Prince of Persia (360) Review

If everyone has a dirty little secret, then mine is I didn't play the Sands of Time trilogy. The Prince of Persia franchise rose to fame during the last console generation, where its slick platforming and inventive time-control mechanics earned it a reputation as the pinnacle example of its genre. With the trilogy completed, Ubisoft have opted for a fresh start with their latest installment, ditching the characters and settings of the previous games in favor of a brand new Prince and a brand new world to explore. What Ubisoft have achieved with Prince of Persia is nothing short of outstanding; A remarkable game in its own right, that lays the foundation for future greatness, but falls just shy of legendary status itself.

The game begins with the luckless Prince, caught in a sandstorm in 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, it's no surprise he decides to follow her. 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 hopefully, walk away from this alive.

Let's get right down to it: PoP is beautiful. The world has a calming, watercolor look to it that is difficult to describe, but absolutely stunning 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, with almost no clipping or choppy animations in sight. The game simply "flows", and half the fun comes from watching the world unfold around you.

The gameplay itself is a refreshing change of pace for the genre. Controlling Prince across complex platforming sections is very much like playing an extended quick-time event; The Prince automatically runs up, down and along various surfaces as he runs into them, and interacts with environmental obstacles - such as grip rings and cracks in the wall - via single-button inputs. Pressing the correct buttons with appropriate timing creates some very acrobatic sequences that are truly a sight to behold.

The obvious downside to this style of gameplay is a perceived lack of direct control. Jumps are largely automated and so you don't often have to aim them yourself, for example. It can often feel like you are merely offering Prince suggestions, and for some this disconnect between player and avatar might be off-putting. Personally, I find it allows me to focus more on the game's stunning visual presentation and the Prince's graceful, acrobatic movements, creating a more cinematic experience than any other game to date.

While the game might be accused of hand-holding during platforming segments, world exploration is far more open-ended. As you progress through the game, you collect orbs called Light Seeds, which can be used to activate the four types of "Power Plates" scattered across the land. Power Plates are color-coded, and each allow Prince to travel to areas previously inaccessible. The order in which you activate the Power Plates is entirely up to you, giving you the freedom of tackling the game's various lands in whichever order you please.

Elika, the Prince's beautiful sidekick, adds her own level of complexity to the gameplay. Not only can Elika chime in during combo attacks with her own magical spells, she can also save Prince from dying when he misses perilous jumps. Elika is very chatty, and her interactions with Prince are one of the highlights of the game. The two characters are very well-written, and their growth over the course of the game - both individually and as a team - is one of the biggest writing triumphs of this generation.

Like the rest of the game, the combat in Prince of Persia focuses on flow. You have four basic commands at your disposal: Jump, Grab, Sword, and Elika. String them together in almost any order you wish, and Prince will execute unique, elaborate combo attacks. The combat is not particularly difficult to do well at, however there is a degree of skill that separates new players from pros. It's all about visual clues: If Prince is far away from the enemy, Jump in close before using your Sword. If your attack knocks the enemy too far back, activate a long-range Elika attack. Respond to changing battle conditions quickly enough and you can string together combos that seem to go on forever. The game is unrivalled at providing a satisfying, cinematic combat experience.

Despite my praise so far, Prince of Persia isn't perfect. While it is certainly worth a purchase, its few flaws are too disappointing to ignore.

For starters, the brilliant combat mechanics are criminally underused. So rare are actual enemies that finding them is often an unexpected surprise. There's just not enough stuff to hit, and that's a damn shame considering how fun the fights can be.

A more pressing concern is the game's lack of difficulty. Like many platformers, obstacles move in such a fashion that a well-timed initial leap will allow you to rush between them all without getting hit. While this works for most platformers, it only serves to make Prince of Persia significantly easier, due to how automatic the platforming has become. As soon as you realize how neatly everything fits together, playing the game becomes as simple as tapping buttons in time to the cues, something so simple you only need to be half-awake to do it.

In the end, the lack of combat opportunities and overall low 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 for that. While I would have liked a little less automation, it is not such a significant problem that it dampens my enthusiasm for what Ubisoft have created. The game flirts constantly with perfection but ultimately only teases; 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 crazy 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 pure hatred, manifested in video game form. That's right, folks, SEGA hates you, and Sonic Unleashed is proof.

Sonic Unleashed is a difficult game to review, as many of its problems have little to do with the quality of the product. At the very least, it is not a bad game. In fact, parts of it - such as nearly every daytime Sonic level - are rather good, and a definite step forward for this ailing franchise. Come nighttime, however, and Sonic transforms into the Werehog. And it's... boring. Not bad, just relentlessly dull. It masquerades as a deep brawler, but the combat is too shallow for any of the elaborate combos to matter. The platforming here is generally solid, but the levels are entirely linear and frankly, it's just too slow, especially when sandwhiched between the exhilarating speeds of the daytime stages.

Sonic Unleashed contributes to the evolution of the franchise by giving Sonic some new toys to play with. 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 really feels like a move that should have been in 3D Sonics from the start. The Sonic Drift is another new move that allows Sonic to drift around tight turns without reducing his pace, and again it makes traversing the stages a lot more fun than it has been in the past.

Despite improvements to the controls, and a noticeable increase in the quality of stage design, the daytime stages frequently stumble over problems from the past. The 3D sections may be fun and visually appealing, but grow shallow quickly; They are a test of twitch reflexes and stage memorization more so than they are tests of platforming skill. The 2D sections are far too brief and are similarly as simple. Gone are the days when momentum was the cornerstone of the Sonic experience, instead replaced by a Boost move so overpowered it almost feels like cheating. Boost power is so easy to accumulate, and using it makes Sonic so hard to kill, that almost all the game's obstacles - bar the ever present bottomless pits - become trivial.

That isn't to say the daytime stages are bad, by any means. They are the highlight of this product and the best Sonic has been since his Genesis days. But the flaws SEGA have been grappling with for a decade are still there, and causing problems where there really is no excuse. A more concentrated effort on ironing out these niggling problems would improve the game tenfold.

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. This is the kind of level design that punishes you for not being psychic enough to know that there was an insta-death pit right around that corner that you couldn't see, or an enemy that pops up in a certain place and drowns you without any chance of escape.
The game takes route-memorization and trial-and-error gameplay to its absolute extreme, making half the levels absolutely impossible to beat without prior knowledge of where all of the obstacles are. I'm all for more difficult games, but I much prefer real difficulty, where deaths are my own fault, not just the result of Sonic Team being dicks.

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. When you do finally see the ending, the wave of relief - "It's finally over!" - is indescribable. The game 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 of this generation. 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. However, if you don't have the time to waste playing a poor imitation of God of War, nor the healthy heart required to survive the game's more punishing segments, 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 price of admission.