#215: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003, GCN)

I made a recent realization that if you are a platformer, you pretty much should have a level of quality and preciseness to your control that is somewhat on par with the Mario series. For example, you have Sonic, whose jumping never quite feels right when he is running (feeling like it is lagging just slightly with a looseness to the ability to control him in midair), and controls absolutely terribly when he is starting from stopped point. The older (two-dimensional) Prince Of Persia likewise suffered from some pretty awful control, though here the looseness and slow response time is attributable to the use of rotoscoped animation - movements cannot be properly canceled. To jump, for example, one needed to press up while there was a window in the prince's run animation. The use of up to jump is bad enough, that it is a timing game (where the 'error' results in death or severe damage from falling) makes it very near unplayable.

The problem with these, however, is not that their control is imprecise, but rather because their design and structure do not work with their imprecise controls - each places an emphasis on speed yet has controls more well suited to a slower and more thoughtful game. The original Prince of Persia was indeed largely a puzzle game - built around navigating the environment and obstacles presented to the player, but there were also time limits present which, like Pikmin, have the effect of rushing the player even if the limit is well above what is actually needed to finish. The controls, to be honest, wouldn't even work if there was no time limit - it is simply too obtuse to use for basic locomotion - but the updated version seen on the Xbox Live Arcade (using assets from the Sands of Time trilogy) illustrates this rather perfectly. The controls are plenty competent, but lack the level of precision one would want to feel truly comfortable. Comfort is very important for a more speed based platformer, as it allows one to be able to not pay attention to the controls and instead focus on navigating the environment through their intuition. That the classic Prince of Persia seems to be designed for navigating through thinking simply underlines how the time limit ill-suits the gameplay.

Sands of Time, in addition to bringing this series into three dimensions, also manages to alleviate this problem by encouraging the player to focus on thinking their way through the environment. This is not even to say that the controls are terribly imprecise - but they do do a lot of the work for the player. In other words, the emphasis is not on execution but planning. The net result is that the player gets to enjoy thinking of a way to navigate the environment, and is then rewarded while executing their route with some entertaining animation (via the Prince's acrobatics). What difficulty in execution there is typically comes down to timing to avoid obstacles - in these instances it is precise (with none of the canned-animation lag seen in earlier entries in the series), and typically sees the timing coming down to when one starts their move (for example, a series of traps will be easily navigated if one starts their run through at the the right time) rather than in the middle of a sequence (these typically being only the need to push off a wall after a wall run at the proper time).

And here comes the master stroke that elevates this whole deal to the level of greatness - the sands of time themselves, which let players rewind time if they screw up. Not only does this render what difficulty in execution there may be somewhat moot, but it encourages the player to, when trying to judge a route through the environment, to be much more open to ideas and simply put, more reckless. That I know I can just push a button to roll back a few seconds before seeing if I can pull off some risky maneuver is, needless to say, going to encourage me to go ahead and try that out. This ability is limited to a maximum of 6 or so rewinds at a time, so one does need to be able to judge if a mistake was due to execution error (in which case, try again) or because that route was not intended to be taken at all (in which case, look elsewhere).

Some time should be spent on what foibles Sands of Time has. It's length and linearity are often criticized - for me I didn't mind the latter (I rarely do when it is in the context of the path being a puzzle) and the latter bothered me only because I would have liked to see more, not because I felt at all cheated. Looking back, in fact, I actually respect their decision not to try to pad it out and risk making the experience tedious (as Warrior Within nearly veered into being). The tedium is unfortunately reserved for the combat which, while not being offensive in any way, is simply too simple for as much of the game it takes up, with a good couple minutes of combat being sprinkled in between every 5-10 minutes of platforming. That each enemy has basically a single move or combo they are weak to makes it largely a rote experience. The last boss, for example, is just a regular enemy with more health who blocks most of your attacks - luckily the real last boss is actually the trip to meet him. Later entries in the series would have the sense to develop the combat to the point where it became somewhat fun in a button-mashing sense - adding a level of variety to your move set that let one simply move to another style of attack once one becomes stale.

The later entries in the series would rather dramatically improve on the core gameplay, but none would match the quality of the story and presentation here - featuring a rare blend of interesting characters and an interesting plot, with the time travel mechanic being used in both a very clever way and as a means to a legitmate emotional payoff, while also sporting some very witty dialogue. Combine this with the fact that it uses a legitimately interesting and (by videogame standards) original setting, and I think the Sands of Time movie could actually turn out to be pretty good (in a Pirates of the Caribbean sort of way - helps that the same production team is behind it).



