Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within

Cafe Society
1

I rented this from Hollywood Video, and boy am I glad I only rented it and didn’t buy it. I haven’t gotten far at all, but *man * is it dark. I really liked PoP: Sands of Time, loved it, in fact. This one seems to have none of the charm of the original; a lot of cool moves and stuff but a dark, depressing Prince with lots of issues, no Farah anywhere in sight, and blood and gore and heads flying off for no earthly reason.

I heard that they made him more angry because guys didn’t like him, it appealed predominantly to female gamers. What’s wrong with appealing to female gamers? There’s a fairly big subset of us now.

Anyway, I’m wondering - is it even worth it to keep going? Seems kind of boring to me. Anybody play it through?

2

Technically the WW might be the superior game when it comes to graphics, moves, and general game play. However I prefer the first one because it was so much more romantic. SoT seemed like it was pulled out of a fairy tale as opposed to WW which just felt way to dark.

Given that most video gamers are males I can see why they’d want to produce games that attract them. SoT was a great game and it received a lot of critical acclaim but I don’t think it actually sold all that well. I purchased my copy for 20 bucks and it came with Splinter Cell as well. I got WW for 30 bucks from Best Buy because it was on sale and I had a 10 dollar off coupon.

Marc

3

I recieved it from gamefly. Glad I didn’t buy it. It was dark in a "desperate to attract teenage boys by appearing hardcore/XTREME TO THE MAX!!! They poocihed prince of persia.

And was it necessary for every girl in that game to wear a thong?

4

That first girl didn’t even seem to be wearing a thong, just same chains. Naked ass all over my screen. Not that that’s a bad thing, but how blatant can you get?

Gonna re-play SoT instead.

5

I’ve played it through and recommend playing more. I don’t think the game’s as good as SoT overall, but the storyline gets very interesting with regards to the temporal interactions. I’m looking forward to playing through again for the alternate ‘better’ ending.

6

I own both. SOT was infinitely better in terms of tone and story.

WW added some decent innovations in fighting, and the gameplay was quite a bit longer than SOT. But I didn’t really care about finishing WW all that much, where getting to the end of SOT was downright compulsive (although ultimately disappointing when the story did a Star Trek-style reset-button).

It really came down to the character and tone in WW v SOT: the Prince and Ferrah in SOT were characters you could care about, and you wanted to see what happened to them. In SOT, we get to hear the Prince’s internal, sometimes immature or selfish, dialog about what’s happening and what he thinks about things as the story progresses. We get some actual character development going, and it was pretty good.

The Prince in WW is a foul mouthed snotty bastard. Character development is minimal – his motivation is to not die, which doesn’t change, and he doesn’t evolve. In WW, his first real comment to another character is “you BITCH!” How charming.

I really didn’t care for the heavier sound track in WW. SOT’s was lighter and stayed out of the way, but was there enough to be mostly atmospheric and give a persian tone to things. WW’s music was, well, not quite metal, but harder than I’d care for. Not much variation from three chord heavy rock, it didn’t add much beyond: “ooh, tough fight, let’s crank up the guitar”.

Graphics were meh in WW – very dark. The character models looked like hell, especially the Queen of Time, she looked awful. Farrah and Prince’s look in SOT had issues, but this, to me, was a big step backwards.

I’d probably still buy WW if I had to choose again – it’s rare to find combat+platforming that’s even halfway involving on the XBOX. But the game does have issues.

Speaking of combat+platforming, I’m currently making my way through God of War on PS2, which is big fun. Keep an eye out for it if you like that sort of thing.

7

Re: WW steel thongs. check this out. :slight_smile:

8

Same cartoonist re: SOT. I thought this was pretty funny.

I always do that – hit submit, and then think of another relevant (well, somewhat) thing. Sorry.

9

I, also, rented it from Hollywood. I returned it the next day and got into a 20 minutes conversation with the guys behind the counter. We all agreed it wasn’t a very good game.

I agree it was too dark, but that wasn’t the biggest drawback IMO.

What I hated was the camera control. I got to the end of the first sequence where you have to leave the ship and gave up. Trying to fight the baddie was too frustrating. You’re fighting an enemy on your left, then the right, then behind. It would be much better to angle the camera so you’re always looking forward and take it from there.

That and the fight controls and combos. What crack-addled meth user came up with these? It would be easier to learn Sanskrit than try to memorize all the combos needed.

I’m picking up SoT this week. Haven’t heard anything bad about it. Yet. :slight_smile:

10

Duffer: SOT is much more sane than WW, which at times can be easy, then insanely difficult, then boringly easy. In SOT, there’s a decent “tutorial” level, then the difficulty ratchets up slowly for a while. You should do OK on a rental.

If you rent SOT, you’ll probably hit the “palace defenses” and get stuck, look here when you do; scroll down to “A Secret Passage (12%)”, there’s an explicit walk through that puzzle. Or solve it yourself – it’s not that difficult, refer to the diagram visible on one of the walls. Good luck!

11

Duffer: My Gamefaqs url is being blocked. Sorry. They’re apprently waging war on external linkages. Please go the search page, type “prince of persia the sand of time”. Click on XBOX->FAQ. Click on DeadMeat X’s walkthrough, it should be the second item.

12

That was another problem I had with the game. The tutorial took you through doing A, then doing B, then C and so on. The very next stage you had to do A through X in order and very fast or whoopsie doodle into the pit you go.

It combined with the tone of the game to make me shrug and put it back into the mailbox.

13

Thanks for the advice squeegee.

14

I really liked the sweet storyline of the first, but the major reason I’m playing WW is because they left it at such a horrible ending. Why couldn’t he just shag her or something? Why does it have to be always be complicated?

Anyway, I’ve got it till Thursday, so I will try to play a little more.

15

I liked both SoT and WW. I found the sequel to be far more frustrating than the original–and I actually liked that. SoT was a bit too easy and repetative. (I finished SoT in two days. WW took me two weeks of on-and-off gameplaying). WW had more difficult puzzles, longer gameplay, and was more challenging. But I also had difficulty with the complex fighting system in WW. I really don’t need Mortal Kombat-type combat control in something that is essentially an action puzzle game. Also, everybody is right in saying that the story isn’t as compelling as in SoT. I think that’s another reason it took me such a long time to finish WW. It couldn’t hold my interest for more than 1 hour at a time, whereas SoT I finished in two 6-hour spurts.

16

My thoughts exactly.
Maybe some little sugar-high whipper-snapper will be able to memorise these comboes but it just plain annoyed me.
That and the fact that you have to use a different combo for every damn boss.
I played it for about 45 minutes and have never played it again.
I absolutely loved Sands of Time and can’t for the life of me understand why they screwed up such a lovely gaming experience by making it for hardcore gamers only.

17

O, c’mon. It wasn’t that hard. The secret was to learn to block, then get in a couple of good hits. Lather, rinse, repeat. Plus only about 2 or 3 of the combos were very useful, so they weren’t that hard to remember.

WW wasn’t terribly hard. But it also wasn’t terribly fun.

18

I don’t need all those combos, either. I learned combos in Soul Caliber II, and they were good and cool. I liked learning those.

Anyway, I started playing it again and got so annoyed with the dismal mood I yanked it out and put in SoT. I’m going to re-play that now, and return WW today.