Ahh, gaming. It's so much fun, but so time-consuming.
I've just recently finished playing Prince of Persia 2 for Xbox, subtitled Warrior Within. I don't recall when I picked it up, but I played it straight for a week, morning and night. I wake up around 11 am or so these days, and I have to be in at work about 3 pm. Luckily, it only takes me two or three minutes to get to the office. That leaves me almost 4 hours of play there. When I return, it's about 9 pm, and I can only play for just a couple of hours, as I've other things to do.
I don't know what that works out to, but I'd say it took about 20-30 hours to complete. I know that's a big window, but as I was playing, the plot kept on twisting and when I had thought I was nearing the end, I was in fact nowhere near it. So I lost track of time. No pun intended.
The pun comes in because as the Prince, you can control time in a number of ways: you can turn back time a few seconds (it's enough to save your life in many, many situations); you can slow down time for a few seconds (i.e. you are fast, and everyone and everything else is slow); you can do a number of other moves which I didn't use all that often, such as knocking back enemies that are around you, or turning the screen red and moving at super-fast speeds to dispatch those around you.
The gameplay stays true to the first Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: lots of good, multi-enemy fighting; lots of semi-challenging puzzles; lots of acrobatics; a mixture of all of the above. Fighting is easy. All four face buttons are used, and along with the left thumbstick, you can quickly and stylishly do away with all the demons. The combo list is readily available from the pause menu. In what seems to be a trend this game season, you can also dual-wield weapons. Having two weapons makes fighting more stylish and fun. There are special combos for the Prince while utilising two weapons. The off-hand weapon, however, is not as sturdy as your main sword, so they deteriorate after a certain period of use. Luckily, you can just throw it away whenever you please, and if there happens to be an unsuspecting enemy nearby, you can decapitate it, too.
Yes, you can decapitate. And yes, you can slice and dice demon bodies into two—horizontally or vertically. As such, this game is not for kids, as most games these days are. The story is darker than the first, and there are some moderately frightening moments, mostly when the giant sand wraith is chasing after you and you must perform precise acrobatic manoeuvres with split-second accuracy in order to avoid his lethal tentacle thingys.
Which brings me to one pet peeve. You die a lot in this game, despite the ability to turn back time (cue Cher music). Of course, there are ample save points (special water fountains). But the annoying thing is this: when you die, there's this flourish of graphics and sound and it tells you "Game Over". Duh. Then it proceeds to load something, as it says "Loading", and finally, after countless seconds, the game gives you the option to retry or quit. I found this very annoying.
These days, I don't see the need for games to state the words "Game Over". This is more of an arcade-style game thing, since you don't generally save your game and start later in an arcade. You either pump more quarters into the machine or you don't. When it's the latter, the game is over. In a console game, there's no need to tell me this. Don't load anything. Just flourish and say retry or quit or reload last saved game or whatever. Don't make we wait five seconds to choose retry and then wait again for the level to reload into memory. Basically, the game is over when I finish it.
There was one more thing I found annoying. No, it wasn't the hard rock soundtrack. In fact, I got used to it, and it even got me in the mood to fight when it did come on. It was the boss fights. There are basically two kinds of bosses: one is a giant demon that grabs you, stomps on you, or whacks you; the other is a female with two large blades.
The former is armoured. You have to run round back to his calves and slash them up until he falls to one knee. Then you climb up his back to his neck and slash away. Problem is, he can grab you and throw you off, sometimes into a chasm, but usually into the floor or wall. This hurts. There's a pattern. He gestures a certain way before he grabs you, but the controls are difficult at times, especially when the camera is rotating, so when you think you are moving out of the way, you're actually doing nothing. You become a wall decoration soon after. It's not that I couldn't beat the thing, but I found it quite annoying. Luckily, I found a glitch. If you run away and save the game after meeting this bloke, he'll be gone when you return. I like it.
The female is worse. She is not armoured. She does not block overhead jumps (i.e. run towards your enemy and vault off them to their behind and hack and slash). She does however, have two really big, long, seemingly extra-sharp blades. A couple of slashes, and you are screwed. She's quick, so if you're caught in one slash, you're gonna get the next three or five, no matter what. Same problem if you try to block. You're caught in the block, but then she does a lower slash attack and you can't block that. So you just have to avoid her altogether. Again, there's a pattern. But it's annoying. And boring. I'd much rather she was less predictable and a little weaker.
The graphics have been beefed up since last year's PoP. The sound is debatable, as hard rock does not really say "Persia" to me. The voices are fine, but the repetetive one-liners during fights can get tiresome, especially in the long boss-fights as you'll hear the same things over and over again too soon.
The puzzles were fun and not so challenging that they would slow down the pace of the game too much. There was only one instance where I was completely clueless as to what to do for more than a few minutes.
The acrobatics are worth mentioning. All the old favourites (running up and along walls, jumping off walls, swinging on horizontal poles, jumping to and from vertical columns, balancing on beams, climbing up, down, and along ledges) are there, as well as some new comers (descending down a tapestry with your sword, running along the wall with a rope, swinging around columns during battle while performing a sweeping strike).
The story is not bad. Nothing Booker-worthy. But it does well in that it gives a purpose to all the running around and fighting.
Minuses: "Game Over" screen and lousy boss fights. Hard rock soundtrack.
Final Verdict (remember, I don't actually have any sort of rating rubric): I'll give it 88%. A solid A.
