S-Rank Blog Post #7: Prince of Persia & X-Men Origins: Wolverine
By Phr4nk0 1 Comments
Here we are again in my rapid succession of 100% completed games. I've been lazy with writing up my blog so we've got two times the excitement in this installment. First it's Prince of Persia, which afforded me a pretty good time. This re-imagening of the Prince of Persia series is running on an updated version of the engine used in Assassins Creed, combined with the "Illustration Style" graphics (which is pretty much just a fancy name for Cel-Shading) which results in a smooth controlled and pretty looking game. There's a new Prince, who isn't even a prince as far as I know, and a new Princess, Elika, with fancy magical powers.
The "Prince" is actually on his way home with a bunch of treasure he probably pilfered from a someones tomb, when a big sandstorm hits and is seperated from his donkey (which was carrying his epic loot). He ends up stumbling into a major power struggle with a evil God and has to put things right through lots of jumping, climbing, swinging and other means of traversal mixed in with some light puzzle solving and duels with some powerful creatures all while reminiscing about the sweet purps he lost from his Tomb Raid-ing.
Unlike the previous Prince of Persia games the combat in here is always 1 on 1 and is very combo based. The previous trilogy was mostly crowd control and slogging bunches of dudes with big swings of your blade, here we have to be a bit more precise. The combat's enjoyable, you can do normal attacks, air attacks, magic, agility and grapple types of combos and combo different types of combos into each other... combo combo combo. For instance you'd normally start of with a normal combo attack of 3 or so moves, before rolling into a magic combo, then into a grapple and finishing with a few air attacks. It's a pretty good system which isn't used all that much in the game, because like a mentioned before the focus is on traversal here, with only a few one on one battles popping up now and then.
Also keeping it fresh is the different enemies you'll come up against usually have an immunity or are able to counter a type of attack. It forces you to change up your go to combos and keeps things fresh. I thought that some of the achievements would require another playthrough but apparently some of the harder ones like Be gentle with her (which is supposed to require you to die less than 100 times) are glitched as of an update to unlock no mater how many times you died. I suppose it's a testiment to the quality of the game that upon finishing it I was actually a little dissapointed to be moving on. There is a DLC Epilogue that picks up right from where the game ended which is slightly different in tone but pretty much just as enjoyable as the main game.
The game is light hearted, and relaxing. It's not too demanding but at the same time not boring and doesn't feel easy because what you're doing (exploring and collecting orbs mostly) isn't that competitive. The graphics look superb and the art style makes everything look like a painting. The only downside is that when nearing the end the game decides to try and ramp up the difficulty a little by requiring you to use the different magical abilities you've been giving Elika, but this actually turns it into more of a Quick Time Event with the Prince flipping out all over the place on the screen but all you're doing is hitting a certain button when the next seal comes up. As a result I would say I liked the earlier half of the game more than the latter, but don't let that influence you into thinking the latter half is bad.
Ok, Achievement paragraph to sum up Prince of Persia... This is one of those games where the graphic designer just couldn't be bothered because all of the achievement icons are the same blue firey orb. I obtained all the achievements in 1 playthrough, there is a lot of orb collecting in this game, so if you're against collectables or something this game probably isn't for you. The good thing is that they are all very findable and I actually enjoyed searching them out, then figuring out how to get to some of the harder ones. I got all 1001 orbs without the help of any guide or walkthrough. I had to start a new game and quickly play through about an hour or so of it to get the last achievement or two I needed but appart from that, it's a fairly easy and very enjoyable 1000. The DLC is harder in regards to the achievements and the platforming, but by the time you've played through the game you'll be more than ready for it. The collectables in the DLC are hidden far better and I had to use a video walkthrough to grab them but don't worry, unlike the 1001 orbs in the main game there's only 10 paintings you have to wall run over here. You'll reach 1250 in no time.
So time to move on to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Here's another example of a Beat 'Em Up done right. Wolverine has character progression with leveling up, putting experience points in to health, damage, special moves etc. Also you're able to equip different Mutagens which buff different stats (like health regeneration) and you also get experienced at fighting different enemies, ie the more dual machete weilding lunatics you kill the more damage you do against the next ones you meet. You have a bunch of moves at your disposal but most of all, the one thing that makes this game actually pretty damn good is the gore. But first a little something about Wolverine incase you've been living under a rock.
