The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

The Short


Pros
- Takes every issue I had with The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and fixes them.
- Two characters, each with unique weapon sets and playstyles
- Each character has their own story mode, and while they aren't particularly unique they are different enough
- Arcade mode is back and better than ever
- Co-op throughout, and it's less broken
- Wider scope of difficulties and improved continue system eliminates most frustration
- Weapons are much better balanced and have a better variety
- Graphics are smoother, effects look better, and the sound design is improved
- Easily one of the best action games on XBLA

Cons
- Finding all the secrets can be a huge pain
- Still sometimes has too much blood/effects on the screen to know what is going on
- Once you beat it 100%, there's little reason to go back. But that could be said for a lot of games (it hurts more with this one because I LOVE IT)
- Story is better and has some unique presentation elements, but is still inane gibberish at its core

Back to some good, bloody 2D action. 

The Long

I really liked The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, probably more than it deserved (maybe not; game was pretty solid). I actually bought it because my wife was going to be away for a week and I was bored, so I needed something to do. It took the whole week of just going to work and playing Dead Samurai before I finally beat it, and once it was over I wanted more. Since James Silva is the only dude working on these games, it took a while for the sequel to show up. But when it did, it was a day one purchase. If it had just been the first game with a new coat of paint, I still would have enjoyed it. But Silva instead took the original, very polished framework of Dead Samurai and ramped it all up to eleven. I kid you not when I say this might be my favorite action game of this generation. 

Even if I can't see what is going on. 

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is pretty much the perfect sequel. It takes everything that was great about the first game - the smooth combat, the hard but fair difficulty, and the great risk/reward feeling of conquering a room - and makes it better. Combat is faster but you are given more tools at your disposal to deal with the new enemies (and the variety in this game is much better). Your movements feel much smoother and the controls feel tighter. This game's combat is polished to such a crazy shine I seriously think other game developers should look at it as an example. "See!" I want to shout. "If one dude can balance this insanely difficult, multi-weapon, multi-charactered 2D game, then why the crap do your games have such stupid, unbalanced difficulty?" 

Sorry. Got off track for a second there.

Anyway, the list of improvements is pretty big, so let's just do the first one: you now have two unique characters! Yay! You have Yuki, the Dishwasher's sister, who now has a chainsaw her arm. You can also play as original flavor Dishwasher if that piques your interest. Yuki plays similarly but is still different enough to make the decision hard: she tends to be faster and better with arial combos (from my experience, anyway), and is also a better dodger. The Dishwasher is a little slower but deals crazy damage, at the expense of losing some of his dodge. Both characters are balanced well enough that one isn't better than the other (I preferred Yuki because she's so fast, but that's just my playstyle). Each has their own story mode (they mirror each other, but there's a few minor changes) so you are encouraged to play through as both. They also share XP, which is nice, so you don't have to completely commit to one if you don't want to. 

Plus, a weapon is giant scissors. Getting a Clock Tower vibe. 

The new weapons are great, and each character's sets are unique. Highlights include a giant syringe needle and "Nimbus" sword (that looks like Cloud's sword from FFVII) for Yuki, and giant Scissors and the slow but deadly "Gore Hammer" for The Dishwasher. This game also does an incredibly good job balancing it's "faster but weaker" weapons with its "slower but higher damaging" ones. Usually in games I just ignore the slower, high damaging weapons because I am never willing to sacrifice agility to end a fight slightly faster; the risk is never worth it. Vampire Smile manages to somehow make even its most cumbersome weapon (the Gore Hammer, which prevents you from doing a vertical dodge) useful, if only because it's damage is totally nuts. It's a rarity that I'll ever switch from the starter weapons in a game (since I've grown accustomed to them by the time new ones show up), but I did so frequently in Vampire Smile. I still have my favorites, but I often cycle through anyway, which shows the balance was just right all around. 

There are loads more finishers this time around, some of which are stupidly over-the-top violent.  

There are lots of other little improvements. Continues are infinite and free, meaning if you fail a room you just restart it with no penalty (other than having to do it again). Upgrades are easier to get, and items tend to be cheaper (probably since I'm not spending money on continues). You can find "beads" throughout the world that will unlock certain abilities (like slowly restoring health when attacking, etc.) which can prove extremely helpful. You can also have multiple weapon "sets," meaning you can cycle through the four much more easily (though I really only used two). A wider range of difficulties allow even the suckiest player to start somewhere, and while the ultimate difficulty isn't nearly as hard as it was on Dead Samurai, it feels more like a challenge and less like pounding your face against a brick wall.

All these improvements are, of course, layered upon the already superb combat system, which again has a heavy focus on dodging at exactly the right moment and being able to single out individual enemies (preferably by getting them in the air, if you are playing on harder modes) and picking them off one by one. Your extreme mobility makes you feel empowered, which helps since these enemies are relentless bastards that only get harder as it goes along. 

Suffer not an agent beastie to live. 

Arcade mode is back, with support for two players (and the second player isn't permanently invincible anymore), and you can co-op the story as mode. Arcade is bigger and the challenges are...more challenging (while also adding new factors in). It's a blast to go around murdering dudes with a friend, with each scenario being both fun and (at times) frustrating. It's just another layer of content stacked alongside an already good-length story mode (which you beat twice, too), so content-wise you are certainly getting your cash value. 

