First impressions of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PC version).
Summary: if you aren't already invested in the franchise, you can let this one go.
1) Ooh, pretty. Especially combat. The various special moves are nice. And watching the prince slide down a tapestry is a treat.
2) Bored with this opponent? Throw her off the bridge. Sweet.
3) At least one hit of adrenalin during a gymnastic sequence, which means I'm identifying with the character. Good.
4) House music; bleah. It's wrong for the genre, although it doesn't give the combat sequences a bit of a John Woo feel.
5) The camera sucks. Forward back left right is based on view, which is correct. But the camera angle changes frequently, especially at moments when the prince desperately needs it not to - chase sequences and the like. And frequently you can't get the camera where you want it, or when you do it immediately reverts to some other setting as soon as you begin to interact with the environment.
6) The framework sucks. It's so slow. At one point, I was having trouble getting by the boss. Every time I died, I then had to wait through 30 seconds of crap to try again. Wait for the restore to load, end up facing the wrong way, run into room, fast forward through the narrative, then run to engage.
Want to restore a previous position? Click escape. Confirm. Select to go back to the main menu, select option to load a game, pick the game and click load. This ought to be two clicks - one to bring up the menu, one to choose the position.
Similar problem on saves. One you reach a save position, you still have to click on the game element that will allow you to save, wait for animation, select yes, click save.
Here's why this is a problem: the controls are hard (at least for a player like me - I don't spend a lot of time on arcade games on any platform). Too often the cause of death is simply the fact that the prince didn't do what I intended, most often because a changing camera angle caused a key sequence to be interpreted differently than I intended. Much of the day was spent thinking "well, the game fucked me again, and now punishes me by making me wait".
But I kept going back, wanting to find out what would happen next.
Nice touch worthy of comment: the game takes place in a single environment, but in different times. In the later times, you can see evidence of your stunts in the earlier times (a particular stretch of wall, covered with footprints, suggesting you'll will on haven run across it many times during earlier visits.
December 5, 2004 11:25 PM
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