New Review Posted: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Mike Bracken reviews Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, and questions the spending habits of the average gamer:

"Despite a boatload of critical praise—including numerous Game of the Year awards—Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was a commercial disappointment. Why were gamers unwilling to plunk down $50 for one of the best platformers to come along in recent memory? Maybe because the game was released during a over-crowded fourth quarter holiday season, or because Ubisoft gave up on it too soon (before the start of 2005 the game could already be found brand-new for $20). It also wasn't a particularly violent game. Of all the possible reasons for the Prince's failure, Ubisoft has apparently decided that the last one—that the game wasn't violent enough—(which also is the least likely reason, in my estimation) is the very reason why the game languished on store shelves."

The rest of the review is right over here.

[EnduroGamer]

Great review Mike. This is a classic line:

Watching the new Prince is sort of like watching Hugh Grant try to be Snoop Dogg; he might get the mannerisms and the "my nizzles" right, but everyone can still tell it's a sham.

I was hell bent on never playing the sequel out of spite (one of my silly boycotts -- see Q&A thread) and because of the constant yammering about battles and combos and blah, blah, blah. Glad to see somebody whose opinion I respect let us know that the platforming goodness and sense of accomplishment is still there. If Sands of Time had zero battles and several more areas, I would have still loved it.

[MoriartyL]

You still would have loved it? Taking out all the battles would have seriously improved the game, in my opinion. It would make it feel more like one game, and less like three.

[Hypatia93]

Mike,
I'm with Doug on this (except that he considers his boycott of the game "silly").
B/c of your review, I put it back on my list -- but it's /way/ down on the maybe when it's like $15 will I buy it list.
One question about the audio. You played it on the XBox, could you customize the soundtrack? Also, could you at least lower the music and VA levels but still keep the other sounds on? Okay that was two. Deal with it.

[Mike Bracken]

Thanks, as always, for the kind words. It's nice to know people actually read this stuff I write.

Hypatia: There's no custom soundtrack option. You're stuck with Godsmack.

I never even thought to check if you could turn them down to the point of not hearing them, though--that would have been a good idea. Somehow, I doubt you can--since they paid for the Godsmack stuff to be in the game, by god you're gonna hear it.

Honestly, it's not that bad--I don't like the music, but it doesn't detract from the game overall. I still think the fighting is more troublesome than anything. It's just that the platforming is so good and so much fun that it counters all the problems and tedium in fighting. If you didn't like fighting in the first game, you're not gonna like it now--but that thrill of finding your way through a treacherous room is still there--and for me, it trumped all the other problems.

Mike B.

[chris mautner]

RE: The soundtrack.

You can turn it all the way down. The catch is that you can't hear any of the dialogue during the cut scenes.

[Asz]

I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed the combat in Sands Of Time, it was a nice break from running up walls and the moves were really well done. The combat in Warrior Within feels like they tried to improve it, but instead made it less fluid. Plus, the combat becomes too intertwined with the platforming, sticking enemies in seemingly random places forcibly breaking up the platforming. The combat also seemed much more difficult, pulling off a combo (usually by accident) left me an open target for the multiple enemies surrounding me, and there were no ways of breaking out of said combo to suddenly dodge attacks, or even block them. The camera angles also didn't work for me in a variety of occasions, either during combat, or during platforming. Often the camera would become obstructed during a battle causing me to get killed more than a few times. Often the camera would be positioned in such a way that from the perspective, I thought I could make a jump and instead fell to my death, again, this happened more than a few times. There were numerous sound bugs in the Xbox version as well, sounds would often loop infinitely until I rebooted the game. Music would often disappear mid-battle. And even occasionally, all sound would go kaput, disappearing all together. Plus, and I know this most likely wasn't a glitch but, the enemies and even the prince would never shut the fuck up, constantly spewing stupid one lines like a generic action movie hero (or action movie goon) with ADD. I'd love to go on about how I loathe Warrior Within compared to Sands Of Time but, i'm tired of typing complaints, onto something else. -_-

[Mike Bracken]

I heard about a lot of the glitches, but other than the sound going off once during a cutscene, I never had a problem with the Xbox version.

Mike B.

[Gene Park]

Originally Posted by chris mautner

RE: The soundtrack.

You can turn it all the way down. The catch is that you can't hear any of the dialogue during the cut scenes.

Actually you can't turn it all the way down to the point of not being able to hear it. At the lowest in-game volume setting for the music, the grindcore will STILL be slightly in the background, albeit very quietly. So you're damn right people are still gonna hear it unless you just mute your TV.

