So Friday saw me perhaps foolishly overlook Red Dead Redemption in favour of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the 10th game in the PoP series and not a sequel to 2008's un-subtitled Prince of Persia, but an 'interquel' set in between The Sands of Time (which I played last week) and Warrior Within. And it is definitely NOT a movie tie-in.
I did have the game preordered at GAME, along with a limited edition pack of PoP playing cards, but after seeing the queue for Rockstar's Wild West opus, I ducked into HMV instead, whom I discovered were giving away the 1981 version of The Clash of the Titans on BluRay with every purchase of The Forgotten Sands on the PS3. Sold.
So anyway. The prince (unofficially named Dastan in the upcoming Disney film) has been sent by his father (who you had to slay in the first game, having become a sand monster, although that never happened due to the prince rewinding time to before the event, stay with me) to the kingdom of his elder brother, Malik, to learn how to be a successful ruler. Upon his arrival, he finds Malik's palace under siege from unknown invaders, and Malik himself fighting a losing battle. As a last resort Malik unleashes the fabled army of King Solomon, which happens to be an unlimited swarm of sand creatures led by a huge demon named Ratash. With the help of Razia, Ratash's benevolent female counterpart, and the powers she bestows upon him (conveniently including the ability to rewind time a few seconds) the prince has to find a way to defeat the demon and banish the army before the world is overrun and all is lost.
The ice power makes for some very tense moments.
Initially I felt like the game was holding my hand a little bit compared to the prequel, all of the moves and actions seem a lot easier to pull off, and everything moves a lot slower giving you more time to pull them off. The combat has also been noticeably simplified, sacrificing strategic thinking and positioning for waves and waves of easily killed but overwhelmingly numerous enemies for the player to wade through, which sounds like a negative point but in all actuality is extremely satisfying. The major new point is the prince's ability to flash-freeze water, allowing himself access to previously unreachable locations.
Aside from that, the game is pretty much what you'd expect from the series: puzzle-solving, acrobatics and a healthy dose of swordplay. The graphics are spot-on, highly detailed, and the only two visual qualms I had are with the prince himself: his face is distinctly simian looking and his arms have a plastic look about them, similar to Dead or Alive's Ryu Hayabusa. But the detail in his armour is spectacular in HD.
Well, it's an enjoyable game. I'll confess I've only played The Sands of Time and the 2008 PoP up until now, and this game lacks the boy/girl partnership that was done so well in the others. Razia pops up every so often, but it just isn't the same. But that's made up for in the game's cinematic and epic closure, set in the epicenter of a huge sandstorm. Verdict? Not going to win any awards, but fantastic fun and great for any fan of the genre.
So, Metro 2033 then? I haven't got this linking thing worked out. Metro 2033 is a post-apocalyptic First-Person Shooter based on a Russian novel of the same name. The game puts you in the shoes of Artyom, a man born in 2013, the final days of Moscow before the world was devastated by nuclear war and forced to live his first twenty years (2013 + 20 = 2033) in an underground settlement in the city's subway system (hence 'Metro') before leaving for the mutant-infested surface on a mission to save the world. As gamers, I'd forgive you if you think you've heard all this before.
But unlike Fallout 3, the game it shares it's back story with, Metro is a very linear experience, and Moscow is a lot darker and a much more depressing setting than the Capital Wasteland. The scenes set in the subterranean towns are very reminiscent of the flashback/forward scenes in The Terminator, with survivors living woefully in overcrowded squalor. Heading outside is also very different, with the game being set a lot sooner after the nuclear disaster than Fallout 3, making for a more hostile world. The air is still polluted, necessitating the use of a gas mask which requires frequent filter changes. Water is irradiated as you'd expect, and hurts you on contact as opposed to the accumulative nature of the radiation in F3.
Unable to find a Metro 2033 screenshot, I'll have to make do with this stock photo of Birmingham.
Okay, no more Fallout comparisons I promise. The game, as I've mentioned, is very dark and depressing, and mostly (so far, I've only played a couple of hours) spent skulking around in dark tunnels with hideously underpowered weaponry. Ammunition, as you can imagine, is a commodity, and is actually used as currency, with pre-war ammo worth more than the low quality bullets created after the bombs. Things begin to get a bit weird when ghosts start appearing in subway cars, and Artyom is plagued with visions of tall, lank creatures in the darkness, taking you up to just about right where I'm at.
Okay, I can't decide whether this game is really good but hard going, or really, really shit. But it definitely is one or the other. The graphics and atmosphere are both phenomenal, and the fact that the cutscenes play out in first person brings a feel of Half-Life 2 into the mix. Voice acting is hit and miss, with some of the frankly strangest accents I've ever heard flying around, and the characters are all grizzled Russian men, without fail, to the point of not being able to tell them apart. I'll reserve judgment for now, as I'm firmly on the fence with this one.
And that's about it. I finished Alan Wake, and the game seemed to lose it's way a bit. After the first half being genuinely scary, reminiscent of Jame's Herbert's fantastic novel 'The Dark', but not actually that good, the second half brings the gameplay up to scratch, with the story descending into a camp buddy comedy. The whole thing is capped off with a baffling ending that answers no questions and leaves no room for the planned sequels or DLC to follow on from. So the game, while decent, is not a patch on what it could have been.
James Herbert is about the only author this guy doesn't name-drop.
So that's that then. I'll try to be on time next week, with Dante's Inferno, hopefully a verdict on Metro 2033 and I just might possibly get my hands on the original Lost Planet. Time will tell.
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