Blogs Games I Own: The Prince of Persia Series

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/09/15/games-i-own-the-prince-of-persia-series/

 

Only played the second one, and I thought it was genuinely very good. Yes the story was pap and the character's skin deep, but the levels and the gameplay more than made up for it.

And I still, still get the willies thinking about the Daharka. Boss battles as they should be done. Tense, frightening, and thoroughly memorable. Plus, the Daharka was brilliantly realised. The way everything faded to brown as it approached was a very clever visual clue to let you know how close you were to something you only ever ran away from.

In the end, I got so freaked out by it I had to ask Joe to do the Daharka runs for me. Yeah, I'm a big ***** sometimes.

 

I played and enjoyed SoT right through to the end. I wish I could've played through WW - I did manage a fair bit, but the savegame fudged and wasn't salvagable so that bollocksed that up. The third one never interested me, there were/are better games around. The fourth (start of a new series?) I've not played much, but actually looks pretty darn good.

 

It's pretty good, but not as good as SOT if you ask me. There's an excellent sense of character, but a few very frustrating and formulaic mechanics.

 

only played sands of time here too.. guess play the last one someday- looks good

 

owned them all, played them all trough, liked the second most, very closely followed by the first. the third was nog that good, i agree. the fourth is beautiful, graphical and storywise. I did really like the fighting mecanism there. but there were only boss battles and far too easy mini-bosses. i liked the fact you could try and practice all your moves and combo's on the grunts in the first 3. the 'youcanneverdie' mechanism is stupid, but the short return of Farah made me laugh.

 

I've been a reader of bit-tech for a long time but this is the first time I have succumbed to posting something. Firstly, Joe, I am surprised that you did not link to GOG for the Sands of Time rather than Steam. Steam seems to get automatically linked in computing websites whereas GOG and Impulse, two superior platforms in my view, miss out.
Also, if I were to recommend a version of the game to play, it would definitely be the PC. I have never held with the view that the controls for platformers are better on a console and the improved graphics are worth it on their own. The easter egg in the console versions does not make up for their shortcomings in my humble opinion.
kenco_uk, the PC version of the Warrior Within does have some fatal bugs but there are savegames available on the internet that allow you to get around them. An internet search should reveal a solution for most of the problems. I was lucky and only ran into a minor one that did not allow me to get the second ending without someone else's savegame. Ubisoft apparently could not be bothered to patch the bugs in this or the PC version of Beyond Good and Evil (for which there is a fan-made patch if you run into a glitch like I did).
As for the trilogy itself, I would have to say that I greatly enjoyed all three. That was despite the obvious flaws of the Warrior Within (the oversexualisation of 'Shahdee' was particularly ridiculous), and I really didn't mind the story or gameply of The Two Thrones. At least they tried to do something different.

 

Only linked to Steam as it was the first result on google and I know that it translates the price to the reader's local currency - whereas GOG is always in dollars.

And don't get me wrong - I played it on PC too and did keyboard and mouse for all three, but I remember being mighty annoyed that I couldn't get the easter egg.

Also, yay for new recruit - +1 rep for making good, valid points in your first post.

 

Is there a particular site you'd recommended?

 

I think I got my savegames from 'game copy world' (I believe that was the name anyway). I haven't visited it in a while but it was a legitimate website when last I did (no copyrighted material, files to allow pirating, trojans, etc). All the same, I would be careful to use NoScript or something like that, although the worst things you should be subjected to are ads for Russian brides and virtual strippers for your desktop.

Thanks for the welcome, Joe. I enjoy your articles, by the way. I even bought SiN and Emergence, despite your warning. I hate series being unfinished, though - I would love to see a sequel to Anachronox (although with some improved gameplay), as long as Tom Hall was heavily involved. I wouldn't trust Square Enix not to ruin it if they did it themselves.

 

I've always meant to play Anachronox, but never got round to it. I remember reading an article ages ago about it (or maybe it was The Nomad Soul) and how it was clearly the most evil game universe ever invented because the coins were pyramid shaped, thus impossible to carry in your pocket.

 

For some reason I thought you had, else I would have suggested it when you were asking for games to play. Actually I was going to suggest you write an article (by which I mean blog post - I don't like the word 'blog') on it.
Some things you would need to know: you will have to play it on Windows Xp (as I'm sure you realise); there are three (I think) patches for it (one official, two fan-made - and actually I don't believe you need the official one with the other two); and importantly (I found this out for myself) you will need a slowdown program (I recommend CPUgrabber). I only needed it in two places, once near the beginning and once near the end. On my Q9450 (stock), I set the affinity of the game exe and CPUgrabber to one core and set CPUgrabber to 70 (I think). You don't need to lock the game exe to one core normally but I did it here to avoid running multiple instances of CPUgrabber.
And lastly, be prepared for the first six or so hours of the game to be a grind but it improves greatly from there. There is all sorts of hidden (well, only obtained under certain conditions) content (e.g. dialogue with NPCs) and I found one had to be prepared to commit oneself to the game to enjoy it. I rushed through it initially (pressure from work) and found I was missing out. The gameplay is somewhat lacklustre throughout but I found the story and bits of humour made it worthwhile.
(Apologies for the long post)