If you don't know much about Wolverine, he is a mutant with accelerated healing powers. Depending on different sources (Movies, comics, videogames) he heals at different rates, from a day or so to seconds and everything in between. According to a loading screen in game Wolverine was once ripped in half by The Hulk and he regenerated from that so the dude's one tough mother. He also has a set of bone claws the erupt from inbetween his knuckles. Because of all this the military saw potential and experimented on him by injecting and coating his bones with Adamantium, which is apparently some pretty much indestructable metal. Obviously this would have killed anyone else but his healing powers allow him to survive and it's turned him into basically a more agile, more angry Terminator then poor Arnie could ever hope to be. Wolverine vs Terminator? Wolverine wins no doubt.
Now onto the gore... you may think that that's not something that really makes a game good, but think about it for a second. He's nearly indestructable, pissed off with 6 massive razor sharp claws throwing himself against an army of guys with guns, grenades and more. I was worried this would be based off the movie, PG rated for the masses crap, but I was assured otherwise and it's true. Unlike so many of the Star Wars games with Jedi fighting people with their light-battons, bludgeoning Stormtroopers to death (Force Unleashed I'm looking at you) Marvel's had the balls to do what Lucas Arts can't, and be true to their character.
Wolverine is a dude that can take crazy amounts of damage, because of his accelerated healing. Dude gets impaled on a spike, only to pull himself off with a giant gaping hole through the middle of his chest, you can see the ends of shiney ribs and all sorts of gruesome shit through there, not to mention the enemy about to try and put a machete through your head coming up from behind. He gets caught in explosions and has half his face blown off, showing his adamantium plated skull. Then as you're fighting and walking around you see him starting to heal and his wounds close up, his face grows back, it looks awesome.
Meanwhile your eviscerating guys with your claws, cutting arms and legs off in a flurry of adamantium and blood. You can grab guys and insta-kill them which looks similarly brutal or throw them out of windows or impaling them on the nearest tree branch/spike/statue. If you're making a beat em up these days, it needs to be stylish, brutal and intense. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers. In the end it's a beat em up, they reached the pinnacle of beat em up design in the mid 80's, you'll know if this style of game appeals to you or not. It's a damn good beat em up though so if you like them check this one out (maybe Afro Samurai too, I have an earlier blog about it.)
Under all this gore is a great game, good combat with some new twists. The lunge move is particularly badass, Wolverine will just lunge 10 meters or more claws first into some dude like a tiger on steroids.The graphics are nice, although I did suffer some frame rate drops here and there when activating a special move in the middle of 10 or more enemies sometimes. The story is cool, it's basically everything you'd want out of a Wolverine game.
Achievement wise there are some cool ones to go for here (set 20 on fire, impale 25, kill 25 with their own weapon etc) You will have to playthrough the game twice (once to unlock the harder difficulty) and a few achievements require some minor grinding (2 or 3 hours was all I needed to finish off the achievements I hadn't got during my playthroughs). All in all another enjoyable and while I wouldn't say easy, it's a very doable 1000.
That's my two game conquests since last time. I hit 100 000 gamerscore since my last blog so yay me! The long road to 200 000 awaits. I also managed to scrape together some dough and got a Kinect. I've been playing Kinect Adventures and it does a great job of showcasing the Kinect and what it can do. I've watched a lot of videos with people showing off the Kinect and it always looks to be lagging a lot but during my time with it the lag seems to be a lot less, hardly noticable so far. I'm actually very impressed with how good it actually works. With that said I don't see any 'hardcore' games utilising it too much. Maybe some creative type can come up with a new IP, from the ground up, that blows everyone away but tacking normal controls to kinect movements is never going to work.
I did have one good idea though... remember back in the day shooters used to let you lean. Well maybe they still do, but I can't remember the last time I utilized a lean. I realised this when I booted up Call of Duty Classic today, it has a lean. You have to use the D-pad to lean which is unruly, and not very practical, however utilizing the Kinect and leaning over a bit on the couch would not only be pretty useful but could help the immersion aswell. It wouldn't be out of most gamers comfort zones to lean left or right a little would it, and you would still be sitting on the couch with a controller in hand. So basically head tracking is about the only thing I could see the Kinect adding to the more traditional 'hardcore' game.
Kinect has had me sweating my ass off though, it really makes you move around. My goal of total completion will no doubt include hours of kinect time to here's hoping some weight loss comes from it. That's all for now, this long ass, two in one blog post has gone on for long enough. I think I'll jump into some more Kinect Adventures and make a fool of myself some more. Until next time!