Well, sorry I haven’t been updating much recently or anything. I haven’t had much time lately to do really anything of this sort. Also I don’t have internet at home, so it’s a bit hard to just get out and post things on here all the time. But for this post, I’ve got something fairly decent prepared. I just quit my job so I can start working on Fij full time, meaning I will hopefully get the game finished or at least in some working order. But I will go ahead and get on with the rest of this post, which is a review of the new Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia is one of the oldest gaming franchises there is, with the entries spanning nearly two decades. The original Prince of Persia is somehow considered a classic, and appreciated for its astonishingly smooth animation for the time. Even despite its horrid laggy controls, which are caused mostly as part of the “smooth” animation. It’s somewhat surprising that such a flawed game has spawned so many sequels. I mean, there’s the first sequel, which was basically like the original, only different levels, then there’s a remake… At one point, someone decided that the franchise was worth bringing into the 3d era, and the god-awful “Prince of Persia 3D” was born. Not surprisingly, after such a flop, and with the Nintendo 64 and Playstation already in their waning years, the idea of a 3d Prince sat stagnant for a while.

But then, an idea was born.

The primary appeal of the original game was the atmosphere of a heroic Persian prince who was a master at acrobatic feats. The only problem was, in the original game, in order to perform these acrobatic feats, you had to spend hours getting used to the strange laggy timing of the game. When the original came out, this wasn’t really an issue. Nobody knew how games were “supposed” to be, so there weren’t any real pre-concieved notions about how a game should behave. However, by the Playstation 2 era, gamers, and especially reviewers weren’t willing to put up with “control lag.” So, in Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, the controls were fine tuned and acrobatic feats were made as easy as possible. Everything seemed good, the game came out with a nifty rewind mechanic and people wanted more.

Unfortunately, in the two sequels that followed, they had missed something. The fact of the matter was, Prince of Persia has always been an unfair game, including the stellar Sands of Time. What with all the spikes coming out of the ground and killing you when you walk too fast across them. Most of the dangerous traps in the dungeons require the player to “learn by dying.” This practice was of course quite common back in the era the original Prince was released. But today is generally considered a design “no-no.” Sands of Time relieved the unfair feeling by allowing the player to rewind time when he died. Although the rewind mechanic itself was somewhat gimmicky and didn’t add much gameplay, it was still a key point of the games design.

Luckily, someone at Ubisoft realized that the unfairness of the later Playstation 2 Era Princes was a problem, and set to remedy it by once again re-inventing the franchise. And thus, “Prince of Persia” was released.

Now I guess I can get to the real review, now that I’ve ranted on about something you probably already know about.

Prince of Persia succeeds in creating a smooth easy-to-control and acrobatic Prince. Suprisingly, he’s even easier to control and more acrobatic than Sands of Time. The controls in Sands of Time were quite specific and although not difficult, were somewhat complex. This meant that as the game progressed, you learned new things and were accquianted with new gadgetry at a reasonable pace. However, this new Prince manages to cram in all of the controls and the major environmental obstacles into less than an hour of gameplay. Now, this isn’t bad because it’s confusing, because it’s anything but. In fact, the controls are so simple, most actions are performed automatically or with one button. This is bad because the rest of the game is set up as a non-linear experience. Now, I know the big buzzwords in gaming right now are all about “non-linearity” and “sandbox gameplay” and “emergent behavior”. But the issue is that these things just don’t really work in Prince of Persia’s puzzling platform universe. It’s sad to see that the game had to make it to full production before anyone truly realized just how much it doesn’t work.

The problem is that the game lacks a real sense of progression due to it’s “Go anywhere” approach. There are four different worlds with 5 stages in each, and each stage ends with a boss. So, there’s twenty stages in total. Now, this would seem like a decent amount of content if this game had followed the linear style of it’s predecessors. Unfortunately, the freedom the game offers you in allowing you to pick which worlds and levels you want to tackle in which order makes all of them kinda taste like beans.