I'm going to say it one more time: Playing Vampire Smile just feels really good. It's smoother than the first game, the combat is fast paced and visceral, you feel like you are in total control, and it still offers a very fair challenge. It is just an extremely solid game. 

Even robots bleed. 

Graphics have seen a massive improvement. First off, sprites are better animated and are a lot bigger, which helps since in the first game they kind of looked like tiny blurry figures. There's a wider range of enemies to look at, with the ones returning from the previous game redrawn to match the new style. But probably the best graphical improvement are the backgrounds. Now instead of being pre-rendered ugly things they fit the pencil-drawn style of its foreground characters, giving the whole thing a grim, uniform style. If you hate black and gray you'll probably not like the look of this game, but I honestly thought it looked fantastic, like sketches in a notebook come to life. With that dissonance between the foreground and background is gone, the whole game looks much better. 

Music and sounds are good, as usual, though none of the tunes were particularly memorable. Effects are slightly toned down (if you can call the screenshot above "toned down") but it still goes bananas at times, but having brighter, cleaner sprites means you don't get lost as frequently. It's still a bit much, but that's the style now so I guess I'll live with it.

Oh wait, I forgot to mention the "story."

There is a story. It is told from two viewpoints, depending on who you play as. The Dishwasher's is just a straight run through, but Yuki's adds some gameplay elements when she kind of goes insane and you have to direct her around. It's a cool concept wasted on a poorly written script, with the story essentially being the same as the first game: robot corporations are evil and messed you up, go kill them. I'm not saying this game needs deep drama or anything, but the fact it's almost exactly the same is kind of lame. Whatever, I'm not playing this game for the story. 

Another full game with no dishwashing gameplay mechanic. I feel cheated. 

As it stands, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is a superb 2D action game. Every misstep, however slight, from the first game has been remedied here. It's fast, brutal, exciting, and gives you a genuine sense of accomplishment when you finally conquer that impossible room. If you have any fondness for these types of games, you are really doing yourself a disservice by ignoring Vampire Smile. I highly suggest picking it up, or at least getting the demo if you own an Xbox 360. Really, really quality stuff.

Now bring on Dishwasher 3!

Five out of five stars. 

Just...tone the effects down a little next time, ok? 

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

The Short


Pros
- Stylized 2D action game with an insane difficulty curve
- Plays like a 2D Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry game, and works surprisingly well
- 2D "sketchbook" style looks pretty good throughout, especially for the characters
- High difficulty, but extremely rewarding once you figure it out
- Large assortment of weapons with easy switching and crazy combos
- Includes a massive "Arcade" mode, with missions that have varying objectives
- Two player co-op (three with a guitar controller) for all modes
- Weapon unlocks, upgrades, and more
- Few games like it; gameplay shows a professionally degree of polish for an indie title
- Made by one dude. Seriously. That's insane.

Cons
- Seriously, this game is really, really hard. If you aren't into that, you should avoid it.
- Story is duuuuuuummmmbbbbb.
- Continue system is a bit too punishing and pushes things into the "frustrating" territory
- Blood is gratuitous and can become so overwhelming you can't see what you are doing
- While I like the style of the drawn sprites, the ugly 3D backdrops look straight bad
- Completely outclass by its sequel, Vampire Smile

Hint: This game isn't actually about doing dishes. 

The Long

It's no secret I really like indie games. Having been an indie designer/creator/developer/whatever myself for a brief stint of my high school and college careers, I have a massive amount of respect for people who keep with it, fight the odds, and produce something awesome after months or years of labor. It isn't easy, I can tell you from firsthand experience, so when something comes along that is so good it rivals big-budget titles, I have to stand up and give it props.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai comes very, very close to that lofty goal. 

Designed by one dude (James Silva), this game won an Xbox Live Indie content a few years back. The reward? $10,000 and the chance to put your game as a full XBLA release if you could get it made. James worked his butt off for quite some time before The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was ready to be released. And I can say that, with perhaps the exception of Super Meat Boy and Braid, I rarely see a team so small do something as incredible. 

Though this game has lots more blood than either of those games. 

The concept behind The Dishwasher is a simple one: take the extremely hard, combo-based, taxing gameplay of famous action games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry and translate that into a 2D setting. With it comes genre staples like juggling enemies in the air with guns, heavy amounts of dodging and being completely precise with your strikes, knowing exactly which weapon to use at what time, etc. Considering I love the Devil May Cry games (even if Bayonetta pretty much trumped all of them), and I love me some 2D games, I figured this would be a match made in heaven.

And it is. It comes dangerously close to being perfect. 

The story here is...well, it's stupid. James should probably go to his local college and pick some guys from a creative writing class or something for his next game if he really wants the story to be taken seriously, because both this game and it's sequel have stupid stories. Basically you were a dishwasher, and you died, and then you came back to life, and robots are taking over people's bodies or something and you have to kill them...and their maker...and everybody...and the chef at your former restaurant is also a samurai...yeah, it's retarded. It's told through comic book pages which is a clever idea, but really you don't need a story here. Kill everything. There's the story. All the rest is just bloated stupid.

It can be hard to see what is going on. 

