Review #520: Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones

 Two Princes, one dagger.

 Just learn to smile already!

 Ubisoft are not the kind of company that would let their cashcows lie still, so a new Prince of Persia was developed, with the aim of mixing what made Sands of Time and Warrior Within so good. They succeeded, for the most part.

 So, the Prince managed to save Kaileena from her fate and prevent the sands of time for being created. Too bad the Vizier has invaded the Prince's town, and... as luck good have it, slays Kaileena early on in the game, thus unleashing the Sands of Time yet again. Even worse, sand demons pop up everywhere, threatening the Prince's subjects, and the Prince himself gets a chain grafted on his arm, which allows the Sands to corrupt him and give birth to the Dark Prince, a being made up of his darkest desires that tries to take control of the Prince's body. The story is alrightish, but nothing to write home about. It's a farcry from the Sands of Time, although at least it's not as juvenile as Warrior Within.

The dark prince is the game's biggest missed opportunity.

 The game plays pretty much exactly like Warrior Withing but slightly better. Combat is exactly the same but enemies aren't as repetitive as before, still, combat is easily the game's weakest element. Platforming has been expanded upon, now the prince can stab his blade on a few panels to hang on air, he can crawl upwards or downwards when between two very close walls and there're a few new trampoline panels that make no sense in a realistic setting but they are allowed because it's a videogame. All the new abilities don't add too much to the game, but parkour is as fun as it's always been, and having new obstacles is very welcome. There's also a new stealth mechanic that involves using QTEs to instantly kill an enemy. Bosses too require QTEs, but they are not as bad as they could've been. They tried to disguise them, since you only need to press Square when the Prince's blade flashes during the cinematic, but they ain't fooling anyone: Those are QTEs.

 The game's main gimmick is the new Dark Prince, and it could've been so much more. He can't grab a secondary weapon but he is stuck with his chain and can be used with either triangle or circle, for a total of three different attack buttons. Enemies can't even block his attacks! Platforming is quite different too, since you use the Dark Prince's chains to propel yourself on walls or use as a chain hook. How amazing could've it have been if you had to switch between both Princes to accomplish tasks? But nope, you only change between forms when the game demands it. It's quite a missed opportunity.

Stealth allows you to bypass many of the game's boring combat scenarios.

 The Two Thrones introduces Chariot races, there're two of them as well as a 'special' one in which you ride a golem. These are boring and add nothing to the game, but at least they are short enough. They really failed to understand that the game is at its best when you are jumping around, performing incredible acrobatics, rather than these sad attempts at action. Still, at least they are short enough, so you don't have to endure their clunky controls for too long.

 There's not much else to say about The Two Thrones, if you've played any of the other PoP games you'll be right at home, and if you hated them... this one won't change your mind. The little polishing it got does make it a better game than Warrior Withing, but sadly it's missing the spark that The Sands of Time had.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Nemesis - Rise of the Imperfects(DS)

 You can't get much more imperfect than this game, that's for sure.

The cover is an omen of what's hidden behind it. Do not play this game.

 This game is absolute garbage. I played it for a few minutes while on the toilet, and it was enough to figure out how horrible the game is. Limited controls, wonky movement, wonky physics(I went through the floor once!) and horrible mechanics make for garbage.

 I can't stress enough how bad this game is. How the hell was EA OK with putting their brand on it??

Archile's Grab-bag: First o'2018 Edition

 NEW YEAR MEANS NEW PACKAGES WHICH MEANS MO' GAMES.

  Well, I guess I should get my trusty package-opening-knife to get the job done...

 Digimon World 4: Originally I wasn't planning on playing this one since it looked terrible. But then I learned it had a two player mode. And then I learned that it has the X-antivirus versions of certain 'mons so... here I am. Gonna be playing it soon, before I finish Grandia Xtreme even!

 Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(Wii): It's been a while since I played any Wii games, hopefully this one delivers... I'm somewhat looking forwards to playing it since I've heard some great things about it... but I also heard a few horrible ones. Seems a love it or hate it kinda thing.

 The King of Fighters 02/03: I've always been a fan of KoF, so I'm gonna try to play a few KoF games this year.

 Marvel Nemesis - Rise of the Imperfects: I've played it a bit, it's horrible.

 Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(DS): This game is everything I hate about DS games: Stylus based and aimed at kids. I kinda want to play all PoP games this year, so I kinda had to get it. I will skip Prince of Persia Battles, however...

 Samurai Shodown - Warriors Rage: A game I've been most curious about, the character designs for this gave always caught my eye, so it's great to finally be able to play it.

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.