game where you get full health). This made the game feel more like survival than fun, instead of "choosing my own combat style" (like ubisoft bragged in one of their movies), i had to choose the one which killed the enemies with the least damage to me (usually being the "jump-over" technique from PoP1). I still hoped this would be remedied in the next game.
About 3/4 though the game, the prince turns into a ragged Raziel-like creature called a Sand Wraith, in one last attempt to change his fate. Doing that makes sand regenerate (sand being the ammunition for the time feats you can make), but health drops at a steady pace. Needless to say, i usually spent 1/4 of the way from save point to the other save point with 5% health (the minimum hp at which the health ceases to degenerate while in sand wraith mode), due to the fact that i actually had to spend time planning a route through the thick layer of traps and puzzles. The game was finished in a bit of a rush, since i really didn't have the patience to go through the huge number of traps and just wished it would be over sooner. Still, overall the nice soundtrack, the storyline, the main antagonist (did i mention she was also a chick) and the moments when the combat was pretty cool outweighed the bad parts, and the overlooked flaws.
Finally, The Two Thrones. This time, the prince puts on some white(r) clothes and stops being so pissed off at the world. He's got the chick, he didn't die, the Dahaka stopped chasing after him, and...
And his whole kingdom is being raped by a merciless army of armored goons at the command of the Vizier, who was now alive since the prince prevented the making of the sands of time back in the second game. So the Vizier takes his kingdom, and soon manages (by a weird coincidence) to take his girl as well. And he throws the prince off a cliff. But hey, at least the prince gets the dagger of time back.
Well all this screwing around with the poor prince can't possibly have a good impact on him, so he develops... a double personality, which talks to you through the whole game. And with this, he also becomes some sort of sand monster which is like the Return of the Sand Wraith, but even more annoying: your health decreases like crazy, you kill enemies like you were a hot knife and they were butter, sand replenishes your life (coincidentally, most enemies you kill will leave a drop of sand behind, giving you full hp), you die if you wait too long, and whenever you see water, you turn back into the prince again (turning into the sand monster guy seems to happen only in fortunate circumstances, when you can benefit from his chain-swinging abilities). Somewhere around here is a picture of him, courtesy of google.
Now Two Thrones introduces a new combat system, named Speed Kill. Basically it tries to introduce some stealth into the game by sneaking up on enemies and killing them with a sequence in which you need to click the mouse button at certain (short) periods of time. If you miss one, the enemy suddenly kicks you off or something. This also introduces positioning, as you will need to jump some more ledges before you place yourself behind and above an unsuspecting enemy, in order to initiate a speed kill. It's fun, and a nice touch, but the combat system STILL is as flawed as the other games. Still no manual target. Still abusable, perhaps even more abusable as now most enemies will not resist the jump-on technique. So you basically do that 20 times, and voila, dead enemies. To not get bored, might as well do some 2-weapon combos in the meantime.
The fights get outright stupid at the end of the game, when you get the greatest ultimate offhand weapon the world has ever seen and every off-hand swing with that weapon causes instant death to all except the last boss. Speaking of boss fights, they introduced another new element to Two Thrones: boss fights + jumping puzzles. It's not enough that you need to wallrun, jump and swing on poles the whole freakin' game, you need to do that in some boss fights too now. Still, it's surprisingly fun when you do it and position yourself nicely enough to get a speed kill on the boss.
Far from the dramatic moments of the first, Two Thrones has much more depth and many moments where the prince needs to question his thoughts and actions.... obviously enough, he sorts them out in the end, therefore gaining the strength required to defeat the vizier and bla bla bla, we heard it all before. The chick in the second one dies, and you meet the princess whatsherface again. This time you don't need to protect her (thankfully) since you don't really travel at the same height. At the end, we come full-circle to the past, the prince starting to tell his story of how he owned stuff back in Sands of Time (which was narrated by him), therefore giving you that "oh, so that's when he told it" feeling.
Final thought... if you haven't played any of these 3 games, then go and play them. They're not the best you'll ever encounter, but if you want to call yourself a gamer, you should at least go through them once. They offer new experiences (the slow and rewind time features, the speed kill) combined with an interesting story and a pretty acceptable fighting system (did i mention the awesome soundtrack in pop2?) which no true gamer should miss.