Prince of Persia (360) Review

Everyone has their dirty little secret. Mine is that I didn't play the Sands of Time trilogy. In gaming circles, that's blasphemous. At the same time, it put me in good stead going into this game; With no preconceived ideas of what the franchise "should" be like, I wasn't going to be swayed by the menacing face of change. And you know what? This game is pretty damn good.

The Prince of Persia franchise rose to fame during the last console generation, where its unique take on the platforming genre and interesting time-control mechanics were met with rounds of applause from critics and fans alike. With that story all wrapped up by the end of the trilogy, it was time for a reboot and a fresh direction for the first next-gen installment. Prince of Persia, for the 360 and PS3, is a clean start for the franchise that lays the foundations for future greatness, but falls short of legendary status itself.

The game begins with the luckless Prince - a different Prince to the one from the previous trilogy (and who isn't actually a prince) - caught in a sandstorm in the middle of the desert. He's lost his donkey, Farah, and the king's ransome in stolen gold she was carrying on her back. More to the point, he's hopelessly lost. So when he comes across a beautiful princess named Elika - or rather, when a beautiful princess named Elika falls on top of him - it's little wonder he follows along. Unknowingly, the Prince walks right into the middle of a war between Elika's people, the Ahura, and the all-powerful God of Darkness, Ahriman. Now unwittingly involved, the Prince joins forces with Elika in order to free the four lands of Persia from the hands of Ahriman's corrupted soldiers - and so he can walk away from this alive.

PoP is beautiful. The world has a calming, watercolor look to it that is hard to describe but absolutely beautiful in motion. The draw distance is amazing, with hills stretching on for miles in all directions. The character models are spot-on and the animation quality is amazing; Aside from the Prince's head scarf, nothing ever clips, and there are no "jagged" gaps between different frames of animation. The entire game just flows, and half the fun of this experience comes from watching the world unfold around you.

The gameplay is a refreshing change of pace for the genre. Doing well is as much about letting the Prince glide gracefully around the world as it is about making precision movements. What's even more amazing is how simple it all is. Jump toward a wall at an angle and the Prince will run across it for as far as his momentum will carry him. Jump directly at a wall and the Prince will climb it. Climb to the top of a pole and press A to make the Prince scamper along the ceiling. While performing any of these motions, you can press A again to jump away from the surface, or B to interact with objects on the wall - such as metal rings - which you can use to regain lost momentum and continue your gravity-defying run. There's no button mashing required here; Time your inputs properly and the Prince can traverse entire chasms without ever having to stop.

There are two sides to the level design. On one hand, it's amazing to watch. Running across a wall, jumping out across a chasm, climbing a wall on the other side, jumping towards a pole and then swinging to the next solid platform sounds thrilling as I type it and is the sort of thing you'll see every ten seconds in PoP. The downside is that, in order to make everything flow so well, the level design is incredibly simple. It all looks great, but actually performing these acrobatic stunts requires hardly any button inputs at all. In some cases, you might not even need to touch the control stick after your initial leap, as the levels themselves are designed to push Prince towards his next stunt.

As you progress through the game, you will collect orbs called Light Seeds which - when you have enough - can be used to activate new Power Plates. The Plates give Elika and the Prince new powers for travelling about the world. The Red and Blue plates are essentially the same, bouncing the duo to far-away platforms. The Yellow Plate gives Elika the gift of flight, and the Green Plate gives the Prince the ability to run up walls. Each area in the game requires a different Power Plate, so the order in which you choose to activate the Plates also determines which lands you can access.

Elika is useful for other things, too. If the Prince isn't going to make a jump, tap Y and Elika will hurl him the extra distance. Fall off a ledge? Don't worry, Elika will reach out and grab you, pulling you to safety. Die in battle? Elika will revive you and let you continue the fight (although the enemy will almost completely heal whatever damage they'd sustained). The fact you can't actually die is a great idea: It cuts out any unecessary "Game Over: Would you like to restart?" screens (of course I want to restart) and does away with the need to replay huge sections of the level every time you fail. Not dying doesn't make the game easier, it makes it more fun.

As you progress through the game, you'll meet up with the four Corrupted warriors of Ahriman: The Hunter, the Concubine, the Warrior and the Alchemist. Each of the Corrupted rules over a different land, and you'll face each of them several times as you purge the world of darkness. Eventually, each one of them will release a different "trap" into the world, which will impede your progress whenever you travel through un-healed lands. For example, the Hunter releases black blobs of dark matter that travel up and down the many cliff faces in the game, forcing you to time each jump carefully. The Concubine releases a swarm of black bees that chase you whenever you're not on solid ground. Furthermore, these traps stack, so the further into the game you get - and the more Corrupted you subsequently piss off - the more traps you'll have to deal with. By the end of the game, you'll be skillfully avoiding all four traps at the same time. As you can imagine, things get rather hectic.

