Now Playing: Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones

 Warrior Within 2.0.

Well... he's still relatively serious.

 Man, it has to be said, The Two Thrones makes me feel like I'm playing another take on Warrior Within. After finishing Sands of Time, and going directly into Warrior Within, they felt like very different games... The Two Thrones reuses a ton of assets from the previous game, the combat is almost exactly the same, even if slightly better. People claim that this one matches the tone from Sands of Time... but that's wrong, I think, very early into the game the Prince gets a bladed chain grafted into his skin. And while dismemberment is gone, this Prince is vicious when it comes to killing his enemies.

 It seems like the Dark Prince are scripted sequences rather than letting you freely transform between both... which is a bit of a missed opportunity seeing how both have different skills when it comes to platforming. I dunno, I'm a bit... underwhelmed with this game. I just got out of the sewers and got the first life upgrade, which means I'm relatively early into the game. Hopefully it gets better.

Review #519: True Crime - Streets of LA

 Criminally underrated.

You've the right to remain dead.

 True Crime Streets of LA was created to take a piece out of GTA's pie, no doubt about it, but the end result was surprisingly competent. It received great reviews at the time, but it didn't score as high as GTA on most publications. Considering this game came out after Vice City... it's a true crime how underappreciated this game is, and in a few ways feels ahead of its time.

 You play as Nicholas Kang, a pastiche of every loose-cannon cop trope out there, who is the star of a generic pastiche out of every cop movie out there. Think Dead to Rights but with extra cheese. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it a good story? No way. The latter chapters included a few supernatural elements that came out of nowhere and don't really fit in with the rest of the game, as cheesy as it is, since it's not much of a tribute or a parody since it takes itself 100% seriously when it comes to these things... which is a bit surprising. The game is a bit light on extra content, there're only random crime occurrences to solve as well as a few optional challenges, which upgrade Nick's abilities, but the main story is pretty lengthy and features three different routes with three different endings. As a matter of fact, you can skip most missions if you wish, and if you fail a few you get alternate missions. The game is divided in episodes, so you can replay any mission at any time and jump through routes as you please.

You'll have tor rely on your minimap, since the full map sucks!

 For an open world game, it's pretty linear. You don't get to choose between which missions to do, each episodes has a string of missions for you to complete. Unless there's a time limit or you're confined inside a building, you're pretty much free to explore or 'borrow' cars as you wish, albeit there're no secrets to find. The game's in-game map is completely useless, it's a jumbled mess of streets, and it doesn't mark places of interest, such as hospitals or the facilities in which you can upgrade Nick's abilities, so you just have to ride around until you're close enough so that they appear on the minimap. At least there's a permanent marker directing you to your next objective.

 There're two important numbers you'll have to keep up with: Shields and Karma. Karma can be positive or negative, and it's affected by how you operate as a cop. Killing criminals gives you bad karma, as opposed to neutralizing them, for example. Karma doesn't play a big part in the game, it merely affects a few small mechanics, like making civilians attack you if you're a bad cop. Shields are earned as you solve crimes, so whether you kill or neutralize a criminal you'll still get shields, and these can be spent on facilities to upgrade Nick's abilities. You can choose guns, to enhance your shooting abilities, combat, to earn new moves, or driving, to earn new maneuvers. Protip, get the first few combat upgrades, to get Ground attacks, and then get every gun upgrade, since the last upgrade turn your limitless ammo-guns the best weapons in the game. You don't really need the driving upgrades or the finishing combat moves. There're also a few exclusive upgrades that are earned after finishing every mission in a chapter, but the only ones that matter are the gun upgrades, since they give your guns a better firing rate and more ammo capacity. End-of-chapter driving upgrades give you new cars, which you don't really need, and combat upgrades give you grappling moves, which are useless.

Civilians are always fast to comply. Just tap L1 and they'll leave their cars!