What matters is the core gameplay is tight. It's also extremely hard, but it's a fair hard. There's a difference between failing over and over because you felt the game didn't give you the tools to succeed, and failing over and over because it's your own fault and you need to not suck as hard (Super Meat Boy comes to mind). Many, many indie games fall into the former category when they make their games "hard," most times filling their games with janky error or lack of polish (heck, professional games do this all the time too, usually the lower-budget ones), but I never felt this way on The Dishwasher, and I've played a lot of action games. Even on easy this game is completely brutal; one mistake can knock your health to nearly gone in just a few seconds, and on the harder difficulties you have to be practically godlike in order to just beat specific rooms.  But again, it's all in your hands. If you suck, you suck. If you get good at dodging (you have a dodge you can always do that renders you completely invincible during its duration, so you have no excuse), picking enemies off one at a time, and mastering the handful of weapons you can totally beat the game. I did. I beat this game on the hardest difficulty. It's one of the achievements I'm proudest of in my entire history of playing Xbox 360 games, and I got every achievement in freaking Bayonetta.

Seriously, do we need this many effects on screen? What is even happening?

It isn't all perfect, though. The continue system (where you have to buy expensive continues and can only have a max of four per level) is frustrating, mostly because continuing restarts a room with all the enemies, meaning you could be a few seconds near the end and still have to pay to retry it. Items are also expensive and have a cap, which leads to the annoying decision of risking a continue for a better run or eating your last heal and hope you don't die (if you continue, you don't get items back).

The visual overload can also be a pain. Once stuff gets crazy (with magic and blood and missiles and lazers and explosions and...yeah) the insane amount of blood every enemy sprays everywhere becomes visually distracting. You do sort of get over it (if you lose where you are just dodge for a bit; you're invincible), but it really should have been addressed, or at least given the option to turn these effects down in favor of gameplay. It makes the otherwise razor-sharp gameplay a bit sloppy, which is exactly what this game didn't need.

Seriously, too much blood. No idea what is going on. 

Aside from the main story, which will take you a hefty chunk of time and skill to beat even on easy, the game has a huge number of arcade missions to beat. These all have various goals, like killing a set number of enemies in the air, fighting off waves with locked weapons, etc. They get progressively more and more difficult (and the difficulty is locked, so...good luck) and provide a hefty amount of bonus content for those who just want to hone their skills. It's a great addition, and for a $10 game it really adds to the value.

In addition, you can play both the main story and the arcade with a friend, who is an invincible ghost-dishwasher, who when he dies he just goes away for about a minute before coming back. This can really help on the harder levels, where its basically cheating to dodge as the main Dishwasher and have your friend (on the invincible one) just kill everything for you. You can also plug a guitar controller in and strum it to do damage with a floating guitar, and while this addition is nice it's pretty much useless. 

And there goes the head. 

Your take on the graphics depends on your tolerance. The characters are animated well enough to work for this type of split-second gameplay, and they all look like they were drawn in a notebook by that creepy goth kid in High School who wore the Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and shopped a lot at Hot Topic. I think the sprites look fine and fit the gritty style. The backgrounds, however, don't fit the style at all. They appear to be rendered, which doesn't match the sprites, and they also look...well, straight up bad to be honest. There are a few better ones (the final level in the machine HQ is cool), but overall they look like crap. No sugar coating it. But it doesn't really matter, since you'll never look at them anyway, because if you do you'll die instantly.

Music is also just kind of there; with the exception of the final boss song I wasn't particularly engrossed. There's only a handful of songs anyway, but they work as background noise I suppose. 

Killin zombies. Mandatory for any game now-a-days.

Should you get The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai? Well...maybe. The sequel, Vampire Smile, is basically the same game with more fluid gameplay, a better single player, improved graphics, multiple characters, and more weapons. It also just plays better as a whole (though it is easier). It's like Gears of War 2 vs Gears of War: you admire the first game for what it is, but it's clear the second is the one you'll go back to. I suggest picking up the free XBLA demo. If you dig it, it's only $10, and you'll be well trained for Vampire Smile after you beat it. If not, you can probably just jump straight to the second one, though I do not for a second regret buying both (and I'll buy a third one, Silva! Make it happen!). Again, for $10 you are getting a ton of content, and if you don't mind having your butt kicked over and over (or if you enjoy it), there's a lot to love here. Fans of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden should really give this game a look.

Despite its mistakes, it still is a great XBLA title, and an achievement for indie games. Four out of five stars.

Going down...

Week in Review for 3/18/2012 - Indie Week

The bomb dot com

So for those not in the know, GiantBomb, my favorite gaming site, recently was purchased by CBS Interactive and is now a part of Gamespot. I was a little worried at first because, well, they kind of left Gamespot to make GiantBomb, and that sort of indie "we do whatever we want" mentality has been why the site has always been so great. That and Quick Looks. Quick Looks are eternally useful (and usually hilarious).

But it seems everything will end up alright, so I wish the very best to the Bombarders in their new offices. Keep the magic coming, guys. 

So this week I reviewed what I thought were overrated games and then did a Prince of Persia binge on Sunday because...why not? I didn't get all the overrated games I intended to, but I did hit the big three I really wanted to review, so we'll leave it at that.

It was 13 reviews this week, pushing us up to 115 grand total. Not as much as usual, but in personal life this week was pretty crap, so hopefully the next one will go better. 

I am uncertain what to do for next week's "theme." It was going to be "Underrated Games" (and still might be), but that theme can only go so far. So currently it's just going to be random slush that I review when I think of it (probably some JRPGs, retro PC games, and maybe some others). I am also considering booting up my windows and burning through my massive collection of PC Indie games and giving them reviews (as well as Xbox Live Indie Games), so we could have an Indie week. Maybe we'll do that this week anyway. Who knows.

