Leveling Down

Prince of Persia looks phenomenal, but where’s the gameplay?

Surprisingly, Prince of Persia is one of the worst games I’ve played that I can remember. Usually when I buy games, it’s under the impression that it will at least be decent, and get maybe a B or so in my book. But Prince of Persia just doesn’t cut it. Here’s a game that has great presentation, but gameplay that is the perhaps the worst I’ve played in a long time. The ironic thing is that this is the first time in a while where I’m not complaining about a game for being too short. In fact, with Prince of Persia, I just wanted to be done with it because of how bored I got. Read on for my reasons why.

Good
- alluring cel-shaded graphics look
- oodles of dialogue
- pleasant level design

Bad
- lack of gameplay
- lack of an interesting story
- frustrating collectathon gameplay

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Infinite Undiscovery – This game is definitely not as bad as the reviews say (never trust professional reviews on JRPGs these days) and is actually pretty fun. Too bad I have to play through it three times if I want all of the Achievements though…

Prince of Persia – Hopefully I can get through this by the end of this weekend and get rid of it next week. Fell asleep a couple times last night when I was playing it.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Seems nearly impossible for cmfl3x and me to be on at the same time long enough to continue our co-op campaign these days. The AI seemed like a pushover until our last mission we just played. We nearly got worked there.

Unreal Tournament III – Decided to open this up a few nights ago and check it out. I then proceeded to drop it about 10 spots in my backlog queue as I completely lost excitement to play it. Maybe I’m just not cut out for that type of old school gaming anymore…

and finally…I got a new PC! Dell has been having awesome deals this past week, so I bit on one.

My new rig arrived with the following for $475 shipped after tax:

- slim tower case
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale 2.66GHz 3MB L2 Cache
- 4 Gigs of RAM
- 640 GB hard drive
- DVD+/-RW
- Wireless network card
- Microsoft Vista Home Premium
- 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3450 supporting HDMI

When I received the PC, I discovered that the new graphics card only had DVI and HDMI output. I run a dual monitor setup, and one of them is VGA so I was kind of screwed there. I could have gotten adapters for both (an HDMI to DVI and a DVI to VGA) but figured might as well just get a good graphics card while I’m at it. The only problem is that my PC is in one of those smaller tower cases now so I can’t use normal sized PCI cards. Instead, I had to learn about something that’s called a “Low Profile” PCI express card (I’m totally out of it when it comes to PC stuff these days). So to look for a new graphics card, I had to find ones that could actually fit in my system and still deal with my meager 250W power supply. I ended up spending about $100 (good thing my wife doesn’t read this blog) on a 1 GB GeForce 9500 GT. Apparently that’s the best graphics card for someone in my situation: low profile slot, 250 W power supply, and has a VGA port. I’ll just transfer this current HDMI out graphics card to my HTPC so everything works out. I’m all excited now though to play more PC games again. Bring on Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3!! (And maybe bring on Crysis while I’m at it haha)

This Prince of Persia reboot may not do it for everyone…

Having completed Mirror’s Edge & Brothers & Arms: Hell’s Highway this past weekend, I decided to jump next into the new Prince of Persia game that was released by Ubisoft last month. I didn’t know too much about it, but I had heard that this was another one of those “love it or hate it” type games. I figured I might as well check it out and see whether or not a hardcore gamer like myself would feel about it. After all, the graphics have a nice cell-shaded look and Prince of Persia is kind of a household name so I figured why not. However, after getting about halfway through, I gotta say that I’m not really feeling this game.

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Mirror’s Edge – getting closer and closer to the 1000. The question at this point is whether I want to get the full 3 stars on all 23 time trials (69 total) or just quit after the 50 required for the Achievement…

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway – pretty short game and the storyline is picking up a bit in the second half of the game. I should have it done by this weekend.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – at first I was pretty annoyed that the game was co-op (because I’d be playing with an AI controlled partner the whole campaign) but then my friend JPKewl got it so now I’m enjoying it a little more now that we can play all the missions together. We’re kind of slowly going through it whenever we both have time to play.

Unreal Tournament III – ended up picking this up at Best Buy last night since it’s on sale for $20 this week. I realize that it doesn’t have matchmaking and most of the online is dead (has co-op though), but I actually miss the game since I loved Unreal Tournament and UT2K4. I figure $20 is enough to play against bots on 50 different maps if that’s what it comes down to. Wish this version still had the Assault game type though but this video sold the game to me.

Prince of Persia – will probably get started on this next as my primary single player experience once I complete Mirror’s Edge and Brothers in Arms: HH this weekend. Heard it was sort of short so I might as well get through it.

Left 4 Dead – feels a little weird going back to campaign mode after spending time on versus mode. When you’re on a good team it’s awesome but when you’re with bad/non-mic players it’s probably one of the worst gaming experiences ever.

Going to change up my weekly thoughts entries to shortened gaming related thoughts I’ve had each week. Here’s this week:

Left 4 Dead – Finally got the 1000. Dang it why did one of my friends have to just get the game this week though. Why couldn’t he have gotten it weeks ago?!

Shadowrun – Cool now maybe I can get back into this for multiplayer since I no longer have another multiplayer game to play at the moment.

Mirror’s Edge – Stupid Time Trial modes. I better just suck it up and beat them. Maybe I can clear them out this weekend.

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway – I should try to beat this soon so I can get rid of it while it still has some value.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – I wanted to start it but it’s getting bumped down so I can get through Brothers in Arms first.

Call of Duty: World at War – Tried it out again recently and maybe I won’t be able to hit the first Prestige after all. It’s just not fun anymore and the fact that I’ll have to put maybe 20 more hours in to get it means I’m pushing it back in my backlog queue in hopes the desire comes back later.

Prince of Persia – Looks interesting, but dang it there’s an Achievement for collecting like 1001 gems or something in the game? Ugh I’ll get to it later then. Same reason I ended up putting Naruto: Rise of a Ninja off.

Gears of War 2 – Epic announced that they’re actually going to release a patch to balance the multiplayer game sometime this month? Too late. And why aren’t they fixing the matchmaking that still takes 10 minutes to find a game?!