 You'v probably realized by now that the game made a big deal out of its three gameplay mechanics: Shooting, Driving and Combat. There's also Stealth, but nobody cares about it. And everything kinda works. Driving is a bit stiff and 'borrowing' cars can be a bit unresponsive, as sometimes Nick has a hard time deciding what to do when you press L1. That said, the driving itself is not too bad, and you can shoot in almost any direction while driving, as a matter of fact, you can hold R1 as you drive to enter manual aiming. As you drive. What other game of its era had that? Then there's on-foot shooting. You get unlimited ammo on your default guns, you can stick to surfaces by holding X, although it's a bit wonky, and you can enter manual-aiming in first person by holding R1 instead of just tapping R1 to shoot. At first the shooting is kinda garbage since Nick is a bit slow when it comes to auto-aiming, but get a few gun-upgrades and you'll be mashing R1 and bringing the entire neighborhood down. You can also pick up weapons from fallen enemies, but after you max out your guns they become a bit of a handicap. There's also slo-mo diving or rolling to evade bullets. The shooting is alright, although on closed-environments the camera can be a bit of a pain in the butt... but just mash R1 and you'll be fine. For whatever reason, sometimes Nick won't shoot when you mash R1, I think it has to do with enemies running on the side of whichever weapon Nick has(He always dual-wields) gone out of ammo, so he doesn't realize that he can shoot with his other arm. As a whole, shootouts are arcadey fun, but it's a bit janky.

 Then there's the combat... which is just button mashing. You mash X, Square or Triangle for Low, regular and high attacks. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the combat, but the animations are still relatively decent. Landing enough hits on an enemy makes them drowsy so that you can execute a special move on them. Circle can be used to grapple with enemies, but it comes out so slowly that they will easily evade it. The best moment to initiate a grapple is when they are drowsy... but why would you if special moves are so much more satisfying? As a whole, combat is pretty alright, definitely better than anything GTA 3, VC or SA had to offer. Lastly, stealth missions. The only problem with these is that sometimes you attacks don't come out. Holding Square or triangle as opposed to just tapping them seems to increase the chance of the attacks being carried out. It's a bit wonky, but it's not too bad. The camera can be a bit of a chore on these, but enemies give ample time to be subjugated after they see you before you lose the mission. They are pretty sure, so having to do them again from the start isn't too bad.

Once you unlock the best guns you won't need to dive, since enemies will go down in seconds flat.

 True Crime was definitely ahead of its time, and it was very ambitious. Everything it does, it does relatively well albeit suffering with a few hiccups... and that's the game as a whole: It's really good, but very rough around its edges. Still, I think it's easy to put up with its shortcomings since the game is so much fun to play. It also features a soundtrack made up of licensed rap, heavy rock and metal songs that fit the game oh so well. It's funny to think how much critics loved GTA and spurned other open-world games, specially considering how modern GTA games play more like True Crime than, well, classic 3D GTA games.

 Problems? It's got a few. But True Crime - Streets of LA is easily more than the sum of its parts. It's sad how the franchise died after a bad sequel.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #518: Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

 Game so edgy it cuts you with its dialogue.

Hopefully the prince will be smiling on the next game.

 Warrior Withing has earned somewhat of a bad name since the day of its release. It's been often cited as one of the worst cases of 'darker and grittier' for the sake of appealing to angsty teens and the such. But being dark and edgy... isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the tone shift is the least of the game's problems.

 Taking place a few years after the Sands of Time, the Prince finds himself prey to the Dahaka, a being that was unleashed the moment the Prince went back in time, and now the Dahaka wants the Prince's life. So he comes up with an idea: Travel back in time to before the sands where created and stop them from ever coming to be. The plot is interesting, and a few amusing things occur during the Prince's journey, however, characters have lost their charm. The Prince isn't as snarky as he used to be, being replaced by an eternal frowner, voiced by the glorious Robin Atkin Downes, and the rest of the characters... well, it seems as if a 12 year old was in charge of designing the females, because it's all about their breasts and butts.