And who cares if you can't hear the dialogue in the cutscenes. It's "smacks of god awful" in my opinion. :P

Anywho the game is otherwise great, and I actually kinda enjoyed the fighting. It's a little awkward, considering how fluid Ninja Gaiden's was. But being able to combo up different moves feels alright, and it's amazing how you're able to mix and match all these different canned animations to make it seem like one fluid combo.

[JackSlack]

I have to disagree with one sentence in your review.

Originally Posted by Mike Bracken

The game industry continues to labor under the deluded notion that sex, scantily-clad women, and lots of blood and guts equates with being mature.

I'd rewrite that:

"The game industry continues to operate under the unfortunately true notion that sex, scantily-clad women, and especially lots of blood and guts equates with being commercially successful."

Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased as punch at the times this turns out to be false. BMX XXX being a big damned flop warmed my heart. But in videogames, it ain't sex that sells; it's violence.

Sadly, I think the sales numbers on Warrior Within lend credence to the notion that horrible as UbiSoft's logic may have been, they were right.

[Evan Evanson]

Originally Posted by JackSlack

Sadly, I think the sales numbers on Warrior Within lend credence to the notion that horrible as UbiSoft's logic may have been, they were right.

Here's a theory that's probably wishful thinking on my part: sales of WW were higher because many, many people eventually played SoT through rentals or friends' copies that don't show up in initial sales figures, and liked it so much that they knew they'd buy the sequel as soon as it came out. I normally wait until games are $20.00 (which happened a lot faster w/ SoT than anybody expected), but I loved SoT so much that I knew I'd be picking it up immediately, reviews be damned.

Which I never do. Well, except for Burnout 3 - that turned out to be a very, very happy deviation from habit.

My own take is that Mike went too easy on it:

1. Yes, the original platforming is there, but it's constantly interrupted by combat that I at least derived no pleasure from.
   
2. You are forced to backtrack over and over through the same areas, sometimes because the game doesn't clearly tell you what your goals are.
   
3. Respawning enemies during the backtracking reminds you that this is a game, lessening the immersive factor.
   
4. The "map" doesn't deserve that word.
   
5. While the graphics are technically better, they are used to portray something that's murkier and less captivating, making the gameplay more frustrating when you can't figure out what you're looking at.
   
6. The music's stunningly inappropriate (during fight scenes, which are of course far more frequent; some of the ambient music's gratifyingly unobtrusive), again chipping away at immersion. It's almost as though it's an EA game.

For me, pretty much the only plus side of WW is that halfway through I got so annoyed and frustrated that I put it down and started replaying SoT, just to see if I was remembering it through a rose-colored CRT. Wound up replaying the entire thing, and I loved it all over again.

Here's the thing I was most impressed with in the first one, and where the second one doesn't even think to compete: the character of the Prince. They don't hit you over the head with it, but his character is lightly and sure-handedly detailed throughout the entire game - his initial callow craving of his father's approval, his distrust of Farah, his regret at his own actions, and his gradual attraction to Farah. It's a wonderfully-told story, in a game in which you'd expect that the story would just be an excuse for gameplay. The "kakulukia" cutscene is the giveaway that these guys knew what they were doing - it's really an interesting choice to do most of it with no visuals whatsoever, solely through writing and voice work, and it pays off beautifully. And of course the ending, which is smart and funny and unexpected and ties up the whole story nicely, is like a fabulous ribbon on the whole package.

In the end, I just don't like the character of the Prince in WW: he's a blowhard, an adolescent jerk "smoldering with generic rage" with no inner life. The makers of WW seem to have confused situation with character. I have no sympathy with him, I don't find him interesting, and the way the game portrays women is adolescent, unappealing (to me; whatever floats your boat) and reminiscent of cuts of meat at a butcher's. Especially compared to Farah, who was attractive, self-reliant and smarter than the Prince - someone worth fighting for.

Sands of Time was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played (even more than Ico - I really found the helplessness of Yorda annoying). Warrior Within was something I suffered through, at one point hurling the controller onto the floor (a first for me). I'll definitely be reading the reviews on Prince of Persia: Whatever The Hell We Call It Next before deciding to buy the threequel.

Evan

[Asz]

Ahhh, nice Evan, you said what I wanted to say, but in a much nicer format. Forgive my horrible writing.

[Evan Evanson]

Originally Posted by Asz

Ahhh, nice Evan, you said what I wanted to say, but in a much nicer format. Forgive my horrible writing.

Nonsense. The reason I hardly went into the combat was you pretty much covered all my points. Suffice it to say that I didn't play Ico for the combat, I didn't play Sands of Time for the combat (although it did look cool), and I certainly didn't play Warrior Within for the combat. If I want combat, I'll play War of the Monsters.

So long as the people I'm playing it with aren't as good as I am.

Evan