New Prince of Persia vid shows acrobatics

The EG preview yesterday has removed some of my initial enthusiasm for this title.

Me too. I hate, hate, HATE QTE. And the jumping acrobatic bits looked a little bit too much like Ass Creeds.

That preview scared me as well. I’m hoping the QTE stuff has more emphasis on the timed event and less on the quick. If the reviews confirm that you can turn them off and the game still works I’ll have some hope, but it’s not a good sign.

I think even with them turned off it’s going to feel a bit too stage managed.

It sounds more and more like it’s not what I was looking for – ie a retread of PoPSoT with a spangly new graphics engine (which really does look phenomenally good).

The combat sounds quite bad, that’s a big concern for me. Sort of like the whole thing is one huge QTE without prompts (until it forces you into a proper QTE, with prompts).

But my main disappointment was the discussion of the voices and tone, which completely ruined my impressions of the game as a sort of Ico-quiet, Sigur Ros soundtracked, drenched in atmosphere-fest. I could have done without ‘comedy’ voice-overs ruining the lovely pictures for me, for sure.

Yeah. Real shame, that.

It’s sort of how the combat worked in Ass Creed though. More a case of hitting the right “response” button at the right time to counter blows and hit back. So I can see where it’s come from.

It really does look nice though, I’m tempted to keep my preorder in place just because it’s such a graphical showcase. But it’s going to feel a little like Dragon’s Lair in that respect I think…

Sands of Time had a comedy voice-over. It enhanced and improved the game. Still that was a different prince and I have the feeling that this might be like Comdemned 2 in that it just loses the character.

I usually ignore reviewers talking about voiceovers because I never find them anywhere near as grating as they do (exception: Blue Dragon), but that’s a good point. I’ll always thank Ubisoft for introducing me to Sigur Ros though. That was very nice of them.

I’ve been into Sigur Ros for about 5 years. Love ‘em.

I don’t know how people could never have heard of Sigor Ros before to be honest.

Its advert music at its purest.

Yeah, SoT did have the comedy voice-over and in that game it worked and it was fine, but I’d gotten the idea that this reboot was to have a much different look and feel to set it apart from the previous games. Seems like a missed opportunity at best and a gross misfire at worst.

Not really. If the did go down the introspective, quiet route they’d just get the ICO thing thrown at them even more.

By you. Yes you.

But I liked Ico! Seeing as Team Ico only seem to supply one game every four years, someone else doing something similar would be much appreciated.

Another case of angry internet men are angry, then?

It seems to me that this is a case of some wanting this game to be similar to example game A, or example game B. In the first case, this is only so because it shares an IP, and in the second case, it’s because it appears to share some similar mechanics to another game.

I’ve said before that a part of the poor opinion of this game was that it used a past IP, if it had an original IP then perhaps those with negative opinions could free themselves of the trappings of the past.

I don’t see why it has to be a Sands of Time remake (it’s not named so), and I don’t see why it has to be Ico 2. These are things that some want, yes, but I don’t see why this game has to be either of these. It seems like anger is directed at the game because the game isn’t the game that some want.

If only those whom I’m speaking of here could stop looking at what the game isn’t for a moment and actually look at what it is.

I think it looks particularly clever, to be honest, and lovely. It’s not Prince of Persia, that’s a given, it shouldn’t have used that IP. Ico just shouldn’t be brought into this, that’s just silly. But standing on its own merits it looks fairly interesting.

The art direction alone has my attention, the stylised nature of it, the floating islands and whatnot. It looks like they might really have an interesting story there, and it intrigues me.

I think that this is going to be a bit of a flop but only because some people are going to go in expecting and needing it to be what it isn’t, instead of trying to understand what it is.

The only valid argument I’ve seen against it so far is QTE, and that’s fair enough. I think QTE is an overused mechanic too, and I’d really like to know just how much QTE there is in the game. If it’s the same amount that was in the Force Unleashed, then I can forgive that and look to the rest of the game, which seems particularly unique.

As for the mechanics, they seem very much based on an organic, reflexive game, where one has to sometimes go by intuition and instinct. I’ve played games like that before and they were pretty fun, Assassin’s Creed was one of them and that’s another game I thought was particularly unique, yet was decried because of some flaws which could’ve been overlooked in favour of the many new and interesting things the game brought to the action genre.

But I digress, I won’t go on much more because this is a big post already. I can’t help but defend this game though, it looks really interesting, and it looks like a lot of love has gone into its development. I’m all for crying “Boo!” when a game is bad, but I feel that some are crying “Boo!” here for entirely the wrong reasons, and reasons that are more about flaws within the person than with the game itself.

Do you set yourself a minimum word count for your posts, Esha?

My complaint isn’t that it’s not a SoT remake (I don’t want one) or that it’s not Ico 2 (I don’t want that either). My complaint is that the game itself doesn’t appear to be turning out much like the original trailers suggested it would be, namely a calm, measured, ethereal, serious game.

Ubi only have themselves to blame for the rising dissent. Their marketing suggested one thing, which most people seemed to love the idea of, but at last minute it appears to be turning into something quite different.

You shut your filthy mouth!

Apart from me, Esha’s the best poster here. They should have their own site.

Bloody hell. You two should have a blog where you just type long winded posts at each other.

Yes…

This is the comment section, not the essay section.