Anyway, here's this week's batch. 

Heavy Rain - 1 / 5 Stars

Assassin's Creed - 2 / 5 Stars

Final Fantasy VII - 3 / 5 Stars

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - 2 / 5 Stars

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 3 / 5 Stars

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4 / 5 Stars

Secret of Mana - 2 / 5 Stars

Goldeneye 007 - 2 / 5 Stars

New Super Mario Bros Wii - 3 / 5 Stars

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - 4 / 5 Stars

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones - 4 / 5 Stars

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - 4 / 5 Stars

Prince of Persia - 5 / 5 Stars

You all have a great week.

EDIT: We decided on indie week. So enjoy reviews of lots of indie games!

Prince of Persia

The Short


Pros
- Reboot that takes a lot of the core Prince of Persia elements and puts them in an open-world setting
- Looks absolutely beautiful
- Voice acting is superbly done, with both the Prince and Elika portrayed well
- Simplifies gameplay while adding a whole new layer and shift in focus with its platforming
- Music is excellent as well
- Areas you explore are unique, interesting, and (again) absolutely beautiful
- Can't die; instead of forcing a checkpoint reload you just start a section over. Good design choice.
- I liked the ending, ok?

Cons
- Turns into a "collect-a-thon" pretty quickly
- Simplified gameplay elements take a bit of the challenge away
- Script is a bit too "modern" for the characters it portrays
- DLC Epilogue feels like a "Oh yeah, buy the next game"
- One-on-one combat is new and starts decent, but quickly gets annoying. Seriously, cut combat from these games completely. It'll be fine.

New series, new Prince. 

The Long

I've been pretty clear that I loved the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time series of games. They revolutionized the idea of parkour platforming, and were pretty good games to boot. After closing off the Sands of Time trilogy (and before adding The Forgotten Sands into the mix), Ubisoft split off and started making the Assassin's Creed games instead, a sort of weird "spiritual successor" to the Prince of Persia ones. They ended up being so radically different they decided to comeback to the Prince of Persia title in the aptly named reboot: Prince of Persia. Which I will now call Prince of Persia 2008 in some attempt to stave off confusion. Remade with cell-shaded graphics, a new engine (the Assassin's Creed engine, actually), a new batch of heroes and story, and no sands of time at all, can this one really pull of the same magic that The Sands of Time did back in 2004? 

One thing is for sure: this game is gorgeous. 

The story starts off with the Prince (or we assume he's a prince; it never really solidifies he's anything aside from a thief) getting lost in the desert and stumbling upon this hidden civilization. He then meets Elika, a princess whose kingdom has been taken over by a dark presence, and only she can purge the darkness and restore it to its former glory. Also there's like a tree or something that has to be revived in order to keep the darkness from coming back and messing everything up, which would suck. So with Elika at your side you go to the many different areas of this land, purging them clean of darkness through crazy platforming and restoring light to the land. Simple stuff.

It's all pretty straightforward until the ending, which pulls a Final Fantasy X style twist (I might have just spoiled it if you've played that game and not this one. Oops?) and then twists it back in an ending that pissed a whole lot of people off. Personally, I thought it was fine. Without spoiling it, it has your main character (who you are controlling during this) doing something that sort of undermines what you've been doing throughout the game. People thought it didn't work, but I disagree. I felt the character arc of the Prince (similar to the Sands of Time, actually, with him starting as a selfish jerk and slowly warming up to not being a selfish jerk thanks to a girl) made the ending plausible, though I will admit that it (and the "Epilogue" DLC) were probably also conceived so that they could sell you sequels (which are yet to come out). Still, it's a charming story throughout, and the banter between the Prince and Elika is charming and fills the whole "we all know they totally are going to fall for each other" tension that works so well in games like this. 

Plus, they are constantly saving each other, so we all knew it was coming. 

My only complaint is that the dialogue sounds really modern at times. Mostly the Prince's, and that's probably because he's voiced by Nolan North, aka Nathan Drake in the Uncharted games. Nolan North is famous for his snarky, funny characters who don't take anything seriously, and the Prince in this game is pretty much exactly the same as Nathan Drake, except Nathan Drake is probably a murderous psychopath under his cheery exterior. Since you could swap probably 90% of either men's one-liners and they'd still make sense between Prince of Persia 2008 and Uncharted, it's kind of...weird to play this game after playing Uncharted. Well, whatever, it works, but they could have at least tried to make him sound like he was from ancient Persia instead of just off the plane from California.

The core element of traversal is still here, but with some modifications. 

The gameplay has seen a radical change of focus since the Sands of Time games. In those, the game's main goal was to tax your button-pressing ability and timing, punishing you for a slightest misstep but giving you a way out with the time-reversal mechanic. It was challenging and required a lot of trial-and-error until you got into the flow of things, and also meant you had to learn a bunch of button combinations and quick reaction times in order to not screw things up. The ultimate goal was to beat a room and move on, the games being completely linear from start to finish.

Prince of Persia 2008 keeps the cool traversal mechanic, but switches up the goal. Rather than having the goal be "get from here to here and never look back," this game is more open world. After purging an area of darkness, you have to gather mass quantities of little glowing orb seed thingies that are scattered across the environment, usually in the path of some crazy platforming. You have to gather enough of these orbs to unlock new powers, which in turn unlock new areas. You are given around four areas to start, and you are free to tackle them in any order you wish, your only limit being the number of seeds you've collected. This makes the game more of a puzzle game in trying to figure out how to get to certain seeds, rather than a game testing your controller dexterity by throwing impossible rooms at you. It's a good switch up that keeps the familiar and puts it into a completely new system, and I liked it (even if the number of stuff you had to collect was kind of insane).

