 If I could turn baack tiime, if I could fiind a waay... nah-nah-nah...
Dammit, I'm getting gayer and gayer by the day, which is not that bad, sexually speaking. It's a known fact that homosexuals get a lot more pussy than straight men, just that they don't know what to do with it. I'd like to turn back time and start all over again, pretend that I'm gay and get all those women who like men getting in touch with their feminine side. You know, not wearing lipstick and women's clothes or shit like that, but sighing at the sight of a beautiful flower, crying at a romantic movie, shopping, taking showers, talking to her and gay shit like that. Come to think of it, I'd like to turn back time again and stop being gay.
Plus I wouldn't want someone to pop my cherry, not before going to prison I mean. Why go to prison? Well I must confess I committed a terrible crime. I gave up life for playing games, I denied reality in favor of virtuality, I stopped living and started gaming. Sure you'll say that's not a crime, that lots of you have done that, but think about it, isn't it against the most important law of them all, common sense, to ignore the important things in life in order to waste your time in front of the computer, playing violent games that turn you into a monster and... ...dna retsnom a otni uoy nrut taht semag tneloiv gniyalp... back in time again, sure I didn't say that. Nah man, fuck this shit, let's talk about the important stuff, electronic entertainment at its best, represented here by this very fine sequel to one of the most important games in gaming history, Prince of Persia. UbiSoft Montreal has done a great job with this title, bringing back to life this great adventure, a beautiful story told by the prince itself, letting us in on a marvelous journey as the game advances.
"My snowmobile is broken." "You've blown a seal?" "Nah, that's just a little ice on my moustache."
That's not ice, it's sand, it's all sand here, in the freaking desert where water is one of the most precious... uhm, things, 'cause that's what water is mostly, a thing, that can restore life after the heat of the battle. Who's doing battle? Well, on one hand, there's this guy, the son of a great sultan, a prince, who's something like Neo (the Matrix guy) meets Nadia Comaneci (the gymnast queen) meets Kibagami Jubei (the ultimate ninja). He can run on walls, jump incredible distances, walk on wires, chop people into pieces and still have time for a drink every now and then, which kinda makes him talk to himself a lot. Nobody's perfect, but this guy is as close as you can get. He's young, rich, handsome, a great athlete and a brave warrior, striving to gain glory and fame in order to impress his father. It's exactly this pride of his that sets in motion the events that are represented in this game. He uses a powerful dagger to unleash upon the land the sands of time that consume almost everyone, turning them into monsters. 
It's against these monsters that our hero has to wage battle against, in the most beautifully imaginable way. Sword in one hand, dagger in the other, he's ready to show the world his ass... ...ssa sih, ahem, his extraordinary fighting skills that allow him to perform eye-catching moves that impress the ladies and make Jet Li green with envy. "How swift thy sword" Nameless would say. Yes, he is our hero.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, let's see. First we pull this lever that opens a door for a limited amount of time, run up that wall, press that yellow button, than quickly jump in the other direction, grab a rope at the last moment, swing onto a ledge that collapses under our feet so we must be quick and start running along the wall, jump off it onto a column, climb it, jump towards a horizontal flag pole, swing of it onto a tall platform, where the door is, and roll past it just before it closes.
Seems crazy? That's the kind of shit you're supposed to do when you're not fighting. Fast paced action that keeps your heart rushing with excitement while your feet are nervously trembling uncontrollably.
Our prince is one agile character, and he's able to do just about all the things I have said above, plus a lot more. Sure he won't be doing this by himself, you have to assume control and lead him through the obstacles in order to advance. It's not easy to realize what must be done in order to progress, when in a tricky room full of ledges and poles and boxes, you have to think things through, experiment, and only then start on the path that starts to reveal itself to you. While it is not chess, still the game stresses the brain a bit by forcing it to think, to foresee the problems that may arise and start solving them in advance. 
Plus there are these puzzles, not many but cleverly done, that you must solve in order to set some mechanism in motion or to open a route of access into some place. Hell yeah, great puzzles that force you to stop for a while and think, and give you a great satisfaction after you solve them.