The fundamental controls are introduced in the intro part of the game, and after that, there are really few additions. With the major ones being these “plates” which require you to press the “Y” button when you land on them. There are four plates, which are each unlocked after collecting a large number of “light seeds.” The light seeds themselves are basically just an incentive to re-explore areas that you’ve already been to, as they are only available after you have completed the stage by defeating the boss and “healing the land” by rapidly pressing the “Y” button. The plates offer several different “moves” which will be performed upon activation. Two of the plates require interaction from the player to avoid hitting obstacles while on a sort of spiritual train-ride against the laws of physics. And the other two basically just play an animation which takes you somewhere else in the level. Unfortunately, none of the plates add anything really interesting to the puzzles in the game, and they all require the press of the same button. So they eventually just add up with the rest of the elements in the game into what feels like an elaborate Simon Says game. When I see the grappling ring, I should press “B”, when I see the plate, “Y”, Press “A” before you get to the edge, “Y” if it’s really far.

The way I put it, the game may sound boring. And I’m sad to say, the truth is that the game is rather boring. The choice of non-linearity allows nothing in the game to build upon anything else, and so it never gets more complex than the first stage you play. Sure, they throw in a few new baddies that you must avoid, and each of the bosses has a slightly different weakness. Unfortunately, these aren’t really enough to add interest, because all of the fighting in the game follows the same sort of Simon says feel with many “Press A to not die” events that pop up if you get too close to the enemy. Although the combat in the game, like almost everything else, is more forgiving than Sands of Time. It’s not really as satisfying or interesting. At the beginning of the game, we are introduced to the novel aspect of combat that we will be controlling two characters during combat. With the Princess’s magic attacks being assigned to the “Y” button. However, as the game progress, we realize that you will never fight more than one opponent at a time, and that all of your opponents will basically be proxies for one another. Sure, one of the bosses you have to push off the cliff because they’re too big to actually feel your sword. And the wierd feral cat-chick thing has some interesting “illusion” battles. But overall, most of the battles involve the same sort of back-and-forth “Simon says” feel as the rest of the game. Oh, now I have to start with an “A” attack, now I have to start with “Y” attack. Uh-oh, he’s charging, better press the buttons on screen so I don’t die.

Of course, as I’ve said earlier, the game is quite forgiving. Almost too forgiving, you can’t even die. Every time you fall to your doom the Princess magically teleports over to you and saves you. (Kinda makes you wonder why you go through all the trouble of helping her out when she can fly the whole time.) Every time you might die in battle, or get sucked in the black “corruption” you get saved by Princess Elika. There are some penalties, if you fall while on a series of acrobatic moves, you get moved back to the last solid ground. If you “die” in battle then the boss regains some health. But overall, the game is easy to an almost ridiculous level. There was a certain joy to being able to let my Prince smack into the ground and die in Sands of Time. There was a certain other joy in being able to just rewind it back when I felt like it. (or didn’t, you bastard prince. *smacks into ground repeatedly*)

Well, anyways. The non-linearity is obviously a problem. And the most interesting bits are the start and the end of the game, where the designers could actually have some idea of what you’ve experienced up to that point.

The story of the game reminds me of a Super Nintendo era game, such as Zelda 3, with the majority of the real backstory and lore being contained solely in the games instruction manual. (Which of course, is entirely in black and while, because no gamer would ever consider reading the instruction manual.) The story in the game is primarily conveyed through conversations between the prince and Elika. Unfortunately, these conversations are completely optional, and only activated when you press the left trigger button. So, you can play through the whole game without actually knowing anything about what’s going on. Many of the conversations pop up at inopportune moments, such as in the middle of a daring escape sequence from a crumbling tower. And due to their disposable nature, all of the conversations feature the same camera angles. This is sad, considering the interactions in Sands of Time worked quite well with conversations that continued regardless of what the player was doing. Although this sometimes created strange situations which didn’t quite match up to the writers intentions, the game didn’t suffer from the same feeling of having a big back-story crammed into a tiny game that the new Prince has.

