Moody Gamer

I was debating whether to write something or not, but since I have a lot of things to write, I decided to keep on going. As I promised from the previous post, here are my impressions and thoughts about the new Prince of Persia.

First thing anyone would notice from the Prince of Persia (2008) is that the Prince doesn’t sound like a prince from Persia, but rather a western dude. That aside, this new Prince of Persia game is pretty good.

It uses the same engine that powers Assassins Creed but with added Cel Shading effect to give the game its new distinctive and magical look. The animation department is pretty good as expected from a Ubisoft game, especially a Prince of Persia game.

Unlike the last Trilogy, the new Prince uses the aid of princess Elyka in this adventure. So no more messing with time element here, this is all gone since this is a different re-imagining to Prince of Persia story, so it has nothing to do with the previous Trilogy.

Story wise, the game is ok and has a very predictable story so nothing really impressive in that department.

What really is cool about the Prince of Persia, is the platforming element, which is taken to the next level, Ceiling walking anyone? Also, a departure from the last Trilogy is the more focused one-on-one fights. No more the Prince going against a dozen guards. With that, there is now more complexity to the fight and more depth to it, or so I thought. As soon as you learn the controls, all the fights are really the same, from the first mob to the last boss. There are some encounters that have some small gimmick changes to make them less repetitive which helps a bit. Also, Elyka adds some depth to those encounters. It almost transforms to some sort of reduced Soul Calibur fighting game.

Also, the game doesn’t have any kind of loading, it is one seamless world and it is very very beautifully designed. Just going through them is enjoyment on its own.

The game is moderately lengthy, you can expect 15 hours of gameplay if you aim to reach the end, or you could go and collect every sphere there is to add more length, but that is merely a small thing to keep you doing that.

All in all, this is Prince of Persia as you would expect it. Is it better than the last Trilogy? Story wise it isn’t, that is for sure. Gameplay? It can go to preference, I would say they are both great and give you different yet similar experiences.

Yes, I finally managed to get around and complete the single player portion of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3. All I can say is that it is a well done campaign with lots of variety in it. Each side boosts nine missions each can take you from as little as 20 minutes and as long as one and half hour, depending on both how you play and the mission it self.

The variety is quite nice as well, even though you have your destroy the other side in between the lines, it has been designed in a way that it really isn’t at the fore front and not direct at all. The units are also introduced quite nicely as you play along the missions and the variety is quite big that I often end up not using some of them. Not because they are useless, but rather because you can pretty much use any kind of combination of units. The secondary modes for each make the decisions even broader and less restricted.

The cut scenes are not bad, but I honestly expected alot more from a Red Alert franchise. I also hate the fact that CG cutscenes are very few. Bring back the win and lose CG cutscenes from the original Red Alert and C&C games (During Westwood days). Those made me want to win and lose each mission just to watch them.

Anyway, the game is still sitting on my desktop just because I still want to explore the MP side of the game which I really see some great fun to be had there, thanks to the very different factions and the fun units you control. Add in the fact that combat can be on land, air or sea makes it even more engaging.

On another Note, I started playing the new Prince of Persia and until now, I am liking it. I managed to manually configure my Rumblepad 2 on it but still can’t manage to get vibrations to work. That was lousy work from Ubisoft to be honest. More impressions to come soon.

What you get when you slap Prince of Persia gameplay with Grand Theft Auto freedom, historical setting and DirectX9/10 graphics? You end up with Ubisoft’s new and ambitious game Assassin’s Creed.

Ambitious as the game may be, it ended with a big flaw I will address later in the review. The game is set around Jerusalem (Al Quds) and just around the third crusade war. You play as an Assassin who works his way to take out key personnel to make sure that the war is under control. Of course Ubisoft are using fictional characters and story even though the setting is historical and so are some characters (Saladin and King Richard). They did a very good job of blending such a setting with a story of their own. So whatever you will be doing in game, it really didn’t happen in reality. In addition, you are actually playing in a simulated history kind of way. The main character is put into a machine that allows you to go back into the characters past, up to whatever grand-grand father memory and few his memory. In our case, the memory goes back to the third crusade era and your great grandfather is actually an assassin. The story might seem complex but it really is simple and there are hardly any twists in it.

If you have ever played Prince of Persia (The Sands of Time Trilogy) then you will be right at home with the controls of Altair (The assassin you control). The idea is that you are give names to go and assassinate but you aren’t pointed to who or where they are. So it is your task to look around in the city for clues. They are given by other assassin’s who work with you in your Creed. A step before that is to find where they are and is done by climbing a View-Point. These are tall buildings (Marked on your map) that you can scale in a remarkable way to get a view of your surroundings. Which also allows you to see any information giver that allows you to get closer to your assassination target in addition of getting more details about how to get to them with the least trouble. The View-Points also allow you to see other “side quests” such as helping citizens, roof-top race against time, assassinating some guards. The missions span three major cities and each city is literally huge with a lot of people going about their daily lives, preachers, guards and even pigeons.

The game graphics is marvelous and so are the character animations (at least the main character). The graphics support high textures and awesome use of HDR and bloom effect. This game is one of the very few that properly implements these settings so that they really contribute to the immersion. You really just can’t believe how well a city looks with all the people in it until you see the game in motion. This brings us to the animation part of the game which is so smooth and realistic that walking in the cities is jaw dropping. Add to that some great roof top maneuvers and jumping and you can see how much fun it is to move around in the city without doing much anything.

The visual effect is combined with some great music that really fits that game and changes based on the event, whether you are being chased, stalking someone or fighting.

The biggest flaw in the game, and I am sorry to say so considering how much I praised it, is that it is very repetitive. You can argue that most games are repetitive, but Assassin’s Creed repetition is so obvious. The main mission asks you to gather information and assassinate a person, which is almost the same every time. The side quests are worse. Hardly any variety from the same scale that tower, help that citizen, get that flag (which is useless for both the PC and PS3 versions), kill that templar and so on. If you do all of these quests, you can easily clock over 50 hours of play, though you will feel that you are forcing yourself to do them rather than trying to have fun doing them.

So a great game with great ambition but plagued with hideous repetition. I still recommend this game but don’t force yourself to do all the side quests after you experienced the main ones, since it gets repetitive after that.