See, the problem with most video game movies has been mostly due to the sorts of games being adapted - a good adaptation needs good characters, a good plot that can easily be condensed into about 2 hours, and a good, original (or more aptly, distinct) setting. Most adaptations to this point have contained usually none of these and none that I can think of had remotely interesting characters, which is probably the most important piece to the puzzle. Instead game adaptations have been used as titles with accompanying high-concepts which fit neatly with the sorts of mid-budget movies aimed at teen and young-adult males - Doom and demons/mars, Resident Evil and a zombie virus, Alone in the Dark and Tara Reid as a scientist, Dungeon Siege and Jason Statham fighting Ninjas, etc. That Prince of Persia brings with it good characters, a unique setting, and a good plot should help it turn pretty good - at the very least the license is finally bringing some tangible benefits to the production such that if it doesn't turn out good, we can say it was because of some other reason than it being a game adaptation.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Developer: Ubi Soft Montreal
Released: 11/18/2003
Obtained: Christmas 2003

9.5/10

#181: SimCity 4 (2003, PC)

I've gone over how the increasing complexity of the SimCity games winds up being more off-putting than engaging, as it went from being an appealing simplification of city management which was easy to familiarize oneself with all the aspects of, to something that winds up trying to be an in-depth simulation of every aspect of real city management. SimCity 4 basically takes the latter to its farthest possible point to the point where I feel it completely misses the point of simulation games entirely.

That point is that, basically, people don't necessarily want to be the mayor of a town, but rather want to feel like they are acting like the mayor. It doesn't sound like much of a difference, but consider which sounds more fun - having to manage the entirety of a city's infrastructure, down to negotiations for the importation or exportation of resources like energy, water, and trash while also managing a budget that has been itemized down to every detail while also planning public transformation from top to bottom - or building a city and watching it grow? The original SimCity managed to capture the latter perfectly - the focus was always on city building, with side-emphasis in managing infrastructure, and those were always abstracted enough so as to be pretty easily managed.

SimCity 4 is not easily managed, like, at all. It feels more like Microsoft's Flight Simulator than it feels like a real Sim game, despite the addition of things like Sims whom you can follow as they take their commutes. And, even if one can't embrace the depths of detail present the way needed to build cities to their maximum potential, there is still a lot of fun to be had just screwing around and making small villages and towns.



Now, I can certainly see a more detailed city management sim appealing greatly to some - the strength of SimCity 4's online community speaks to this - but for me, I prefer to keep things a good deal simpler than this. This is a real shame, especially because SimCity 4 is also far and away the most fun entry in the series to watch your city grow in - the level of graphical detail is quite stunning, and the cities produced are far more realistic (in terms of layout and the way they affix to the classic SimCity grid) than any of the predecessors. If only producing a city in this engine weren't so intimidating.

SimCity 4
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1/14/2003
Obtained: 2/7/2003

8.0/10

#119: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (2000, PC)

Age of Empires (II and III) are really the only RTSs I actually really like. I respect the hell out of StarCraft, of course, but given the choice to actually play something for fun, I'd take either of the former. It probably has to do somewhat with the way I play RTSs - I'm simply not at all good at doing things quickly in these. This means I'm not very good at defending rushes, much less initiate them myself, so I like to basically turtle along until I can have fun overwhelming the opponent in the endgame (I'm also not exactly very good at that either, so I'm usually playing against an somewhat easy computer opponent, rather than some online opponent). Age of Empires luckily happens to lend itself very, very well to my style, and as a bonus it sports a medieval theme (since I'm something of a fan). It's really right up my alley.

Strange thing about this expansion pack - I can barely recall what Age of Empires II is like without it. Now this has happened to me with other expanded titles - but usually in cases where I got the expansion and the original in the same package (like Roller Coaster Tycoon Gold, or Age of Empires Gold - the first Age of Empires, that is) - not a case where there was a 9 month gulf between my having the original and the expansion during which I was actually playing the hell out of it.

I remember The Conquerors so fondly in large part because the improvements it offers are so complete and helpful, that it makes going back to the original something of a pain. Little details like allowing for farms to be queued so that they can be automatically replanted upon their exhaustion - removing the need to go back late in a match to rebuild them - turn out to be a tremendous help. Other improvements are similarly subtle - expansions to the unit and technology lists enhances gameplay, that villagers tasked to build a lumber mill will, on finishing, automatically go about collecting lumber rather than await a new command removes a lot of the annoying micromanagement. New map types (and some very cool real-world maps - like the English Islands) make for more varied general gameplay, and there is an entirely new (and excellent) soundtrack.



The new civilizations, I should note, never did much for me - I had been well settled into my groove of using either the Byzantines or the Teutons for everything, and some Eagle Warriors or Friars or Turtle Ships weren't going to sway me there (funny since, new civilizations would seem to be the main draw of a RTS expansion, but for me the above improvements were the draw).

Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Ensemble Games
Released: 8/24/2000
Obtained: 9/2/2000

9.5/10

#69: Mario Kart 64 (1997, N64)

I find it interesting to go back and see that Mario Kart 64 got pretty distinctly mixed reviews back when it was originally released, while I considered it pretty immediately to be one of my favorite titles on the system (well that doesn't mean that much, since it was only my third N64 title), as well as probably the first game ever where I found myself really embracing multiplayer. What stands out most to me about Mario Kart 64 is both how dramatically it improved on the original Super Mario Kart, and how dramatically it was itself improved upon by both Double Dash and Mario Kart DS, to point of feeling unplayable until after a proper acclimation period.

The improvement over Super Mario Kart was pretty easy - the original, while great in its own right, is still a mode 7 racer played on a digital control pad - meaning it lacked both anything resembling vertically as well as meaning it lacked some precision in its control. Battle mode was still very fun, but only for 2 people at a time. Mario Kart 64's move to 3D wound up - much like Star Fox's transition to 3D - feeling more like a return home than a move into some new world like it was with something like Mario 64. Four-way battles meant less time was spent searching and also meant that attacks could come out of anywhere. The move away from the more maze-like battle maps to simpler ones which utilized vertically also meant both that there would be less opportunity to hide and better ways to sneak up on opponents. Just an all-around total improvement.

Racing itself was also greatly aided in part to less difficult computer opposition. Whereas the original could see opponents on higher difficulties able to blow the player away (in addition to increased aggression via weaponry), Mario Kart 64 does a good job of keeping things closer. This does mean that rubberband AI is extremely prevalent, but it also means one is not likely to find themselves so far out that the race ceases to be interesting.

The most important addition to the racing and the star of the show winds up being power sliding, exactly the sort of simple skill move an otherwise simple kart racer like this needed as it means that the player is rarely simply accelerating - even when alone at the head of the pack - as they are instead looking for opportunities to gain a quick speed boost via a power slide.



The flaws become most exposed only after coming back after spending time with the superior sequels on the GameCube and DS - each of which further enhance the quality of control (dramatically) and eliminate the bugs and quirks present here (track exploits are surprisingly wide-spread here).

Mario Kart 64
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Released: 2/10/1997
Obtained: Early 1997

9.0/10

#59: SimCity 2000 (1993, PC)

SimCity 2000's greatest value comes in that it allows you to create cities that look a lot cooler then the ones in SimCity. As I went over in my earlier review, the original manages to actually play better on account of being so much less demanding of the player - but when evaluating a true sandbox, does that really matter? That is to say, if I'm playing a SimCity game because I want to make a cool looking town, or because I want to watch a town grow, then why wouldn't I just use the cheats available for money and do just what I want to?

SimCity 2000 manages to just surpass that threshold between the comfortably complex and interesting and the taxing and difficult to manage. I think one could argue that this is owed almost entirely to the inclusion of elevation - through it we have now to deal with uncooperative terrain and with the hassle of running water to our towns. Yet while these additions mean playing SimCity as SimCity has become more of a chore, the increased possibilities they allow so far as expressing ones creativity in town design pretty much cancels it out, at least if that expression is what one wants out of it. Other additions aid dramatically in this appeal - cities can be planned as things other than a series of 3x3 blocks (less roads and the occasional park), and things like education can be planned for. More detail is available for managing the Sims themselves, such as a much more detailed approach to the budget. The presentation is dramatically improved, sporting appealing sprite-art that holds up well to this day, and including various ways to better personalize ones city (allowing for signs signifying landmarks, the ability to name numerous buildings).

The best part for me, however, lied in the way SimCity 2000 cities could be imported into the excellent SimCopter and the 'interesting' Streets of SimCity - allowing one to explore their creations in real-time. It's kind of hard to get across how cool this is, other than to compare it perhaps to being able to build your own cities for Grand Theft Auto IV. Enhancing this ability was the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit, a toolkit that let you build cities completely to ones own specifications, down to choosing individual zoned buildings rather than hoping that the desired one would be built randomly. The sprites themselves could also be edited at will - this effect wouldn't transfer to SimCopter, but it could be transferred to SimCity 2000.



The only downside came in the city building tools for SCURK being significantly more unwieldy than those in regular-ass SimCity 2000 - the best approach that I found was to do most of your terrain design and basic road layouts in SimCity 2000, then jump over to SCURK for placing buildings, although even there it could be tedious to develop a pleasing variety of buildings - there was no 'residential wash' option that would just paint in random residential buildings of a certain style, meaning that large sections would either wind up with a lot of identical buildings next to each other - or take a long time. For the purposes of building maps for SimCopter however, such redundancy is not very noticeable and dense cityscapes make for poorer gameplay than a city with a lot of open space.