The game’s ending leaves the story open for a sequel, and is perhaps the highlight of the entire game. If there is a direct sequel to this Prince, I hope the fine folks at Ubisoft will see their mistake and make the next one a linear experience.

But maybe they won’t. After all, the series must be making some good money, for them to be making a Disney movie of the thing. Jerry Bruckhiemer is even jumping on that cash cow. Let’s just hope that movie has a deeper story than this game, and it might just turn out to be watchable.

Overall Score: 6/10

The game is very playable. There are a few interesting moments, but the game as a whole is rather forgettable. Sad, because the art style of this game was a positive direction for the series.

I don’t know what all the hating is about on the Saw movies. Well, I suppose I do, but I would like more people to like the movies, considering how much I like them. So this of course brings me to my next movie review…

Saw V

It’s pretty difficult to keep a horror movie franchise going for five installments without the whole story becoming stale and boring. Most notably because in the typical horror movie, the majority of the protagonists don’t make it to the end of the movie. Or at least, they don’t make it there alive and in one piece.

So, it’s easy to see why there would be fairly low expectations of the fifth film in the Saw series, a series of films centering on a not-quite-serial-killer named John, who has been nicknamed Jigsaw, and who has been dead for several films now. Of course, the expectations weren’t that high in the first place, considering the first Saw only scored a whopping 46 on Rotten Tomatoes. (My aggregate movie review site of choice) And the review scores have only gone downhill since then, with this latest installment only receiving a 15 percent positive rating.

It’s obvious why someone wouldn’t like the Saw movies. First and foremost, they are extremely horrifically violent films, with all kinds of gruesome deaths shown on-screen and relatively un-toned down. (I say relatively because the theatrical cuts of the films often have large sections of gory footage removed.) And secondly, the plot of the films continues to build and rely heavily on minor characters from films as far back as the first. (This being an unfortunate side affect of the aforementioned death of all the major characters.)

However, if you are willing to pay attention to the movies, and maybe watch them more than once, you will find a quite interesting and satisfying story which unfolds over the length of the series. The story itself is quite comic-book like in nature. (Meaning, it isn’t very realistic, but you’re expected to take that for granted.)

Now, as for Saw V in particular, I suppose I will need to begin again.

Saw V was released on October 24, 2008; The friday before halloween, as with the tradition set by the previous films. It has a different director than the past three films, which were all directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. (who also was involved in the creation of a quite interesting musical horror number called “Repo, The Genetic Opera”, which you may be interested in checking out.) The first film in the series was directed by James Wan, and he continues to be involved with the production of the series, along with his fellow writer and D-list actor, Leigh Whannell.

The story of Saw V was written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the writers of the previous film, and the story of V jumps off fairly easily from the end of that film. (Which is a somewhat unusual turn for the series, which has been a bit notorious for not making it clear how much time has passed between films) The story itself centers around John, or Jigsaw’s, apprentice–a police detective named Mark Hoffman–and the pursuit of him by Agent Strahm. The story of the film is similar to Saw III in that it features two main narratives which primarily only intersect at the end of the film. The second narrative features five contestants in a series of traps which require “teamwork”, as much as that is really possible in a saw film.

The primary narrative of the film basically involves Agent Strahm discovering some things by delving into Detective Hoffman’s past. Through his discoveries, we learn more backstory. (a frequent device since the death of Jigsaw in the third movie) However, there is a somewhat interesting new element added involving a new character named Seth Baxter, who dies at the beginning of the movie to the hands (steel?) of an un-winnable trap inspired heavily by Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum.”

