After playing it, what's within was definitely coming up
| Platform | Presentation | Controls | Variety | Audio | Depth | Value & Fun | OVERALL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GameCube | 3.00 | 0.00 | 3.50 | 0.50 | 3.00 | 0.00 | 1.74 |
| Presentation | 3.00 |
| No, the game doesn't look as poor as a 3, as I give it; however, it is so difficult to tell what yo're supposed to do and where you're supposed to go, that pretty environments don't really matter. Immediately looking at Warrior Within, it stinks of multiplatformism. Nothing is particularly striking, and the models are dull; there are also visible breaks in the walls causing a thin white line peaking through in places. While the environments improve, the frame rate goes at times. More problematic is the fact that many of the ledges, ropes and other things to climb on blend into the background -- more on that in controls. Many times throughout the game, you'll be stuck inside of enemies; you can't hit them, they can't hit you, and you're clipping through the middle of them. It's not too difficult to break free, but it completely screws up your attack, and can get you hurt in a battle of multiple enemies. Wost of all is that this game contains the absolute worst map I've ever seen; it loads slowly for one, and basically it shows you an indistinguishable extreme distance view on the entire castle (if that's what you're in, it's hard to tell) with you as an icon and where you're supposed to go with an icon (there is absolutely no way to tell which direction to go except checking it, travelling a fair distance, then checking if your icon moved in the right direction). And to top it off, there is unnecessary over-the-top blood and gore, and slow motion kills that are more disgusting than satisfying. Let me finish section by saying that this game has one of the most offensive portrayals of women to come along in a long time. Not only is every single female character a hardly clothed enemy, but the voices are filled with innuendo, and it is never even mentioned to you why they are an enemy in the first place. | |
| Controls | 0.00 |
|
The controls effectively destroy the game, making it, without hyperbole, the worst game I've ever played (Superman 64 and Re-volt challenge, but I only rented those and didn't get to play them extensively enough to make the comparison). The camera angles are horrible; several times you have to move and/or jump in a direction not visible. This coupled with the fact that what you're supposed to jump to is unclear. There are instances where it forces you to run towards the camera; instances where you have to jump through tree brush to a wooden plank past it, and times when the camera switches mid-run and mid-wall-run. The platforming element of the game basically comes down to struggling with the camera, trying to spot where to go and trial-and-error tactics until you figure it out. Shortly into the game, you'll fall and you'll die. This is normal, but you either die, or are completely fine -- there is no middle ground, which is entirely irritating since you often are supposed to drop near-death levels and it's hard to tell whether you will or not. That coupled with the sand tanks seems to me more like lazy developing than creativity. The other half of the game is the combat...the horrible, horrible combat...The game auto-targets your enemies and draws you weapon for you, so you can't choose who to target, nor choose not to target at all. You can, however, try and back away while running backward, but you can't do all your acrobatic moves or wall runs/jumps while in that state. If you should choose to fight, you can jump on them and throw them, jump off a wall/around a pole, or just hack at them. You can also do flips away -- all of which completely leave your control for a time and will occasionally throw you off an edge, and if you don't have any sand tanks left, well, start at the last save/checkpoint. An important part of the game are the sand tanks, though, which allow you to distort time for your own benefit. From the start, you have the ability to go shortly back in time in case you screwed up a jump (which is extremely common). Doing this takes one sand tank -- you get sand tanks in some jars or by defeating enemies. This is the glitchiest of the time powers -- you can break obstacles with this. There are spinning blades, saws and cylinders throughout the game that run on rails. If you go back in time (particularly multiple times in a row) the obstacles will often either get stuck, or move entirely off the rails. Also, if you move back to mid jump or mid-wallrun you won't have enough momentum to make the jump or wall-run again and you'll die. And finally if you go back in time before an automatic camera switch, you'll often just end up dead because it drops you in the wrong place (or in the case of when the ground