Enemies block everything that goes beyond two hits, save for spinning attack combos.

 The game plays pretty much like the first one, melding combat with platforming and puzzle platforming, but the Prince's moveset has been expanded upon. Platforming is pretty much the same, the Prince can still run on walls until gravity brings him down, scale on a few surfaces and will have to jump from ruins to scaffolding to bars to what have you in order to get to his destination. Most puzzles in the game are about figuring out how to get to where you want to go. There's a few new additions, like slowing down your decent by shredding through a flag with your sword, using ropes to aid you, using your time powers to slow down time and get to a door before it closes or a few enemies that cling on to walls and must be slashed at the right time. Yes, the new additions are pretty shallow, but the previous game did this perfectly, and there was no need to fix what wasn't broken.

 Combat has been completely overhauled. Now the prince will wield his main weapon on his right and can pick up any other weapon with the left, albeit most secondary weapons will break pretty swiftly. There're more options in combat to, if you're fighting with a single sword you can grab enemies in order to strangle them or slash them, or you can use a wall to propel yourself against an enemy or even a column to spin with your sword around it. It sounds like the combat is fun, but... it's as dull as it used to be. You'll be using Square-triangle or square-square-triangle attacks most of the time because 80% of your enemies will block anything that goes beyond two hits unless it's a two-weapon spin attack combo. Either that or spam triangle+square in order to land free hits. Then there's also the fact that enemies can't be finished off with anything less than a three hit combo or a 'special' strike, like vaulting over their heads and slashing or grabbing them and slashing. It's boring. And bosses don't fare much better, you'll spend most of your time blocking and dodging before they open up their guard... or abuse the slow-down time mechanic. So, it's combat better than in Sands of Time? On paper yes, in practice... it's just as lame, since you'll end up cheesing enemies with the same techniques over and over again.

Abuse columns, enemies don't know that they can engage you outside it's area of effect.

 One thing to keep in mind before approaching Warrior Within is that it's a much harder game. While you had sand reserves to spare, which are used to rewind time in order to make up for mistakes, now you've got a paltry maximum of six reserves, and you only start with three and increase your maximum very slowly. Plus, defeating enemies does't guarantee a sand refill. Enemies and traps hit much harder than ever before, which makes tracking down the health upgrades a necessity. Don't feel too bad about using a guide, the game is relatively open ended, so you can basically backtrack and explore at your leisure, but these are VERY well hidden. You'll also have to deal with travelling to and back from the past, by using a few sand shrines scattered throughout the island. The in-game map is absolutely useless, so hopefully your memory is up to snuff. Oh, and shrines must be activated by doing a dumb mini-puzzle, based on trial and error, in which you have to press four switches in the correct order. And absolute waste of time that adds nothing to the game.

 Another thing to keep in mind... is that you should have two save files at all times. The game is notorious for its numerous game-breaking bugs. I didn't come across any of them on this playthrough, but I did when I was younger and I was forced to start a new file. As a matter of fact, the game feels somewhat sloppy. Sometimes when you jump against a wall the Prince may linger on the air while deciding how to collide with the wall. It never happened during platforming sections, it mostly did when I was trying to get to some place fast an started fooling around, so it's not like it will ruin your experience, but it feels sloppy as a whole. There's another instance in which you must defeat a giant miniboss, after which a ladder pops up and you go to the top floor. On the top floor there's a hidden checkpoint and three tough enemies. If you die here, which I did, you don't have to defeat the boss again... but he will respawn below you, and you'll be hearing his noises and the healthbar will appear on the bottom of the screen. Does it affect your progress? Nope, but it's further proof of how poorly tested the game was. As a matter of fact, when I arrived here I was out of sands and running low on health, and there's a health upgrade on this top floor, so I needed to defeat these enemies in order to get enough sand(Since the door shuts down quickly unless you slow down time) to enter the chamber... on one of my retries, these three enemies didn't spawn and I was forced to kill myself.

The prince is a pirate now.