"Honey, come to dinner!" "Dad, explain mom I can't come right now, I'm half way through this game and can't save until the beginning of the next level!" "We shouldn't have bought him that console..."
Hell, consoles shouldn't have been invented in the first place. It's obvious that if you can't save your progress in a game at any given moment, that game is fucking broken by default, it's a design error, accentuated by the freaking consoles that can't quicksave because they are cripple. This pisses me off, because POP: SOT was created for consoles, so it was thought for consoles, with fixed savepoints and all that.
Fuck this shit man, it's really annoying to have to play through almost an entire level and after a series of good combinations you can't get that last jump straight, so you fall some twenty meters, bang, you're dead, start over.
But for the first time in my life I don't have a problem with this anymore, not in this game at least, because the genius of the developers merged the gameplay into the story so damn well it amazes even me, and I've seen things, believe me. This Sands of Time crap isn't just an excuse to make a game, but like I said, it merges into gameplay. When having that special dagger on you, you can actually control time.  So you can freeze it or only just slow it down, but most important of all you can turn it back, for like ten seconds or so.
This means that when you miss a jump for example and fall to your (character's) death, you don't have to start over the entire level, but instead you "go back in time" and have the opportunity to do right what previously went wrong, which is an excellent idea, never before implemented in a game. Plus the slow motion effect is just as good as any bullet time implementation you've seen in other games, and when you freeze everything around you, you gain an almost unfair advantage over your enemies, hacking and slashing them while they hold still like statues.
Two blind men at the cinema: "You see anything?" "No." "Me either, let's move to the front row."
I'm not going to tell you that Prince of Persia: Sands of Time looks good, you can see that for yourselves. What I'd like to talk about is its programming, the kind that people who made this graphics engine have, and most others in the industry don't. Sure, other games look good as well, but this one even plays good on most systems, provided a video card that can "do" pixelshaders is present. But don't think high-end shit, a GeForce 3 Ti or a Radeon 8500 should do the trick, and they perform pretty good while delivering quality graphics in a game that looks better than most games which perform poorer on faster video cards.
So one has to ask himself: if this sort of thing is possible, why doesn't everybody do it? Well, probably because they lack the skills, but if this kind of eye candy can still come out of a (very) old generation of graphic cards, shouldn't we have to expect more from these resource hungry new games?  Well, the subject is very complicated and a lot could be said, we'll just have to settle for this game here having the best performance/quality ratio, surpassing even the excellent Freedom Fighters.
"I'm going to cut off your head and feed you to the fishes" "Huh?" "I said that before I go off to bed, I will do the dishes"
Modern times blessed us with many wonderful things like mobile phones, fast food, room service, porn channels and 3D surround. Our prince can't talk to a cell, order food or watch porn, but he can hear beautiful sounds from all around him, perfectly balanced and accompanied by gorgeous music, you know, the kind that flies straight into your playlist. Needless to say that in the last few years the overall quality of the sound in video games has increased tremendously so you're not exactly complimenting a title by saying "this one has great sound", it's more like "well, this is how things work now". So I'll just stop right here, but not before adding that some puzzles are solved by listening carefully, not to indications but to the ambient, a very nice touch.
"... and in these troubled times it's very important that we stick together and that we... hey, where is everybody?"
So there you go, considering this year is almost coming to an end, having thought things over, I can say that in my opinion this is one of the best games of the year. I mean, sure, there have been a few others that I played with a lot of interest and had a great story mixed with addicting gameplay laid over a great engine and all of that, but Prince of Persia has always been a special game to me, and seeing him back in action fills my heart with joy. 
A flawless game, no bugs or poor design decisions, everything done right, with taste and refinement, this title has been thoroughly polished. Of course, I can't forget the camera that has been driving me crazy at some points in the game, but I have to admit that it's better than what I have seen in any Tomb Raider for example, and even if it's hard to adjust to, it's pretty useful in the end. Oh, and I liked the bitch, not Lara, I'm talking about the one in this game.
Before advising you to buy this game, I'd like to address a warm thanks to my pants that did a great job in holding on to my dick even after watching Weapons of Ass Destruction. Well done, you can go home now.
|