The primary narrative begins to be fairly dry, but it is the secondary narrative about the reckless fight for survival inside of Detective Hoffman’s latest Jigsaw-style game that really makes the film exciting. The overall series of traps are somewhat straightforward compared to some of the previous films, however this simplification allows the grand scheme of things to be somewhat more clear at the end. Compared to Saw II, in which the viewer is left wondering… “Well, what if they did something else?” So, the trap is certainly less Rube Goldberg-ey and unrealistic. But still, it provides the primary thrust of the film, and helps speed up the otherwise slow (and admittedly boring) primary cat-and-mouse narrative.

The biggest complaint I have about the film is it’s lack of a twist. And that’s not to say that I dislike movies that do not have twists, or that I think that the Saw films must have amazing twists to be really great. The main reason I’m frustrated by the lack of a twist, is that the tagline for the film, “You won’t believe how it ends,” blatantly suggested a killer twist. However, I am here to inform you that there is no twist, and if the only thing that seems like a twist at the end of the film, is in fact supposed to be a twist, I can only pity the writers of the film. As is, the tagline for the film seems to be one of the more ridiculous taglines I’ve seen. Without a twist, the line might as well be attached to any film.

Napoleon Dynamite, you won’t believe how it ends.

Overall: 7/10

The primary narrative of the film is probably the least interesting of the series. But the secondary storyline provides enough thrills to be worth a watch.

So, yeah. It’s been a bit of a while since I’ve updated the blog. But that’s nothing unusual for me, I suppose. After I dropped out of college, I moved in with my fiancee, and we don’t have internet except for going downtown and sitting outside next to the courthouse and mooching off of the wifi there. So I don’t really get online that much, and when I do, I try to make it for something more important. But I guess I’ve been neglecting this blog, as well as my game design and programming habits. It’s all just sort of gone down the toilet, so to speak.

However, I have seen quite a few movies and played a few games since my last post, so I suppose I should give an update on them. Or at least on a few of the ones that I haven’t reviewed.

Orphan

I guess if I would’ve researched this movie somewhat more I wouldn’t have gone to see it at all. With a 56 on Rotten Tomatoes, I wouldn’t have gone to see the movie normally. But I was hooked in by the trailer and, on a whim, decided to go see it without checking online about the movie or the director’s history of not so excellence.

I suppose it may be too much to expect anything special by the director who re-made…

Holy crap! A rooster just jumped up on the hood of my car!

Anyways… where was I? Oh yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a director who remade a 1953 Horror film, which itself was a remake of a 1933 Mystery film, originally based on a short story called The Wax Works, as a horror film House of Wax in 2005. But of course, I have never seen House of Wax, so I expected something special from Orphan.

The movie’s premise is certainly interesting enough. A family who has recently lost a child due to miscarriage is looking to adopt. So they go to a local orphanage, where they are quickly drawn to a young girl named Agatha, who seems to act quite maturely for her age. Then of course, after they bring the girl home, things slowly seem wierder and wierder. Of course, Agatha appears nice to the parents, but to everyone else, she acts like a psychotic sociopath.

This in and of itself, could’ve been a good movie. Had the story went to a conclusion with a reasonable twist, or no twist at all, I would’ve left the theater satisfied. After all, the movie had superb cinematography, with many clever and quite beautiful shots. The storytelling was quite inventive, especially a scene in which the mother tells a story to her near-deaf daughter. During this scene, the daughter takes out her hearing-aids, and the film is silent except for music. All of the storytelling her mother does is through sign language, and is shown as subtitles on the bottom of the screen. Now, I’m nearly certain that this was probably inspired by some other movie that I have not seen. And the director may have counted on this. But either way, it was a nice touch.

But the movie immediately loses credibility after the third act twist, which if you do not want spoiled, I would advise you not read the following section.

spoiler:::

During this end scene, after driving away her adoptive mother, she dresses herself up, gets her father drunk and attempts to seduce him. This is, of course, rather uncomfortable to watch, and also makes very little sense. This is intended to get your mind whirring about the twist. And just after you’ve figured it out, the movie tells it to you. Which is of course, ideal for a good twist. But this is not a good twist. This twist is just ridiculous. According to a foreign mental hospital where Agatha had been staying before coming to the United States, she has a condition known as hypopituitarism, and is actually 30-something, despite the appearance of being a 12-year old. So it is apparently her built-up anger about being treated like a child her whole life which has led her to attempt to seduce older looking men.