You're gonna be gathering a lot of these seeds.

Since the focus isn't really on taxing, controller-throwing rooms and instead of seeking out pathways and following them, the actual climbing gameplay has been dumbed-down. This makes sense, giving the change of focus in the game. Rather than force you to hold directions and buttons down least you fall to your demise, each ability is mapped to a button. If it's something that would use your claw (grabbing a ring or a hook, etc.) just tap B when near it and the Prince will run off. Need to wall-run? Tap A while running towards a wall and he'll take care of it. You can still do complex stuff (like jump from wall to wall, or hold B to slide down a wall at a decelerated rate), but as a whole the gameplay is extremely streamlined. This pissed off a lot of people when this game came out, but I think it works better. Had I been forced to collect all those damn seeds and do the super-taxing gameplay from the Sands of Time trilogy, this game would have gotten frustrating really fast. As it stands, it's just tricky enough to keep it challenging, while not going overboard. I think it's a good step in the right direction for where they wanted to take the gameplay, and it all works just fine.

As an additional note: you can't die in this game. At all. If you stupidly fall off a ledge, Elika will warp you back to the last stable ground you were on for another shot. This is another thing people complained about, and to those who did: you are straight up stupid. Seriously, you either are dumb or didn't think this through, because this is a great gameplay choice. First off, there's no loading for this revival; you just pop back and can give it another go. Second, how is this any different than hitting a "Load Checkpoint" screen? It's saving you time to read the text, as well as time to watch a stupid loading screen. Third, as I've said before we have lives in games because of old arcade games. Why shouldn't we be streamlining this? The challenge in Prince of Persia games is doing long sections of platforming (where you never hit the ground) successfully. It's enough of a penalty to be put back on the last stable platform because most of the time that platform is a long ways away. It's just saving you time. If you really hate it, then every time you die and Elika saves you just sit there stupidly for about 30 seconds. This is to represent the loading screen, text "Game Over" and "Reload Checkpoint" screen, and it putting you back to where you were before. Then you can start playing again. Congratulations, you won. Now leave it alone.

This beastie is suffering the Prince to not live. 

Combat has always been a problem in Prince of Persia games, and while this one makes a noble effort to mix it up, in the end it doesn't. Gone are group fights, instead having each battle be just one-on-one fights with powerful enemies. Again, you can't die, but if you go down Elika saves you and the enemies gets most of their life back, so you still have to be careful. Combat is broken up into simple distinct moves like the traversal: a button for sword, a button for grab, and a button to use Elika's magic. You can chain some pretty bananas combos if you know them, but usually you'll just button mash and pray. Counters are also the order of the day (hey, like Assassin's Creed!) though some bosses have unblockable moves that aren't projected as unblockable until after you take the hit, which is cheap. I can see they were kind of trying to make these battles be faster and easier, but honestly I think the game shouldn't have even had them. The platforming was challenge enough (especially near the end, where your timing has to be spot in in order to make it through the more difficult parts) and these battles just drag. Especially the boss fights, where messing up once and going down means having to redo the last 5-10 minutes of a fight. Obnoxious. 

You look cool, boss, but fighting you sucks. 

As you've probably seen from the screenshots, this game is freaking gorgeous. The cell-shaded look really works well and gives it a distinct style, with characters being colorful and well detailed. Perhaps the coolest thing is watching the sort of black/blue of the tainted worlds being transformed into the "Fertile" worlds, where the darkness flakes away like paint leaving luscious greens and browns beneath. It's really something to watch, and if you have a nice HDTV this game really works at showing off how beautiful games can be.

Music is also excellent, with more mellow tunes when compared to the previous Prince of Persia games, setting good ambiance throughout. As stated the voice acting is excellent from top to bottom, with enough of it to keep even the longest climbs entertaining. 

The production values are through the roof. 

If you came off this game from Sands of Time, you might be a little disappointed by the streamlined platforming and change of focus. But after you've been swinging around a bit, collecting the magic glowy seed things and unlocking powers, you'll find there's a lot to love in this reboot. It takes it's roots and does something new and unique with them, which is something gamers are constantly clamoring for (and then complain when people actually do it). It's also a weirdly good game to play with a girlfriend or spouse, because when you are seed-hunting it often helps to have another pair of eyes searching for pathways you might have missed to the more elusive ones. Just a thought.

Even if you never played a Prince of Persia game before, this 2008 reboot is worth looking into. It's fun, relatively non-frustrating (except a few bosses), looks fantastic, sounds fantastic, and lets you do some totally impossible things (like walk on the ceiling. HOW DOES HE DO THAT AND STILL MAKE IT LOOK NATURAL). If this is where the series is going, then I gladly welcome it, and look forward to the next installment.

Assuming they don't take our carefree Prince and turn him into a gritty angry dark shadow of his former self. But hey, who would do that after having such a successful first game?

Five out of five stars. 

