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Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Video Game (PlayStation 2)
I played some early incarnation of Prince of Persia on my old Mac IIcx in college, and it was a decent diversion at the time. (my other favorite time-wasters at the time were Maelstrom (Asteroids on steroids, a truly great game), The Incredible Machine (an ingenious freeform problem-solving game in which you built Rube Goldberg devices to achieve set goals), Apeiron (a Centipede update that showed how much the enjoyment of Centipede depended on that rolly-ball); interest in Tetris was waning, and Crystal Quest was already old hat. God, it's a miracle I got any work done at all.)
     This game is the second "new generation" PoP title. The coolest innovation of the first (aside from all the stuff that came automatically with a contemporary PS2 game, like hi-res graphics and 3-d gameplay) was the ability to rewind the game ten seconds if you screwed up in some dangerous but fixable way. It was fucking genius, because 90% of the time in these video games, your character dies as a result of a stupid mistake. When you jumped into a pit of deadly metal spikes, you just held down a button until you moved back to the ledge you were on before you leapt blindly to your death. So satisfying not to have to start a section over from the last save point every time.
     Otherwise, the game involved complex (though not always difficult) puzzles involving a lot of jumping around and pulling switches and moving boxes and crap like that, interspersed with some sword-fighting. I thought the game was great. No task was too hard that I couldn't do it within at most 3 tries, except for bosses, who were appropriately tough. I would have given that game a 9.0, I think.
     This game is just as good, I think, and it improves on some things that I didn't even know bothered me about the first. But it's a sequel, so it doesn't seem quite as special.
.: . . . . : . .8.9. :
3/30/2006 • link

2 comments:


Anonymous Anonymous said...

But wait, there's more!

I presume you've finally gotten far enough in the game so you've acquired the "mask," or some shit, which is this great little thing that makes you look like a mummy (seriously, the animation is great, with flowing bandages coming off you every which way) and allows you to essentially rewind any time you want, with no limitation. The only issue...apparently you're bleeding from a sucking chestwound underneath all those bandages, or someshit, and thus your health is constantly going down.
Tick
tck
tk
t

So none of that "sitting there and staring at the puzzle until you can get it in one shot" that you do so well. RUN! Oh god! The pain! Try again! RUN!

*splat*

Again!

4/10/2006 12:18 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I left this comment elsewhere, before I could do it here.

But now that there's a home: just wanted to mention that despite being awesome in many other ways, the third PoP game "Two Thrones" has a major flaw. You instantly dies when falling from a height approximately equivalent to jumping off my mom's ranch home roof.

Pretty weak.

4/10/2006 5:41 PM  

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