Prince of Persia 3: The Clunky Ass

[Noyb]

Or just read the first draft script from Jordan Mechner.

[Ben X]

Watch the film, then read the Mechner draft, Synth! (And report back here, obv.)

[syntheticgerbil]

But reading is haaaaard!

[Sal Limones]

I cannot make my brain comprehend someone calling Sands of Time "gay" and then saying Warrior Within is "mature"

[DanJW]

I cannot make my brain comprehend someone calling Sands of Time "gay" and then saying Warrior Within is "mature"

Exactly. Such a judgement can only be made by someone who does not ever converse with anyone who matches either description.

[Murdoc]

I dunno, the way the prince was after that hot princess in SoT was pretty gay.

[syntheticgerbil]

Actually, now that you mention it, he seemed rather disinterested in both of the available scantily clad, gravity defying women in Warrior Within. Hmm...

There is a love scene at the end of the "good ending" but it's super awkward and comes out of no where. I'm still not convinced.

I know Farah is coming back in Two Thrones, but I'm getting the feeling it's not going to be that interesting or focused upon. Too bad, I really liked their banter.

[Sno]

Since i last posted in this topic, i mulled over my experiences with Warrior Within a little, and i now remember that literally all i did to break the game was to try and backtrack to find all the life upgrades when i was late into the game. If i remember right, some puzzle in one of the areas reset to an unsolved state, but the mechanisms for solving it did not, and so i got trapped in a loop feeding across a few rooms. (Being a few rooms long, i didn't realize it until it was too late, so course i saved while i was inside of it.)

But yeeaaah, yeeaaaaaaaaah. It's competent, from a gameplay standpoint, it's just everything else about that damn game is so offensive.

Are you going to play the apparently three very different versions of forgotten sands? (PS3/360, Wii, PSP.)

[syntheticgerbil]

I think I will play all Forgotten Sands, even the DS version, but I'm guessing that won't even be until next year. I've sort of gotta work on Killer 7 a little bit now.

[Ben X]

Actually, now that you mention it, he seemed rather disinterested in both of the available scantily clad, gravity defying women in Warrior Within.QUOTE]

Arrgh! "Uninterested"!

(We need a language Nazi smiley.)

[Noyb]

(We need a language Nazi smiley.)

+ = ???

[syntheticgerbil]

Actually, now that you mention it, he seemed rather disinterested in both of the available scantily clad, gravity defying women in Warrior Within.

Arrgh! "Uninterested"!

(We need a language Nazi smiley.)

Wha?

Word Meaning Arguments, etc.

Eh, still works.

[Nappi]

+ = ???

Edited August 25, 2011 by Nappi

[Sno]

I'm not entirely sure it gets the point across, but it's still pretty amazing.

[Ben X]

Still, use of senses 1a and 1b will incur the disapproval of some who may not fully appreciate the history of this word or the subtleties of its present use.

Hey, that's me! Oh well, seems like it's swinging back to them both meaning the same thing again. Language, eh?

[syntheticgerbil]

Hmm, once again I'm posting here since I can't find any more open Two Thrones topics, even though there a lot in the Idlethumbs search. Feel like there's no point in littering another.

So to start off, I know everyone was pretty, "meh" about Two Thrones and everywhere else in general, but I absolutely loved this game. I almost like it more than Sands of Time. There's some parts that just completely drag it down and it's not a fluid experience the whole way through. There's also a major high I'm probably coming off of after finishing Warrior Within to note as well.

It's just, this story is so great. All of the mistakes of the previous game were fixed, some to ridiculousness (Kaileena's breasts shrink a few cup sizes and are no longer floating, her face is no longer collagen porn start face, as well as her clothes covering much more - all in the course of one boat ride!).Kaileena was just a much more likeable character this time, Farah's back and it's great (even though her voice actress was changed (apparently the original became a lawyer and would not return)), the Prince is back to his old self in Sands of Time and battling the nu-metal bastard inside of him.

The plot where the Prince is fighting the dark part of himself did not make a ton of sense on the logic outside of magical sands but it did a lot for the story. It wasn't a glossed over thing and was essentially a major plot point, even though it was obviously tacked on to rationalize Warrior Within away. I would rather have that I think than just glossing over what came before. Just going through the story and having the prince continuously strive not to be a bastard was just great to me, probably because it's a lot for me to relate to. I'm a sucker for duality themes.

