I sense a theme developing.
By Video_Game_King 19 Comments
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
( I'd tell you what that theme is, but I'll just let you completely ignore this part of the blog so you can figure it out for yourself.) However, for the absolutely none of you loyal readers, I'll just come out and say it: 3D platforming...I think. To be fair, it could also be "video game movies that were half decent." I didn't think this through entirely, but you understand what I mean. First up is a game that gets it right. If you want to know the name, read the damn title. I'm not going to hold your hand throughout this entire blog, probably because there's something in the back of my mind telling me that you're telling me not to like this game. Fuck you, possibly, because this game is awesome!You know what I don't like, though? The Prince. First off, he has an airy British accent. That may sound kinda petty, but keep in mind that he's in medieval Persia (the title is pretty clear about that), an area older than the English language itself. It's stupid in too many directions. Second, just look at his ugly mug. I couldn't even find a good image of that on the site, and for good reason. His face is perfectly generic and devoid of any notable features. He's the type of guy in dire need of facial hair to cover up his ugliness. (You've all met that type of guy.) Oh, and it's not like he doesn't know about this; his brother has enough facial hair for both of them, and he looks pretty good. I probably should have mentioned that he's major part of the story, by which I mean "he's the main villain." He's the guy who unleashed a great magic evil from its ancient slumber and refuses to seal it back in. I know that sounds a bit cliché, especially since at least two Prince of Persia games tell that story, too, but it's actually a pretty decent tale about power corrupting and "am I my brother's keeper" and a protagonist who spends the first half of the plot fucking shit up big time. All of those themes are developed fairly well, for better or for worse, usually in the same type of scene: Razia (queen of all djinn as long as their names begin with the letter R) berates the Prince for not listening to her instructions and then sends him off for more tasks to fuck up. If she had a sense of humor about it, she'd tell the Prince to say something funny, knowing what would c-
They can't be loading, because there are so many opportunities to load other rooms. Just look at the combat. That's clearly a waste of time that could be used for loading, maybe. This may be the part where you yell at me (or embrace me, because I can't read your moods, especially through the Internet), but I found things to be a bit button-mashy. Just mash the X button. No need to dodge or parry or try anything else from the Nolan North'd Prince of Persia. Although to its credit, at least it's trying. Remember what I said about all those cool abilities before? Well, you get cool abilities here, too. They're not the same abilities (how do I remember something to death when it hasn't previously been dead?), but they're pretty cool. You have your Last Airbender powers, Super Mario jumping prowess, and a bunch of other powers I'll never use. Why would I ever venture outside the tried and true "mash X, hold down RB when I mashed X incorrectly" stratagem? Hell, by the end of the game, everything dies in one hit, presumably because Ubisoft agrees with me, on some level. Then again, it is pretty fun to knock an enemy off a ledge and into their eternal death. Hell, do it enough times, and you get an achievement for it. What's the achievement called? Believe it or not, it's so offensively stupid that I'll need to start a new paragraph to give you time to prepare. Ready?
This is Persia. Get it? Because that's not at all how it happened in the historically inaccurate movie? What's that? The name's a disgraceful pile of shit? Did you use that time I gave you to prepare? Because every achievement is like this. Let me read off some of them: Ding! Level Up; Got Walkthrough?; Floors are for losers; and many other horrible names. Notice how I said "names" and not "achievements." That's because the actual achievements are pretty good. OK, so you have your "just play the game" achievements (I guess the game isn't enough motivation?) and that terrible 100% achievement I mentioned earlier, but look at some of the other ones. You know, like the poorly named "walk on walls for a long time" achievement or the "pretend that this is Super Mario Bros." achievement. The only real flaw I found with them is that they were a bit easy.........I really expected that to last me longer. Let's see if this next statement holds up as well: this is a cool game..........No, not really.
Review Synopsis
- What about this Prince is fit to lead? Tell me how he would make a good leader.
- The Forgotten Sands is what happens when Zelda dungeon designers just give up: they still manage to make a great game, somehow.