What. the. Hell?

I mean, the idea seems to make sense at first glance. But if she is so upset about people thinking that she is a child, then why is she dressing like a child, and putting on make-up to make herself look younger, and staying at a god-damn orphanage!?? This is just bizzare. And dumb. Bizzare and dumb as hell.

The rest of the movie is just a typical run-for-your-life thing which ultimately ends in the death of Agatha due to being kicked in the face by her adoptive mother.

Thank god there won’t be a sequel.

::end spoiler

Overall Rating: 6/10

At least the cinematography was good. There were a few clever acting moments as well. But the movie just sinks on it’s terrible twist, which was the brunt force of the marketing campaign anyways.

Indigo Prophecy

Now this was a game that interested me originally when I played a demo of it on my computer back when it came out. But I didn’t have the money to buy it at the time, so it just sort of went away and I forgot about it in the wave of hype for the next generation of consoles.

Until I found it a Gamestop for like nine dollars.

So, I bought the game hastily, hoping to finally enjoy the rest of this promising adventure game.

And the game was quite promising, despite some honestly awkward voice acting by the main characters. Up until about two-thirds of the way through the game, it was still interesting. There was a wierd mystery unfolding about why Lucas Kane had involuntarily stabbed a man to death in the bathroom at a downtown diner. The story was subtle, and the characters were developing slowly and realisticly.

Yeah, there’s some spoiliers that follow, but I really wouldn’t worry about it.

Then the end of the game comes. First, Lucas Kane re-hooks up with his ex-girlfriend. Not a bad thing in and of itself, however his girlfriend is immediately kidnapped by the trademark “spooky bad guy in a cloak”. He has a vision of his girlfriend falling to her death at the old run down theme park thing. So he goes there and follows a raven or crow or something until he realizes he must climb up to the top of a roller coaster to reach his girlfriend. So he goes up there, and just when he is about to reach his girl, the spooky cloaked guy destroys the roller coaster and Lucas Kane falls with his girlfriend to their presumable deaths.

Or not?

Now, it would have been fine by me if Lucas Kane died, he wasn’t a particularly interesting character. Plus the game has you playing scenes as the two cops in pursuit of him, so he’s really only 1/3 of the game. The game could’ve ended quite well without the mystery even being solved. Not every thread has to be tied up for a story to be completed.

But of course David whatever-hell-his-name-is-director-of-this-crappy-video-game-story has other ideas entirely. Instead of leaving the story in sane territory. He decides that Lucas Kane will still be alive in a sort of zombified wierd half-dead sort of state.

At this point, the world in the game is getting colder and colder every day, and the temperature drops, hence the name of the European released version of the game, “Fahrenheit”. (However, they changed the name for the US release to avoid confusion with the recently released Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore)

The story just goes downhill farther and further as the game continues. Rather than leave some things a mystery, David-whatever tries to tie everything up with this BS story about 3 secret societies who Illuminati-esque rule the world. (One of these societies happens to be made entirely of energy robots, by the way.)

So, the old lady in the wheelchair (who was creepy already with her crazy house and crows in cages, but the game forced you to trust her despite your inhibitions, and who had died earlier in the game to boot) reappears after the death/resurrection of Lucas Kane. But then we find out that she’s actually a robot, and she wants to kill you. Then Lucas Kane and the robot fly around Matrix Revolutions-style while you play a game of simon says with the two analog sticks.

Well, I’ll just leave it at that. Needless to say, the game does not disappoint in its stupidity towards the end.

Oh, well, I suppose I should add one more thing. The female cop who was pursuing Lucas Kane through the whole game, suddenly falls in love with him shortly after meeting him in his quasi-dead state. Oh, and they have sex. Oh, and she has his baby at the end of the game. Even though HES FREAKING DEAD ALREADY!!!!