Gameplay was by the books PoP and suffered in some parts just for having uninteresting areas, while other parts strived and were beautiful to look at. I enjoyed the Dark Prince sections even though it was one of the major criticized parts and all except one of the boss parts were serious fun. A certain part with two large brutes just completely drags the game down in the insane difficulty that is no where else in the game. It's one of those things where I wonder if QA testers played the game straight through and made any notes of that part or if they wanted to tough it out and pretend they were badass to the designers.

So yeah, a Two Thrones lover here, even though I know many don't exist. Next up is the PSP version I suppose, which will probably be the same as Revelations with a game twice as long but with the new sections badly programmed and idiotically designed (hopefully not).

[Ben X]

The plot where the Prince is fighting the dark part of himself did not make a ton of sense on the logic outside of magical sands but it did a lot for the story. It wasn't a glossed over thing and was essentially a major plot point, even though it was obviously tacked on to rationalize Warrior Within away.

It also works as an expansion of the doppelganger in the original game...

[James]

I know this is from ages ago and no longer really at all relevant, but I only just read Timothy Francis Gagnon's amazing review:

I cannot make my brain comprehend someone calling Sands of Time "gay" and then saying Warrior Within is "mature"

It's worth noting that this same person thinks that a second-person perspective is the same as a first-person perspective, but with no visible body for the player. I'm not sure he's familiar with the terms' origins in literary narrative.

Obviously that's not nearly as offensive as the other stuff he comes out with (such as "You should always be going out with at least two girls at a time"), but it did make me laugh.

Anyway, Prince of Persia. As I remember it, I really enjoyed the whole Sands of Time trilogy. I'm sure I noticed that the story and characterization got kind of dumb, and the aesthetic kind of adolescent (although if I'm honest I'm not as bothered by that sort of thing as a lot of people seem to be), but I enjoyed the puzzles and traversal well enough. Conversely, while I didn't hate PoP08 by any means, it did leave me kind of cold. Some combination of its characteristics made it seem too unreal and abstract for me to properly engage with it. Between them the micro-checkpointing, the super-stylized environments, the loose timing and the crazy physics of that claw of his put me at too much of a distance from what was going on. I felt more like I was vaguely guiding proceedings than actually controlling a guy in a world that made some sort of sense to me.

I realize that a lot of these objections could be levelled to some degree at the SoT trilogy, which I had a much better time with; I guess it's a matter of crossing a line, and for me the line fell somewhere between those two styles. Of course the physics in the earlier games didn't make much sense either, and of course the architecture was pretty fucking balmy, but it was just sensible enough for me to suspend incredulity.

I should clarify that I had no problem with the graphical style; it's the weird utilitarian sparseness of the geometry that was jarring for me. Perhaps all I needed was a little more set dressing or fictional context. I'm not sure. And I do quite appreciate the possible story implications of all the claw marks on the walls, but unfortunately the overall effect is that the whole thing looks like an obstacle course to me. Yes, that's kind of what these games are anyway, but I don't like it to look like that. It's like playing a paintball FPS or something.

Anyway, like I said, I didn't hate it. I played it to the end and it was OK, but those things held it back for me.

Finally, the very original Prince of Persia was a fantastic game, but I was terrible at it. My cousin and I used to play it together, and he did eventually beat it without cheating. I don't think I got much further than half-way.

[syntheticgerbil]

It also works as an expansion of the doppelganger in the original game...

Ah you're right, that's awesome! He kind of existed in the Shadow and the Flame as well, but controllable. The manual said the merging with the doppelganger in the original led to the prince being able to separate.

[infovore]

Just another quick shout for Warrior Within. The tone is horrible, the combat overblown, and the whole nu-metal Prince thing is terrible.

But: the platforming is really good, when it's good. The Water Tower and Mechanical Tower, for instance, are fantastic - the best kind of POP verticality, building on the platforming that came towards the end of Sands Of Time. Made me super happy, just climbing these huge vertical things... and then I had to fight things, which made me grumpy.

So, you know, if you can tolerate all the stuff that really is as bad as everyone says, there's a bunch of stuff in it that really builds upon Sands of Time.

(SOT is still the best, and my favourite, by a long way. Don't worry, I'm not crazy.)

[syntheticgerbil]

Beat the stupid side card game/strategy Battles of Prince of Persia. It was incredibly ugly for a Prince of Persia game and also crap. The story was just walls of text to explain the plot between Sands of Time and Warrior Within. Also somewhat complicated for whatever reason. I don't know what else to say. The redeeming quality was that it was addictive in the way I just wanted to get it over to play the next game in the series.