- Wait, how can the combat have so much cool shit without reasons for me to use it all? Oh, and I should probably mention that I got this game from Vito_Raliffe. Hooray for him.
Again with this? I wasn't kidding, was I?
Tomb Raider
( Man, this blog has taken a LONG time to come out.) I'll just leave it at technical issues piled upon other technical issues. The punchline? This game isn't even that good, and because there's no II on the end, I can't make any dumb navgtr jokes. So why did I play this game again? Historical significance? Eh, to an extent, but more importantly, it's because it (coincidentally) makes for great contrast with the previous part of this blog. Specifically, this is what you want to avoid in a 3D platformer: boring-ass gameplay combined with labyrinthine level design. Wait, I fucked up that last sentence. After all, Core Design made the entire game take place in mostly temples (I guess it took a few thousand years before people realized that churches shouldn't be at the center of corn mazes) ripped straight from Indiana Jones. OK, I fucked up that sentence, too, because Tomb Raider doesn't really rip off Indiana Jones a lot. For example, Indy doesn't have great tits. Also, Lara doesn't fight Nazis or teach bored college kids or any of that. She's dedicated to her job of robbing ancient civilizations of their priceless artifacts. The civilization in question? Atlantis. Or maybe she's trying to open up Atlantis by stealing from other places. I don't know. The story's pretty confusing, and for no reason, like how Lara's employer is also the antagonist of the game. If I explained the reasons for this, you'd only be far more confused. Also, Atlantis has robots and pyramids and Crimson Heads, because why the fuck not? Fortunately, the story doesn't come up too often, so it's all good (read: easy to ignore). The less I have to see of the graphics, the better....somehow.
.....OK, no more delaying the inevitable. I have to face facts eventually: I have to talk about the actual game. Why am I delaying it so much? Because how the hell do you turn a boring game into an interesting blog? I could talk about the platforming, but that would require conjuring memories of lining up my jumps perfectly, pressing the jump button a full second before Lara decided to jump, and then pressing another button entirely just to grab the ledges (let me say right now that there are no instances where not grabbing a ledge is beneficial, so what the crap?). So we'll be having none of that. Instead, I want to focus all my time on the levels themselves. Remember what I said about the levels being hard to navigate? Unless you've played the game, you have absolutely no idea how confusing these levels are. There's zero direction in this game and the levels can look kinda same-y, so it's stupidly easy to get lost. I spent a lot my time in this game just wandering around, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. That probably explains why I could beat Prince of Persia in the time it takes to complete some of these levels. Mid-level saves help, and some of the later levels actually have a decent amount of focus, but that's about it.
Fortunately, the combat doesn't have these problems. Instead, it has its own set of problems to deal with. OK, it's only one problem, but it's a pretty big one: aiming is a mess. There's some form of auto lock-on, which would have been a big innovation for the time had it been any good. Turns out that Lara absolutely refuses to look away from an enemy after she's locked onto them, even if it's already dead (I guess she's trying to make sure). Unless you manually aim at another enemy, prepare to see Lara shoot a dead bat to death while a lion mauls her throat out. Then again, you'll probably get mauled anyway, since it's really hard to move and shoot at the same time. First, I should mention that Tomb Raider uses the oft-maligned tank control set-up. Of course, it's not maligned here, since there aren't any pre-rendered environments or fixed camera angles or terrible l....OK, there are terrible lines in this (something about abortion), but what I want to focus on is the combat. One thing I forgot to mention is that Lara has to be facing an enemy to shoot it. That may not sound like much, but keep in mind that tanks can't circle strafe (mainly because Goldeneye was four years away from making the world more awesome), so unless you want to line dance yourself to death, you're gonna have to realign yourself every so often mid-battle. It's exactly as awkward as it sounds. Kind of like the rest of the game.
Review Synopsis
- Imagine Indiana Jones. Now unimagine it and stuff it with Atlantian abortions and robots and other stuff. That's Tomb Raider.
- Eh, might as well throw in some awkward platforming and huge, confusing levels.
- Tons of cool (kinda) secret weapons that are a pain in the ass to use.