Overall: 1/10

And it only gets that one point because the game didn’t have any glitches preventing me from completing it.

Well, hopefully I’ll be back soon with a review of the new Prince of Persia game, and maybe some other stuff.

For those people who haven’t gone out and bought a 360 just to play this game, (Which I’m guessing most of you haven’t) you can now play Braid on your PC!

I mean, seriously, it’s on Steam, if you haven’t played it now, just buy it already. It’s, in my opinion, one of the most impactful games that has been released in the past few years. And in addition to that, it’s just a really great game.

Don’t pass it up any longer.

Not doing much right now, just putting this up from a public computer. About to go to my Old Testament class, which is the most sleep-inducing class of my school week. Unfortunately I’m already tired, so this is not going to be so good.

I’m currently mulling over some ideas for my next programming project. My goal is to keep myself working on making game projects so that I can actually be a developer. Rather than sitting around hoping that I’ll “be a game developer one day,” I figure I should just jump in and start completing projects. So far I’ve been making pretty good headway. I just don’t know what exactly I’m going to do next.

I’ve got some ideas for tools to make my big project (Fij, of course,) but I think it might be better of me to stick to actual game projects that are quite small and should only take about a week of work to implement. (barring any serious bugs, like the memory leak issue with my Pong clone) The main reason that I sort of feel this push as a necessary thing is that I want to learn game development, not just programming. And that means I need to learn as much as possible how to design and manage the programming and development of my projects until they are completed.

So, whilst doing other random things later today, I’ll hopefully try to mull for some ideas deep inside my brain.

Either that or I’ll just end up writing a space invaders clone.

Another dumb game, but hey, it’s learning experience for me, and at least it’s better than tic-tac-toe:

PONG

As you can see, the left paddle is going to lose.

Download:

Pong (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.15MB

How to Play:

Uhm, seriously… It’s just pong. Try not to miss the ball while also trying make the opponent miss the ball. First player to 10 points wins. There’s a single player mode with AI, and a two player mode as well. Have Fun!

Libraries used:

SDL ,  SDL_image , SDL_mixer , SDL_ttf

Yeah, I made this yesterday, so I guess this is my first completed game made in C++:

TIC-TAC-TOE

As you can see, X is going to lose.

You can download it here:

Tic Tac Toe (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.28MB

How to play:

It’s pretty straightforward, just click on the grid to place X’s and O’s. Sorry, there’s no single player mode, so you’ll have to come out of your cave and actually talk to someone.

In developing this, I used the following libraries:

SDL , SDL_image

I figure it’s been too long since I posted something on here, and although this post will not be long, it makes me feel more at ease.

I’ve been eating some Warheads candies for the first time in many years. They seem much less sour than I remember, but they still burn my tongue when I eat a bunch of them at once. They are certainly delishus.

Sad to say, not much progress on any game projects, as usual. My weekend has been spent with my fiancee, and not on any programming/flash goodness. So, I apologize to anyone who cares. Which is probably no one, but it’s out there in the open anyways.

Also not much progress on me becoming less sleepy. I have no clue why I am so tired all the time. Seriously. I got up at like 2PM, so I’ve only been awake like 11 hours, and I’m so freaking tired I feel like just sleeping all day tomorrow. But I do have classes, so I will not be able to do any such sleeping all day.

Dookie braing.

blink’s back together, need I say more?

Sad to say I let the weekend pass by without doing anything very productive. However I do have some good news. I’m learning to program in C++

Maybe this could mean things for Fij, maybe not. I dunno. Just thought you might be interested. On second thought, you’re probably not.

*sigh* anyways….

Here’s something rather…interesting that I’ve found. It’s a little flash-based game about being trapped. I’ll just let you play it. Audience Award winner of the Nordic Game Jam 2009.

I’m so sleepy…