Prince of Persia: Forgotten Game?

I've mentioned to a few people how much I enjoyed Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. I must have since I got it in the mail, played all the way through it, and sent it back in just over a week. That's some kind of record for me. The platforming and combat were lots of fun. The difficulty was just right, and the story wasn't terrible.

I've heard some comparisons to Sands of Time thrown around, but I think I like parts of this one even better than that game. The combat from SoT seemed really frustrating at times. In this iteration, a lot more enemies are thrown at you at once, but you're also a lot more powerful. Plus, you're given lots of options on how you can dispatch them. So you can pick your favorite combinations. But speaking of combinations, this game's not too heavy on it. You aren't forced to remember ridiculous button combinations so you're freed up to hack and slash, use magic, or whatever works for you.

The level design is pretty neat, but you have to suspend your disbelief that all of the obstacles just HAPPENED to line up perfectly. You really can't spend too much time thinking about it, and just go where the game (not so subtlely) directs you. I found very few spots where I was confused on where to go next. And it does this without falling into the "rhythm game" mentality of the last game.

This game gives you a great mix of "do whatever you want" combat and "extremely directed" acrobatics. It also was hard to stop playing. I often found myself playing "just to the next checkpoint." Only to find myself saying that again when I got there.

Late in the game, the timing puzzles tighten up a bit and leave you less room for error. They don't seem impossible. Rather, they're just reminding you how far you've come. As an example, late in the game right before you open Solomon's tomb, I got to a series of jumps that seemed fairly easy for what I was used to. Of course, I had to back track and was now on the clock. It was ticking down while I retraced what was easy the first time through. Well played, Prince.

Of course, the big mechanic for this series is the ability to rewind time when you mess up a jump. You acquire that fairly early on, but it really takes a back seat to being able to flash freeze water. Horizontal water fountains become bars to twirl around, and waterfalls become solid walls to run across. Later on, it leads to some of the trickiest sequences of having to quickly freeze and unfreeze as you make your way across the obstacles. Almost as an afterthought, you get a "recall" ability to fill in sections of wall that are all Matrix-code-looking. But you can only do one section at a time. Often I'd forget that I had to use this on the thing I was standing on, turn it off and drop to my death. Whoops. I could have used some kind of slight visual indication that "this ground might not be entirely stable."

The title of this post refers to my sense that this game was largely ignored when it shouldn't have been. But I loved it. You might want to give it a shot too.

Port & Starboard

Whenever I go to an actual arcade, I end up spending most of my time playing something Star Wars-related or Hydro Thunder. It's basically a silly, over the top racing game. On the water. With ridiculous looking boats and locations. And I love it.

So when I heard about Hydro Thunder Hurricane coming to XBLA, I was immediately interested. I played the demo and thought about it for a few days. Was it really worth $15 even though the demo only let you try one track? Eventually I decided it was and I haven't regretted it.

The best part of the game are the controls. Everything just feels right when you're turning, jumping out of the water, and slamming back down. Some of the boats have quirky handling, but I mostly tried to stick to the one or two that I liked.

I hear the online play can be fun, I should probably try that at some point. But I have a feeling I'd get steamrolled by 12 year olds. Plus I'd have to listen to all of them. So maybe not.

Guns & numbers

"Sweet! I got a new gun!"
"Is it any good? Is it better than one I already have?"
"I...um...well, I'm not sure." (lots of number checking & experimentation follows)
"OK, technically, yes...but only in certain situations."

This is a conversation I have with myself far too often in Borderlands. It's a good bit of fun. RPG elements and leveling make you want to stick with it. Same with the quest system. And on top of that, it's a very good shooter. The controls feel perfectly mapped and responsive. I guess that's a very good thing when shooting and moving is what you'll be doing more than 95% of the time in the game. It suffers from the same problem as Bioshock 2 however, because you constantly have to look at the ground to see what kind of goodies and loot are down there. Visually, you can see 'em from far away, and they're even color coded, but to actually decide if it's worth picking up you have to look at your feet, then exactly in the right spot to determine if it's something you need or want. The potential of incredible loot is almost enough to make you check it before you've even safely cleared out all the bad guys in the area. So I often end up taking damage while I'm staring at the stuff on the ground. Whoops.

I actually bought this one, and that seems like the perfect situation. There's not much story at all that would keep you wanting to play it all the way through, but it's addictive enough to keep pulling me back in every few weeks for an hour or two.

Other (M)etroid Game

So Metroid: Other M was really...interesting. I felt like I couldn't skip it since it had Metroid in the title. But I'd heard a lot about how it was such a departure from previous games.

The combat is mostly great. But I see too much Ninja Gaiden in it from developer Team Ninja. For that game I only played the 360 version for a few hours since it was too hard and frustrating. Other M also has more cheap "instant death" scenarios than I cared to count. This is quite a departure from the hand-holding fair world of Nintendo-produced games.

I really hated the third person slow walking sequences. I don't remember one where I actually find anything interesting while forced to walk around like this. Sometimes for far too long. Come on. I just wanna run around and shoot stuff! And speaking of that, I miss not getting health and missile drops from dead enemies. It changes the whole dynamic of the game. Where in other Metroid games I'd proceed slowly and take out every enemy, this one rewards me for rushing through and avoiding unnecessary enemies. That, coupled with the lack of much exploration changes this game quite a bit from the Prime or Fusion series. Mitch over at Insult Swordfighting talks about how the game changes after you've finished and you can do this kind of quiet exploration, but I wasn't motivated to stick around after the finish.

Much has been said about the lame cut scenes, terrible voice acting, and the character assassination of Samus. Really, that stuff didn't bother me too much. Sadly, that's because I've played a ton of other games that were just as dumb.

For the last hour or two you pretty much have all the upgrades and get to run around like a badass swatting aside any small enemies they throw at you. This seemed nice, mainly because they're often the same enemies that annoyed the crap out of me earlier by jumping in front of me and taking way too much health away when I ran into 'em.

So it's not a game I recommend you run out and buy, but it's a decent rental.

Soon?

I said I'd post more "soon." Soon is a relative term. Please know that I've got two drafts for posts going. One for Metroid: Other M and one for Borderlands. I'll post Metroid when I finish the game. I'll post Borderlands when I...uh...you know, Borderlands doesn't really seem like a game you ever really finish since there's very little story. It's just about level grinding and shooting things. Which is tons more fun than it sounds. Anyway, I'll post that when I feel like I've got a more complete sense of the game. I'm at level 20 if that means anything to anybody.