Like the rest of the game, the combat in Prince of Persia focuses on flow. X is for sword attacks, A is for acrobatic attacks, B is for grabs/throws and Y is for magic attacks, courtesy of Elika. To fight most effectively, you need to pause between each button press, watch the Prince execute his move, and then take in any visual clues that will help you string the combo along. Say you pressed X - for a standard sword attack - and then followed it up with a B-button grab. The grab will launch the enemy into the air, at which point the action will go into slow-motion. Here, you can either press A to leap into the air yourself, or you can press Y to throw Elika at the enemy and use her magic instead. Or, you could use a magic attack, and then jump into the air and knock the enemy back to the ground with a sword attack (X). Combo trees literally fold out in front of you as you play, and it makes the combat satisfying even if you're generally not very good at beat-em-ups. As far as looking cool and controlling intuitievly goes, the combat in PoP is unmatched.

Despite my glowing praise so far, Prince of Persia isn't perfect. That doesn't mean it isn't worth a purchase - because it most certainly is - but it does mean that certain aspects of the experience are too disappointing to ignore.

For starters, there's one glaringly obvious problem: There's virtually no combat. In healing each land, you'll fight one of the Corrupted about six times, but other than that, you'll face maybe five regular enemies. Five. There's just not enough to stuff to hit. When the combat system is this good, they really could have done with throwing in a few more opportunities for battle.

Another more pressing concern is the game's difficulty. Or rather, the lack thereof. Prince of Persia is criminally easy, and it isn't because you "can't die". It's because I didn't even know what it looked like to have Elika save you mid-battle until the very last area of the game. It's because traversing the game world is a largely automatic process. It's because the traps released by the Corrupted overlap each other in such a way that, provided you time your initial leap well and don't break the Prince's flow, none of them will touch you. Nothing in this game is challenging. And once you realize that you're not being seriously threatened by anything - not even the immortal servants of a dark God - a lot of the atmosphere is lost.

That isn't to say the game completely falls flat. The many dialogs between the Prince and Elika are genuienly entertaining, and there are more than a few quote-worthy lines thrown about. During one exchange, they discuss dreams, and the Prince warns Elika that "If you dream too much, that's all you'll ever do." Another conversation has the Prince berating Elika for always staring at his ass, to which Elika sarcastically replies "I thought you lost your ass?" It's amazing that a game with only two main characters can keep their conversations fresh and interesting for the entire experience.

In the end, the lack of combat-oriented action and overall difficulty shouldn't turn anyone away from the game. Prince of Persia is as much about enjoying the ride as it about reaching the destination, and when the ride is this good you can hardly blame it. The game flirts constantly with perfection but ultimately does little more than tease; The best game of this generation is hiding in this package and I can only hope the inevitable sequel brings it out. In the meantime, you'd have to be batshit insane not to check this out.

A must-buy.

Sonic Unleashed (360) Review

Oh right, there's this blog thing I update sometimes.

There are three parts to Sonic Unleashed. The first is the daytime gameplay, in which Sonic blasts madly around beautiful locales at frightening speeds. That part is good. The second is the nighttime gameplay, in which Sonic inexplicably turns into a large, lumbering "Werehog" that plays like God of War but without any of the fun. The third is the manifestation of Sega's unbridled hatred for their fans. That's right, folks: Sega fucking hates you.

Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. In fact, it's rather good. In particular, the daytime Sonic levels are remarkably fun. Designed like narrow racetracks winding in and around the game's varied locales, Sonic will barrel down alleyways and bounce across rooftops in some of the most solid platforming this series has seen in years. Gone are the days of dodgy camera angles and twitchy controls. In Sonic Unleashed, the camera is either directly behind Sonic or facing him from the side in one of the game's many 2D segments. Should you find yourself wanting to backtrack across a 3D path, the right stick allows you to spin the camera around on a whim. Sonic himself controls with less precision than he once did, but the lack of responsiveness allows you greater control at high speed, with it now possible to maneuver Sonic with some degree of finesse.

There are some curious changes to the button-mapping of certain abilities, but nothing that will set any player back too far. Most notably, Sonic's signature Homing Attack is no longer mapped to the jump button (A), but rather the X button. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense, given that anyone who has played any of the previous 3D titles is going to have to relearn this basic maneuver. Even more curious is Sonic's new air dash move also being mapped to X, meaning a failed homing attack now sends you barrelling off course and (usually) to your death. Considering the old input isn't even used for anything, the change in control strikes me as completely unnecessary.

Sonic has some new toys to play with, of course. The Quick Step, activated by pressing LB or RB, lets Sonic sidestep to the left or right without losing any forward momentum. Sidestepping around enemies and obstacles while scampering down a straightaway is highly satisfying, and this really feels like a move that should have been in 3D Sonics from the start. The Sonic Drift is fairly self-explanatory, allowing Sonic to drift around tight turns without reducing his pace.