I need to Finish the Fight! Where the crap is this game's sequel? 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

The Short


Pros
- Acts as an interlude between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within
- Original Prince is back, with the same crazy platforming as the previous games
- New powers in platforming are super cool and make the game harder (freezing water, etc.)
- Easily some of the best platforming puzzles in the series, and has great pacing throughout
- Unique story that focuses a lot on Persian mythology rather than the Sands of Time's mythos
- Scenery looks good and uses the next-gen hardware well

Cons
- Story doesn't flow well from Sands of Time or into Warrior Within; seems like a side-story
- Prince's character model (especially his face) looks awful 
- Sparse cast of characters and dialogue
- Combat is a dull mess
- Aside from being a fun throwback, I really see no reason why this game exists

The back of the box says "Find your Power, Unleash your Destiny." Um...shouldn't those verbs be switched? Anyway, on with the review. 

The Long


Six years after Sands of Time showed up and blew my mind, it seems this Prince of Persia thing is actually sort of a big deal. Jerry Bruckheimer (you know, the guy who made one good Pirates of the Caribbean movie and three awful ones) and Disney were working together to make a Prince of Persia movie in 2012, and Ubisoft realized they didn't actually have a game that they could sell along with it. Since it was based off a game that was already out (Sands of Time) and their last PoP game was a reboot (imaginatively titled just "Prince of Persia"), they needed to get something out there to cash in. Since The Two Thrones took place right after Warrior Within (and The Two Thrones pretty much ended the whole thing neatly), they decided to slam an interlude game in between Sands of Time and Warrior Within. I was actually sort of excited about this: we'd finally see why the Prince went from a witty, dapper young chap into emo goth Johnny McHardcore, and maybe then I'd actually not totally hate his character in Warrior Within. When I heard they were bringing the original voice actor back that was also a plus: I was pumped.

So...is The Forgotten Sands really all I wanted it to be? Or is it just a movie cash-in? Well...it's sort of in the middle.

But hey, it looks pretty good. 

The story doesn't do anything I described above. If anything, it's so far distanced from the original Sands of Time story threads it really is a "forgotten" story. The Prince decides to go hang with his brother Malik, who is some king somewhere, and when he shows up the entire place is under siege. His brother stupidly decides to unleash Soloman's Army, which makes a bunch of sand zombie guys show up and require killing. Then there's a good Djinn and a bad Djinn, and the good one gives you time-reversing powers (because why not) and the bad one wants to blow up everything. Pretty simple.

Again, this really has no ties with the other games, and doesn't bleed over in either direction. I'd have loved to see a Dahaka cameo or something in here (since he is supposed to have started being hunted around this point) or at least an explanation as to why he became so emo, but the Prince is just as lighthearted as ever (even if the script isn't particularly great) and just rolls with all the punches without getting all worked up over it. Alright, I guess.

It's a story more seeped in Persian mythology than the mythology the Sands of Time people created, and I'm fine with this. It makes it a very unique side-story, but it is just that: a side story. There are no revelations here, and because of that you can pretty much play this game without having played any of the other ones. So if you were holding back because you were worried you'd ruin the other games: don't. There are no spoilers to be had at all in this game, and no reoccurring characters, nothin. It opens and closes neatly, which makes it kind of feel like a cash-in. 

Yet another beastie to suffer not living. 

Luckily, the sort-of-pointless story is held up by the best platforming the series has to offer. The Prince of Persia reboot in 2008 was like the other games really in name only. Aside from offering a whole new world and set of characters, it also streamlined the platforming and changed the focus on precise button presses and more on exploration of the environment. The Forgotten Sands ignores that game was made and goes right back to classic Prince of Persia: holding triggers to wall run, precise jumps, and more. This game is made better, however, by implementing lots of the improvements made in Prince of Persia 2008. For example, you can now wall jump from wall to wall, neatly chaining them together. There's also lots more things he can do on ledges, and he can wall run up from a ledge, which is nice. Basically it was everything they'd learned from the previous Prince of Persia games put into this one, which makes it the best in terms of difficult puzzles.

But that isn't even the best part!

Swinging on water. OH YES. 

In addition to the regular stuff, the game ramps up the difficulty further by giving you new powers. My favorite is the ability to freeze time so all water becomes hard, turning fountains into poles to swing on and waterfalls into walls to run up. You have to be holding the button for it to work, though, which means it turns it into controller twister. There are also more powers, like the ability to air-dash to enemies to close long gaps, and a power to recreate broken bits of scenery. All these require extremely fast reflexes, with the final climb up the tower that is a culmination of all these one of the craziest, most challenging, and funnest experiences I've had in all the Prince of Persia games. The combination of all the old moves with these new powers (and smoother controls) makes this easily the best Prince of Persia game in terms of platforming, and I really hope they do something with this in whatever the next installment will be.

Then we get to the bad stuff. 

But it isn't an Ubisoft game if they don't counter something really good with something stupid (exception being Rayman Origins, where it's all good) and for this game it's the combat. Gone is the sand-sucking system from Sands of Time, the multi-weapon system from Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, and the one-on-one battle system from Prince of Persia 2008. Instead, we have a weird, Dynasty Warriors style hack 'n slash, which pretty much consists of pressing X to attack a lot, sometimes pressing Y to kick shield guys over, and jumping on enemies' heads if they surround you. Yeah. That's really bout it. It's focus is on group zombie killing, and it gets button-mashy extremely fast. While I guess it isn't bad (you do get tons of magic powers that make things stupid easy, though you should only use the invincible armor and whirlwind) its just tedious. Fights seem like they happen just to keep you from the next batch of awesome platforming, which is exactly what the fights shouldn't do. Bosses are the same: not focusing as much on the platforming as they should, instead just mostly hitting stuff by pressing X over and over. Dull.

