The Prince is back, apparently from rehab. He is beset on all sides by improbably garbed temptresses. The good news is that game we liked is in there, but it's underneath a bunch of crap I ordinarily wouldn't touch without gloves.
Brenna refused to believe it when I told her that the plot revolves around the Empress of Time, who lives on the Island of Time where the Sands (all together now) OF TIME were created. All the same, that's the kind of situation we're talking about. Jesus Christ, people. Just call the island fucking Chronos or something. Spell it with a K if you have to. I can figure out that there's some kind of time thing going on.
I don't have a problem at some default level with the thematic change, my aversion to the new palette (visually or conceptually) isn't automatic. They just want it too bad. What's more, I think they're confused about what kind of personality they want the prince to embody. The PC demo you can download has another voice take for the game's introduction, which painted him as more "desperate" and less "x-treme." I preferred it. It's hard to prefer this Prince in a general sense, though, because (as Eurogamer put it) he's just not likable. The wry voiceovers and endearing progression of The Sands Of Time's rude royal son charmed me completely. I oversaw his redemption in the first game, apparently so they could take what I had done and negate it.
They've got these Raider guys that are essentially the Cannon Fodder of Time, jackhole pincushions there explicitly for you to puncture. They're mean or whatever, but they don't turn into crows or explode which makes them fairly mundane by Warrior Within standards. The problem with these guys is their voices, which are hilarious, and not grim. You can't feel tough when you cut these guys. Halo has those little grunts, and I guess I'm supposed to feel like a bad-ass when I destroy them but I actually just feel like an asshole. They both seem like species that just fell in with the wrong crowd. What they need are compelling after school activities, not death.
There's a new combat system now, but there's also way more combat, and it takes place all over, so whether or not it actually ceased being repetitive I couldn't tell you. Just as in the first one, I traverse the combat oriented areas so I can arrive at the next perfected, genre defining platform section. It is like getting a ordering a pizza and getting a free walrus. Even if the walrus were excellent, I mean truly exemplary, I'm really not in the market for it and it's not why I ordered the pizza.
I recognize that electronic entertainment is a business, but at its best you don't see the ravenous, mercantile hunger throbbing right in front of you. It's indecorous. You can go read the 8 and 9.0 reviews out there if you want to see it glossed over. Sometimes, when you play it, you remember how good the first game was.
(CW)TB out.
chit ta chit, rage cookie