 People claim that Warrior Within is a bad game because it got darkier and edgier. They are wrong, Warrior Withing is pretty good. The problem is... Sands of Time did everything this game does better. Not only that, there's so many bugs or small issues that make the game feel like it was rushed, even though the game works when it needs to... well, most of the time. With a bit more time in the oven, the game could've been as good as the first one, because the basics are here and the combat is slightly better than it used to be, at least there're more things to abuse so you can do something else besides vaulting.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: True Crime - Streets of LA

 Being a videogame, it makes it fictional crime. Just sayin'

The red GH label... actually kinda fits the cover.

 I used to love this game. I played it on the PS2, never finished it but liked it so much that when my PS2 died I bought it on PC, all four discs, and cleared it 100% on all routes. It was probably my favorite open world game at the time, and I realize why: The combat is quite competent, even if a bit clunky.

 I'm all the way to chapter 3 and that's pretty much how I feel about the entire game: It's pretty good, but very rough around the edges. Driving is acceptable, but a bit stiff. Shooting is alright, but taking cover could've been smoother. Combat is fun, but repetitive.

 What I mean to say is... True Crime's still got it.

Month Overview: January 2018

 Tally:
 Shadow of Rome 8.0
 Rise of the Argonauts 7.5
 God Hand 9.0
 Musashi - Samurai Legend 6.5
 Spec Ops - The Line 8.0
 Fear Effect 4.0
 Fear Effect 2 - Retro Helix 5.0
 Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time 9.0


 It's 2018 baby! Even though I started working and a programming course, meaning I'm out from 9 AM 'till 10 PM, I still managed to play a fair amount of games. Chiefly, I finally played the Fear Effect franchise!.... but I was not impressed, I can appreciate how mature and original its plot and characters were for its time, but it has aged very, very badly. I also got around God Hand and was pleasantly surprised, about how good it was, and surprisingly relieved at how overrated its difficulty was.
 I also started the PoP franchise, because Grandia Xtreme was so dull, and I was surprised at hot... lame I'm finding Warrior Within, considering how much I used to love it. And it has nothing to do with the tone shift, I'm quite OK with it actually. On the flip side, I absolutely adored the Sands of Time, despite its shortcomings.


 Runner-up:

 God Hand was bloody phenomenal. The humor was great, and funny if a bit offensive. The characters where interesting, ridiculously so. But the gameplay was weird... but amazing at the same time. It's a surprisingly deep game, albeit one that can only appeal to fans of beat'em up games.

 Game of January 2018:

 Alright, so it was a hard choice between God Hand and Prince of Persia, but PoP won the premise that it did so much more. God Hand excelled at the one thing it did: Beating up thugs, but Prince of Persia gave us an engaging adventure, fantastic platforming and OK combat, alongside some pretty unique mechanics. As far as I'm concerned, The Sands of Time is every bit as good as it once was.

Now Playing: Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

 The Prince's teenage rebel phase.

Alright, now the Prince is even MORE serious.

 I'll always wonder why people automatically assume that dark and gritty means that it's bad. Alright, so Warrior Within tries hard to be dark and edgy, with buxom babes, cursing and maiming... but that doesn't make it bad, particularly when it polishes and expands upon the first game.

 The Sands of Time? Excellent, but with passable combat. Warrior Within has the same parkour, but with a few new tricks, has better combat, I'd call it good, and expands on the sands powers. Sure, the story is not as good, although the set-up is more original, and yes, its portrayal of women seems as if straight out of a 12 year old's mind... but the gameplay is more of the same but better.

 Regardless, I used to love Warrior Withing when I was younger, I played this game over and over and over again. Even though on my first playthrough I was victim to the Sand Wraith bug, which turned me into the Sand Wraith way before it should've and it meant that I could advance through the game... at to a certain point. Just in case I'm playing with two savefiles this time around! Still, as soon as I found out that I was stuck for good, and I kept playing as the Sand Wraith because I didn't notice I wasn't the Prince any more before it was too late, on the off chance that I would be able to finish the game... and I couldn't. But I didn't care, I immediately started the game again and got to the end. And I loved it. Hopefully I'll be as in love now as I was back then by the time I finish it.