And there's LOTS of fights. Seriously, it's ok to make a Prince of Persia game without swordplay. I'd be totally fine with that. 

Graphics look pretty good, fitting to the theme set in Sands of Time and The Two Thrones. It all has that sandy, lush look, and they use environmental effects effectively to spice up a lot of the areas. The magic looks pretty lame, though, with fire-trail just leaving a red mark on the ground (where are the flames?), and ice attack doing the same thing but blue. The Prince's model looks good, but his face...urrrgh! What did they do to your face, Prince? Did they forget to play the previous games before making the model?

Who the crap is this guy?

Music is good and voice acting (what little there is) is also decent, though the script is lacking. The sounds throughout the environments work and, as a whole, it sounds on par with the rest of the series. There's also no Nolan North which, as much as I love the guy, whenever they put him in a lead role I just think "Nathan Drake" and the whole game is ruined. 

This isn't a Sands of Time game, but whatever; I'm fine with it. 

I really liked The Forgotten Sands. Sure, it didn't actually do anything story-wise that I wanted (totally ignoring my and other fans' desires to figure out what the crap happened to the Prince before Warrior Within) and it really is just a "best of with change" from the previous series, but that series was awesome and a chance to revisit its fantastic platforming (even in this weird side-story sort of way) is a chance I will always take. Adding in all the new stuff from Prince of Persia 2008 as well as more original content, and you have a solid gameplay experience from start to end. You can play through it even if you haven't played the other games, so if you want to try these but don't want to invest in an trilogy, this might be a good one to check out. It is still pretty sad, though, that after making Prince of Persia games for six years these guys still can't make a good combat system to save their life (even Assassin's Creed's sucked). Oh well, maybe next time. 

If you like Prince of Persia, you'll love The Forgotten Sands. And it's stupid cheap now, so you really have no excuse. 

Four out of five stars. 

Now stop making stupid Assassin's Creed II spinoffs and give me a new Prince of Persia game, dang it!

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

The Short


Pros
- Still the same extremely solid platforming from the first two games of the series
- Setting of the ruined city of Babylon is unique and makes for some fun areas to traverse
- "Dark" tone from Warrior Within has been diminished substantially. Thank goodness.
- Mixes things up with the "Dark Prince" gameplay segments and combat
- "Quick kills" are a great idea for this series, focusing on platforming and quick reflexes
- Music is back to its awesome Persian-sounding roots
- Provides decent closure to the Sands of Time series

Cons
- A bit "more of the same" from Warrior Within's gameplay in both combat and platforming
- Combat is still weak overall, with "quick kills" working only about 25% of the time
- While I appreciate the attempt to lighten the tone, it still doesn't come close to Sands of Time's brilliance
- Almost feels like a "best of" between the last two games, without bringing anything of its own to the table
- New gameplay bits like chariot races are ok, but hardly necessary
- Dark Prince isn't particularly fun to play, even if his concept is interesting

Yay! The old Prince is back! Sort of...

The Long

I was so mad at what Warrior Within did to the Prince's character that I didn't play The Two Thrones until nearly two years after its release. Yeah, the game was still awesome to play, but the sour taste in my mouth was so prevalent that every time I even looked at The Two Thrones' box I could just remember the Prince screaming "YOU BITCH" and stupid Nu-Metal blasting in the background. Ugh. 

When I finally did get around to playing The Two Thrones, I was pleasantly surprised. Ubisoft apparently had an entirely different game in the works for this one, but after an E3 showing that revealed it was going to be another dark, Warrior Within-esque sequel, the fan backlash was so bad they went back and redesigned it. Now you get what we have now: a mix between The Sands of Time's charismatic, quip-friendly Prince, Warrior Within's combat and excellent platforming, and general aesthetics more loyal to the original game. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? 

Well...sort of. 

Man, this series is just so much fun. 

The story picks up immediately after the "true" ending of Warrior Within. The Prince is heading back to his home city of Babylon with the Empress of Time, intent on making things right. Once he gets there, however, he finds the city under siege. Apparently since he undid everything that happened during both the first and second games (rendering them irrelevant, which kind of sucks) the Vizier from The Sands of Time invaded Babylon (even though that...wasn't his role in the story in Sands of Time. Whatever.) and is generally ruining everything. The Prince's boat is sunk, the Empress captured, and off he goes to save her.

First off: this game's tone is certainly more Sands of Time than Warrior Within, though some of the "hardcore"-ness from Warrior Within does poke through from time to time. The original voice actor for the Prince is back, with the Empress of Time narrating over the story. This storytelling idea ties it in perfectly with Sands of Time. Farah, the love interest from the first game, shows up again in this one (this isn't that big of a spoiler; you'll live) and we get more of their silly banter as they quest about the city.

Together again! Yay!

The ending is really satisfying, as I said before, and ties everything up almost perfectly. Yeah, it's a bit corny and maybe isn't exactly had in mind when I beat Sands of Time back in 2004, but whatever; it works, and it isn't the Prince cutting himself or whatever the original plan was. That being said, this game is not Sands of Time. While the Prince and Farah throwing insults back and forth is great, it isn't nearly as clever or believable as it was in the first game. It almost seems forced at times, like Ubisoft was saying "You liked this, remember? We liked it too! We don't know what we were thinking, taking it out last game!" which sort of works, but still doesn't have that same magic.