The daytime stages aren't perfect, however. The 3D sections are fun and visually appealing, but grow shallow fairly quickly. The 2D sections are far too brief and rarely feature more than a couple of moving platforms to jump across. I've noted in the past what importance Sonic's momentum used to play in the series and how little it plays in the Sonic games of today, and so I'm thankful that Sonic Unleashed takes some baby steps in the right direction. Alternate routes become available if Sonic takes jumps at a high enough speed, and loops are no longer automated, transforming them once again into legitimate obstacles. Yet, the game still features an unnecessary Boost move, which cheapens the whole experience somewhat. You'll rarely miss an alternate route if you just boost the whole time, and loops will never impede you unless you intentionally slow down. Removing the boost from the game entirely would improve it tenfold.

As noted earlier, the 3D segments are flashy but generally hold little in the way of deep gameplay. The game would benefit from being more 2D-oriented, with the 3D segments only used intermittently to add flavor to the game, rather than serving as the main attraction.

Come nighttime, Sonic transforms into the Werehog. And it's... boring. Not bad, just relentlessly dull. It masquerades as a deep brawler - with flashy multi-button combos and whatnot - but is ultimately far too shallow for it's own good. You'll never need any combos other than the standard "X,X,X" or "Y,Y,Y" moves, which do everything you could possibly want. Enemies are generally slow and timid in their attack, and only become dangerous in the later levels where you'll be facing an unholy number of them at once. The platforming here is generally solid, but the levels are entirely linear and frankly, it's just too slow. I don't advocate the idea that Sonic needs to go fastfastfast, but this is too far towards the other end of the scale. I mean, there's a button to make the werehog run - he doesn't run by default - but it is little more than a jog compared to the exhilarating platforming of the daytime stages. Not to mention these levels generally drag on for 10-20 minutes depending on how good you are, resulting in most of your playtime taken up by these boring exercises in mediocrity. You probably won't hate it, but you won't have any fun here either.

And that, sadly, is where my generally positive attitude ends. There's a dark side to Sonic Unleashed, and it comes in the form of devious level design. When I say it's "devious", I really mean it was crafted by Satan himself. From about the mid-point of the game onwards, each level is the pure embodiment of evil, causing me mass frustration and a dangerous amount of burst blood vessels. There's enough money in my swear jar to single-handedly rescue the entire African nation from poverty. Fuck this game.

The game takes the route-memorization aspect of the Sonic Rush series - a mild annoyance there - and magnifies it, making half the levels literally impossible to beat the first time through. Now, I'm all for more difficult games, and if I was breezing through the final levels then I'd no doubt be complaining that the game is too easy. But I like real difficulty, where I die only if I make a mistake, not just because Sonic Team are dicks. Take the ice level, Holoska, for example. You do a lot of running on water in this level, and in order to maintain that high speed, you're required to boost. This becomes a problem when the camera switches to the 2D perspective, and you can no longer see what's approaching. And so, Sonic Team threw in a few floating spike traps which not only hurt you and knock you out of your boost, but also cause you to drown instantly. Let me reiterate: You do not - you cannot - know these traps are there until you have already been hit by them.

Repeat the above scenario but with other neatly-placed traps: The "Eggman Spring", which Sonic's homing attack locks onto automatically and which usually bounces you in the opposite direction you want to go, often to your death. The sudden pit in the middle of an otherwise solid platform that you've already fallen in to before you could even see it coming. The grind rails that abruptly drop off and send you falling into an abyss. The game is jam-packed with "oh fuck off" moments that make me absolutely certain that this is the sort of game you make for your enemies, not your fans. "You little faggots didn't like Sonic '06, huh?"

Furthermore, the final level - which alternates between hedgehog/werehog gameplay - takes at least 40 minutes to complete if you're good. That's 40 minutes of bullshit. Now imagine losing all your lives after playing half an hour of it. Does it hurt? It will do, when it happens to you. It happens to everybody.

I suppose it's somewhat testament to the quality of the daytime stages that I kept coming back for more despite the game giving my testicles a kick at every given opportunity. Consider this review your one warning: The game gets unfairly and intolerably unforgiving in the final hour and a half, which is comprised of the final level and no less than three "final" boss fights. When you finally see the ending, you will hate this game with a burning passion. It will have repeatedly wronged and mistreated you. It will have forced you to sit through more than an hour of the least enjoyable gaming moments in recent memory. It will have sacrificed your firstborn child to appease its pagan God. But at the end of the day, at least half of the game is still undeniably fun, and it is unlikely that these horrible experiences will keep you away for long.

Whether or not you should buy Sonic Unleashed depends entirely on what sort of person you are. If you're patient enough to sit through the uninspired and dull werehog stages and to put up with the unfair design of the last few levels, then you'll find that there's a lot to like about the rest of the experience. If you don't have the time to waste playing a shittier God of War, then there's little reason to bother with this at all; The daytime stages take up too little of your total playing time to be worth the $50 price of admission.

Also, don't buy this game if you don't like getting fucked by bullshit.