Review #517: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

 As if time hadn't passed at all....

The Prince's shirt gets torn to shred as the story advances.

 The original Prince of Persia was a bit of a landmark as far as videogames are concerned, yet its first jump to 3D was pretty much terrible. A few years later Ubisoft would acquire the IP and deliver The Sands of Time, a game that continues to influence other games to this day with its then-unique blend of combat and parkour.

 You play as the Prince, victim of the Vizier's treachery, having unleashed the Sands of Time on the Sultan's abode. The sands have turned everyone but him, the Vizier and the captive Farah into sand demons, so now he and Farah team up to stop the Vizier. Luckily, he is armed with the Dagger of Time, a weapon that allows him to manipulate time to his will... as long as he has enough sand stored. The story is pretty cookie-cutter, but the interactions between the Prince and Farah are pretty adorable. Plus, even though the story is nothing special, it's still well told and it's an enjoyable trip. The story is told to us by the Prince, so every time you die he'll exclaim that 'that's not what happened!', which surprisingly doesn't grow old. A simple, but enjoyable tale that runs about 6 hours long... which would be an acceptable length if only the game wasn't so good that you just want more.

Heavy enemies require block-and-counterattacking to be defeated.

 Prince of Persia is the precursor to Assassin's Creed, as a matter of fact, the first Assassin's Creed began life as Prince of Persia: Assassins. But I digress, what I meant to tell was that this game did the parkour thing before any other game. This is a linear game, so you'll constantly be moving forwards and only forwards, although it's in your best interest to explore a little so that you can increase the maximum amount of health and sand you can have. Heck, you can also unlock the very dated first Prince of Persia game, although you'll need a guide to do that, since the wall you must break is pretty well hidden.

 The platforming in this game is pretty much fantastic, the Prince remains one of the most nimble characters out there, he can run on walls as long as momentum allows him, jump from wall to wall, cling to ledges, spin on bars and a few other nifty tricks. The game puzzles come in the form of figuring out how to traverse the environment, as you pull trick after trick to get to where you need to go. If you mess up, which you will every now and then, you can spend a sand tank to rewind time with L2 to before you screwed up that jump and save yourself. The game is pretty lenient with this mechanic, if you die there's ample time to press L2 before the retry screen pops up. Word of warning, as great as the time rewind is, don't grow to dependent on it, as the last few stretches of the game part the Prince with said ability.

The game could've used less enemies and more jumping instead.

 And then comes the game's weakest link: Combat. You use square to slash with your sword, R1 to block, X to vault over enemies(Or roll around) and triangle to use the dagger, and you can spend a secondary sand gauge to turn enemies into sand and do quick work of them. The combat is very simple and rather dull, the game throws waves upon waves upon waves of enemies and combat never gets too interesting. Enemies must be hit with the dagger when they are downed in order to finish them off completely, which also refills a sand tank in the process. The thing is... the vault move is so good that it downs pretty much any enemy that can't counter it instantly, so there's no reason not to use it... unless you want to slowly hit an enemy's guard until they decide to counterattack so that you can block their move and counterattack yourself. Heavy enemies later in the game grow immune to your vault so you'll have to resort to counterattacks to win. You've also got the Mega Freeze move, called Haste in the instruction booklet, which requires your full sand reservoir to use, as well as the secondary sand gauge, and turns every enemy into sand for a short while, so you just mash square and easily wipe them out. Mind you, the combat can get a bit dull, but it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

 Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time hasn't aged a single day, it's every bit as good as it once was. The combat can grow a bit stale, but the parkour is fantastic, and exploring the palace while the Prince and Farah banter is great. This game is one of the finest adventure games out there, and it won't be going obsolete any time soon.
 9.0 out of 10