The Vizier also turns into some weird sand-monster-god thing that looks kind of like a mix between Kefka and a Silent Hill monster, so...there's that too. 

At least he isn't calling himself "The Vizier...OF TIME" or anything stupid like that. 

As it stands, it blends elements of the previous two games together, which I appreciate because Sands of Time was so good, but really...you could have just not put the Warrior Within bits. He erased that timeline anyway; just pretend it never happened and go straight Sands of Time. That might have worked better, but I'm satisfied with what I'm given. They even tried giving the Prince another growth arc this time, this one about becoming brave enough to face his mistakes and lead his people (something he's been avoiding since the first game), which again works but not as well as the arc in the first game. As it stands, it's a good story, and fixes enough of the Warrior Within's problems that I'm willing to forgive this series.

On to the rest of it, then. 

Gameplay wise, not much has changed with the platforming. At all. The Prince still has his same skillset from Warrior Within, though he's replaced his sword with the Dagger of Time ("See, guys? We remembered what you liked!"). You still pick up weapons that break, have almost exactly the same combos (and the same ones still work), the running and jumping is identical, etc. As regular Prince, this game plays remarkably like Warrior Within, which is a good thing, though it would have been nice to mix it up.

The biggest change in regular Prince combat is the "quick kill" system. Basically, if you can be both quick, sneaky, and have perfect timing, you can leap from a wall towards say, an enemy on a balcony, and if you time it right you can tap a button and kill them instantly. It's a cool idea, one that works well with the Prince's acrobatics as well as the idea of him needed skill to face overwhelming odds, but the problem is it doesn't work. Each situation usually only has one right way of doing it, and if you mess it up all enemies are alerted and you are basically forced to fight them normally. Since there really isn't a stealth mechanic in play, you either get it or you don't, and you can't go "hide" or anything to reset it. It's stupid that they took this idea and didn't bother fleshing it out well at all, because again: it compliments the Prince's style. Oh well.

Then we got this guy. 

The most radical shift is the Dark Prince, who your regular Prince transforms to when he runs through fire or something like that. He's supposed to represent all the pent up anger and douchyness the Prince had in Warrior Within (so casting him as a villain really pushes the point home that even Ubisoft knew they'd messed up), and often can be heard talking to the Prince inside his head (which is a cool touch). The Dark Prince is absurdly overpowered when it comes to fighting, meaning you won't need any stealth kills, though he does have a big weakness: his health keeps draining down to a tiny sliver unless you keep collecting sand (either by killing or finding it in the environment). The Dark Prince also platforms a little differently because he has a chain that lets him swing, but the environments are built completely around this so it isn't that big of a mixup. Ultimately, the Dark Prince just makes the game easier, and while I'm glad for the variety he just seems sort of tacked on.

And now we see some Warrior Within bits creeping through. 

There are a few other new elements. Most enemies can only be killed when in light, leading to some cool underground portions where you have to lure them to light in order to finish them off. Chariot races are a fun diversion but hardly necessary, though the slow-mo enemy chariot explosion when you run them off the road is kind of hilariously awesome. Bosses, despite looking really stupid, are actually pretty fun. Most require use of the platforms around to get up on and then kick the crap out of (though they do the "quick time event" thing that was just now starting to become the norm), which means you are actually using the platforming elements of the game to fight them. Good work, Ubisoft! Only took you three games to realize you probably should use your series' strongest feature in the boss fights!

Of course, some of them don't do this, relying on the still-decent-but-not-great combat system to pull through, and those are disappointing. As it stands, however, this game is pretty much Warrior Within but with easy Dark Prince areas and a brighter, more lighthearted approach. Which I am totally fine with.

Every room is a puzzle, and as Professor Layton would say "Every puzzle has an answer."

This game is still using a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, and it shows. While great lengths have been made to modernize the graphics, this engine is just outdated by now. Considering this came out the same year God of War did (and almost a full year after Resident Evil 4), it looks a bit dated. Still, the brighter color pallet and cityscape setting reminds me a lot of their future work on Assassin's Creed, and since the scenery and climbing was the best part about that game, I'm fine with it.

Sounds are so much better. As I said already, the original voice cast is back, complete with over-story narration, and it's fantastic. Though the Empress of Time kind of talks a bit too much in a whispy, "I'm so mystical" voice like Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings movies, she isn't annoying. The music is back to its Persian rock roots, and it all sounds really good. 

The Prince, before he loses his shirt. He and Jacob from Twilight share that character motif. 

As it stands, The Two Thrones was a step back in the right direction. It provided a satisfying conclusion to the series, helped repair some of the damage caused by Warrior Within, and was a pretty good game in its own right. It's a pity nothing it brought new to the table was particularly good, the game heavily resting on the shoulders of its predecessors to succeed, but those are excellent shoulders to rest on and so the game still works.

It doesn't reach the heights of Sands of Time, not even close. But for the end of the trilogy and the conclusion of the story, it does it all well enough. As I said before, you can get all three of these games in HD on the PS3 for only around $20-30, and I really suggest picking them up if you haven't ever played them. This is one of the best game series' I can think of, and really should be played. Just...treat Warrior Within nicely, ok? It's been through some rough times, and we just now got it on antidepressants. 

I'm sad to see the Prince go. Four out of five stars.

And they all lived happily ever after. Awww...