Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
Prince of Persia as a game series has one of the more interesting origins stories which we won’t go into. PoP as a Ubisoft franchise has a less interesting background. The formerly 2D Prince made the leap to 3D with Mattel’s PoP 3D. To all intents and purposes, it was rather ordinary. In 2003, Ubisoft (who had acquired some of Mattel’s gaming library a year or two previously) released Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Here, in order to lesson the rather punishing lessons of trial and error the play would often endure in a PoP game, the reversing time mechanic was introduced. It was a great game with fantastic atmosphere, a great story, brilliant platforming based on contextual button presses and some button mashing combat that was neither here nor there. It came out and didn’t sell all that well until Ubi cut the price rather substantially wherein the game found its audience. For the followup a year later, Ubi looked at what the perceived barriers to purchasing the game and decided to lesson the whole Persian aspect, darken it up, more combat oriented and flushed any atmosphere down the toilet. Warrior Within was shash. The trilogy capping two Thrones was better but by then the damage was done.
Flash forward a few years and Assassin’s Creed, flawed it may have been, sold gangbusters is followed by a new Prince of Persia.
The new game is a sort of return to the atmosphere of the first game, with more platforming, less combat, a better story.
And its a great game being held back by TERRIBLE controls
The controls are quite simple and the game likes to do things for you. Which, if you’re a person who likes to have more than minimal control over what you’re doing can be very frustrating. You jump across a gap onto a wall. But you don’t have to press jump again because that will just have you jumping off into a chasm.
Time and time again, the game’s control system will confound your expectations and having you leaping to your doom because your mind can’t accept you don’t need to press so many buttons.
Just as Sands of Time featured the rewind time mechanic so that you didn’t have to constantly restart at checkpoints, this game has your constant companion Elika as a magical princess who can rescue you if you fall.
Many people have praised the removal of death of an obstacle to playing the game. That’s so much bullshit. All it is is a checkpoint system hidden by a cutscene of some chick grabbing your hand.
The game is sort of an open world. You get to a new area, jump for a bit, are confronted by a boss. Once you beat the boss, Elika fertilized the area and there are little glowing lightseeds you much collect. Think of them as Agility Orbs and you’re close to the mark. So the game is frustratingly good in so many ways, but ruined by unintuitive controls that are fairly loose in response to you inputs. But the graphics are rather spectacular with very solid sound. Presentation is obviously Ubisoft Montreal’s strong point. Gameplay, isn’t.
As a fan of Sands of Time, I’m highly disappointed by this title. Fans of Mirror’s Edge and Assassin’s Creed (you know, people you can sell any platformer to as long as you say its parkour) will be just as disappointed as real gamers.
controller1.com rating 1/3 (should have been 3/3 if the damn thing was playable)
I recently started the most recent Prince of Persia game and very shortly into it I realised how much I wanted to go back and give Mirror’s Edge another try. I had given up around the 60% mark, sick of the trial and error approach to platforming. Here’s the review written after I had grown weary of the game and Fallout 3 was fast becoming an all-consuming addiction.
Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it gelled a bit better than the first half of the game. There are still thing not quite right about the game, with waaaaay too much trial and error and combat that’s more frustrating than catering for a Vegan at a Barbecue. But I seemed to enjoy it a lot more, perhaps without the distraction of Fallout 3. The story wasn’t anything much but I did enjoy the cutscenes ending the game. Of course, Portal’s end credits song called “Still Alive” is better than Mirror’s Edge’s end credits song called “Still Alive.”
Would this game be better if it was a third person game? I don’t know, its pretty good as it is and a third person perspective would be a different kettle of fish altogether. Combat in third person would probably be better but then the game would then just be Uncharted. DICE are still to be commended for trying something so radically different from Battlefield and I hope the sequel (we can but hope) takes a lot of the criticism seriously.
Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Since I was so much wanting to see the end of the game, I bumped the difficulty down to easy for the last two chapters. As far as I can see, it made absolutely no difference in terms of making the combat less painful or the jumping (especially the penultimate leap) more predictable.
I’m glad I made the effort to go back and finish the game, despite its difficult last few levels. Even though the levels all seem to be variations on the same thing, it never felt boring apart from those occasions where you are trying a difficult jump. Usually it comes down to you doing it wrong.
I’ve amended our original review to reflect the change in thinking. Its rare that I quit a game because of frustrating gameplay and come to finish it later and actually like it.
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360, PC Developed by DICE. Published by EA
Parkour is the the buzzword of the moment. So when the first person game Mirror’s Edge was announced, from the makers of the Battlefield games no less, people took notice. Platforming and First Person perspectives have never had a happy home in gaming (c1 has previously reviewed two of these- Duke 3D and Call of Juarez), and most FPS games of the last 10 years have eschewed this style of gameplay, putting it in the “too hard” basket.
Mirror’s Edge is about Faith, who’s a runner who’s a courier. She’s asian, got a tat and has an athletic figure, in stark contrast to what some on the net would prefer. The game is a platform game where you run across the tops of buildings, leaping between skyscrapers, bounding over obstacles, running through corridors, walkways, balconies, up ladders, down pipes, etc. Mostly without a gun. Your runner’s sense will show objects that you can interact with by them glowing red (I’ve made the joke many times how the faceless villains could fuck these guys up with some well placed spraypaint), ie when you need to jump to the next point- look for the pipe that’s now glowing red.