is collapsing under you, the ground didn't come back). The second power you get is to slow down time, which is the next most useful technique, however the graphics distort when you use it, so it becomes even more difficult to tell where to go or what's ahead of you. If you use this technique just before you get hit, you'll get stuck for a second and it will keep trying to slow time and fail and will use up all your sand tanks. The third power is an attack where the screen turns red and you attack rapidly. Nothing particularly broken about that one. And the last power is to release an energy wave (I think), which was entirely useless since whenever I tried to use it I would get struck by the excessively fast when at a distance enemies. |
|
| Variety | 3.50 |
|
When it comes to non-boss enemies, there are three enemies -- male, female and wolf. All simply take more or less damage, and one type of wolf explodes. However, it's near impossible to tell which one you're getting and how many hits it will take to eliminate them. As for the hyped big boss battles, you don't fight one of the large bosses until 60% through the game, and then you fight the same one (similar to the situation with the repeat non-boss enemies) multiple times. Even worse is that the battles consist simply of button mashing while between the giants legs, pressing A when it goes to one knee, then mashing the B button once more. Repeat until defeated. There is one other large boss that you fight once, and is probably the highlight of the game, besides finishing it and saying to hell with this disc. The final boss is a repeat fight, which is always a terrible thing. Let me talk about the story now. I did not play Sands of Time, so I don't know what happened in that game -- and Warrior Within doesn't tell me. Here's what I get from the story in Warrior Within: Dahaka wants to kill the Prince because of something to do with the sands of time, which were made by the Empress. The Prince wants to kill the Empress and the Empress wants to kill the Prince (both because they don't want to die). That's it, that's all, and that means absolutely nothing to me. If anything, it makes me dislike the Prince in that he wants to kill a woman in order to save himself; that really makes me want to help him. |
|
| Audio | 0.50 |
| The audio just adds insult to injury. Out-of-place rock music moves in and out, loosely whenever there are enemies, but it's unreliable at that. For that same 60% of the game that you don't face one of the advertised large bosses, you hear the same crappy song. On top of that are the annoying battle voice overs from the Prince and the enemies such as from the females "There's so much pleasure in pain". The Prince seems to like to say "You'll pay for this transgression"; to quote Homer Simpson for a moment, "What kind of catch-phrase is that?". Also common is "I'm getting tired of this". So am I, Prince; so am I. | |
| Depth | 3.00 |
| Depth in battle comes down to when to use your sand tanks, and when to jump around. But repeatedly you throw enemies off ledges wherever possible, and the rest of the time throw them to the ground and stab them (since it takes a LOT longer to defeat them while they're standing, for whatever reason). The bosses have way too much health for the battles though, and those become very tedious, on top of excessive difficult. There'd be more depth in the platforming if it weren't for the camera-induced trial-and-error. | |
| Value & Fun | 0.00 |
| Prince of Persia: Warrior Within isn't broken beyond playability, but it's definitely broken beyond entertainment. Glitches hinder the gameplay, lack of direction hinders the flow, and the music irritates the ears. Is there a difficulty "sucky"? Because that's really the only way to describe Warrior Within's difficulty. It's not that the battles or platforming are particularly difficult, it's just how poorly everything is put together than causes hinder after hinder making it hard. If there were anything as terribly grinding as a video-game as this, I have not played it. | |
| Overall | 1.74 |
| Painful. Absolutely painful. You can discount my reviews if you are somehow a fan of the game, but I refuse to recognize this as anything close to a quality game. It's rare for absolutely everything in a game to go so horribly wrong. From the camera, to the audio, to the repetitive button-mashing gameplay. And on top of it all, the story is non-existent, the content is offensive, and more disgustingly of all, Ubisoft felt it was so necessary to make the Prince a dark anti-hero that they made the second game in a trilogy rated Mature while the first was rated Teen. Never abandon your fans; at least, fortunately for any fans that missed out, they got to avoid this dreadful insult to gaming. | |
Posted by Ellyoda Sat, 04 Feb 2006 00:00:00
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