Then there’s the combat. There really doesn’t need to be much of this in the game but it helps if occasionally you knock out a guard or disarm them. Occasionally you can use their weapons against them, though there’s a popular achievement/trophy if you don’t use the guns. The combat is kinda painful though it wasn’t what put me off the game half way through. The actual raison d’etre of the game is the platforming of the trial and error variety. And what kills any joy out of doing this is the fact the checkpoints are rather sparsely placed throughout some of the levels. There are some rather painful jumps that if you miss, the amount of retreading you must undertake becomes rather repetitive.
The graphics in the game are very nice, with a steady framerate (essential to surviving the jumping without motion sickness). Sound is also a high point in the game and I can’t say I agree with some of the common presentation gripes some have with this game- namely the Flash-style animations used for some in-between level cutscenes. Faith is an appealing protagonist but I will have to see if some improvements have been made to see whether the sequel is worth the time. I had to hang up this game around half way through
So I liked the game, to a point. I couldn’t keep up with the constant trial and error and re-doing a big section just to try again and fail again by falling again so I could restart and retrace and re-fail. It’s like watching Groundhog Day in a loop.
UPDATE:
I recently started the most recent Prince of Persia game and very shortly into it I realised how much I wanted to go back and give Mirror’s Edge another try. I had given up around the 60% mark, sick of the trial and error approach to platforming. Here’s the review written after I had grown weary of the game and Fallout 3 was fast becoming an all-consuming addiction.
Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it gelled a bit better than the first half of the game. There are still thing not quite right about the game, with waaaaay too much trial and error and combat that’s more frustrating than catering for a Vegan at a Barbecue. But I seemed to enjoy it a lot more, perhaps without the distraction of Fallout 3. The story wasn’t anything much but I did enjoy the cutscenes ending the game. Of course, Portal’s end credits song called “Still Alive” is better than Mirror’s Edge’s end credits song called “Still Alive.”
Would this game be better if it was a third person game? I don’t know, its pretty good as it is and a third person perspective would be a different kettle of fish altogether. Combat in third person would probably be better but then the game would then just be Uncharted. DICE are still to be commended for trying something so radically different from Battlefield and I hope the sequel (we can but hope) takes a lot of the criticism seriously.
Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Since I was so much wanting to see the end of the game, I bumped the difficulty down to easy for the last two chapters. As far as I can see, it made absolutely no difference in terms of making the combat less painful or the jumping (especially the penultimate leap) more predictable.
I’m glad I made the effort to go back and finish the game, despite its difficult last few levels. Even though the levels all seem to be variations on the same thing, it never felt boring apart from those occasions where you are trying a difficult jump. Usually it comes down to you doing it wrong.
Original Controller1.com rating 1/3 (This game epitomises ‘Your Mileage May Vary’)
UPDATED Controller1.com rating 2/3
So this week, Clint surprises us all by buying Mirror’s Edge on Day 1.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, DS. Developed by Ubisoft Monteal. Published by Ubisoft
Ubisoft presents a Ubisoft Montreal production…
Assassin’s Creed is an enigma of a game. It looks like a gorgeous open world stealth action game. It looks as though there’s millions of things to do in this [cliche] leaving, breathing city [/cliche]. Well looks can be deceiving. Assassin’s creed has a few tricks up its sleeve. You just have to do them over and over again.
Halo creators Bungie have often said that their games are 10 seconds of fun repeated over and over. Well Ass Creed is about 2 seconds of fun repeated over and over again. It’s like Ubi Montreal got wrapped up in how cool the locale and story was and forgot about making the gameplay varied enough (as GTA does so well). Obviously you can’t have bazookas and helicopters in a game set during the middle ages. Or can you?
SPOILERS (even though this game has been out six months, Flamey still has another 3 years before he can even consider it retro enough for his tastes. This spoiler is not all that much of a spoiler since the menus give it away before you’ve even pressed start and the game doesn’t wait 5 mins before it tells you the big twist)
This game is set in the present. Your character is actually accessing a trace memory on his ancestor (similar to the Matrix). Unfortunately, this serves almost no story purpose, kills the middle age realism by having techno looking menus, computer voices telling you you’re fast forwarding and the like. It even feels grafted on in some ways.
So, hi tech conceits and repetition aside, what has Unisoft done for us? Well, the game is fun to play, the towns are interesting to explore and combat and movement is fun, despite the incredibly wanky tutorial. By incredibly wanky, I mean super incredibly wanky in the vein of Final Fantasy wankery. Its pretty and it sounds very good.I quite liked being able to climb buildings though I found having towers more fun than missions because they were more frustrating than fun to be honest. There’s little skill involved in pickpocketing more luck. Interrogating barely works and stealth kills in order to assist an informant where somewhat more fun.
Metal Gear meets GTA meets the middle ages meets the Matrix meets hype and cute producer meets 5 million in sales. If AC2 managed to fix the basic gameplay issues, I’ll be there, since they’re got most of the elements right. As it is, if you can play it for more than a few hours without getting incredibly frustrated or bored, you might like this.
C1 Rating: 1/3