SimCity 2000
Publisher: Maxis
Developer: Maxis
Released: 1993
Obtained: Early 1996

9.0/10

#483: BioShock (2007, X360)

BioShock is perhaps best described as a tale of two different games. One is the competent first person shooter, perhaps a bit light on enemy variety but big on providing a lot of fun ways to do combat, and with some good character building elements to boot. Now, this game is, by itself, pretty damn good for roughly the same reason that Gears of War and the first Halo succeeded, namely the 15 seconds of fun principle. The 15 seconds of fun principle holds that, basically, if your core gameplay mechanics are fun, it doesn't really hurt you all that much to not spend much time shaking up the gameplay. In Halo this meant that since it was simply a lot of fun to go around tossing grenades and thwacking grunts and elites and whatever, it didn't matter that it turned out that that was all you'd be doing for the next 8 hours (and it didn't matter, at least not to me).

For BioShock this means that, in large part due to the huge number of plasmids at your disposal, you are bound to find at least a few combat methods that you find yourself enjoying the hell out of and this fun is enough to pretty much carry you through to the end of the game, despite the enemies being all very similar and there being very little in the way of big changes to the core gameplay (nothing even at the level of Halo's vehicle segments). For me specifically, it was a combination of telekinesis and using plasmids to boost my wrench power to the point where it became the only weapon I needed (of course, when all you want to use is a wrench, it becomes pretty damn useful). Others I'm sure liked to use the alternate ammunition for their guns (like setting tripwires with the crossbow), or to use a wider variety of active plasmids (like fire, or ice, or BEES). The point is, there is enough available to the player that they can adjust things to suit what methods they are finding the most fun to play. Furthermore, if the 15 seconds of fun begins to wear out, it gives them the option of switching things up. So, again, by a purely gameplay centric perspective, BioShock has a whole hell of a lot going on for it, and we haven't even touched on the setting, story, and characters that actually wind up making the game what it is (that being the best game of 2007 this side of Super Mario Galaxy).



The second game here is the one featuring one of the most compelling settings I've ever seen in a video game - alternating beautifully between the disturbing and frightening and the majestic and inspiring. It's important not to underestimate how something like setting can dramatically enhance a title. BioShock could very easily of been set in some space station manned with space marines (like, oh, Halo) - the excellent gameplay would remain pretty much unchanged, Big Daddys could be robots, Little Sisters could be little Salacious B. Crumb type creatures or space imps or something, the pistol could be a space pistol, etc. It could still look pretty damn amazing too - Unreal Tournament 2004 and Gears of War showed that you can still do really interesting things with game architecture amongst a horde of space marines. All that said, to say that having as incredible and unique an environment as Rapture wasn't probably the single biggest factor in its success would be pretty disingenuous. Rapture's pull, such as it is, mostly comes from the way it manages to highlight at nearly every turn both how spectacular this world was (and still is) and how far this world has fallen. The player is presented at nearly every turn with gorgeous art deco architecture while simultaneously offering visions of the horrors that has befallen it. Perhaps most incredible is how beautiful this horror can be - in its own way - and this coming from a guy who is normally genuinely turned away from the grotesque - BioShock makes it work by having it seem to be so fitting amongst the splendor one sees.

The setting manages to, in its own way, tell a story and become a character which is itself more compelling than about 95% of what is on the market. The player feels compelled to explore every nook and cranny - not for the hope of discovering some new item or upgrade (not that these don't exist, but they are fairly sparse - except for the huge amounts of disposables like ammo laying around) - but for the hope of discovering some new hint towards explaining the background of this environment, in the form of an audio book diary, or perhaps some secret area used by Rapture's saner denizens before they too were attacked by the splicers who've taken over.

The audio books deserve a special mention - in general, I don't care much for cut scenes in video games. They strike me as a surprisingly lazy way to go about telling story - that rather than embracing the medium itself, developers are simply using the storytelling conventions of film. On the same plane of the uninspired is the scrolling text box (taking cues from books this time). Now, I'm not saying that having story told through these means is bad, of course, countless great stories have been told in these fashions - but I greatly prefer games that can tell their stories in ways that don't stop the gameplay dead in its tracks. The gold standard here is of course, the Half-Life series, but BioShock comes up with some interesting solutions as well. This is where the audio books come in - allowing for the rich backstory of rapture to be brought to life for the player without ever actually pausing the action - they simply play in the background. Add in some excellent voice acting, and you got yourself a stew going. Compare this to the likely alternative - written diaries, likely confined to some submenu or something. Not only would you lose the acting and the sense of the writer/speaker being brought to life, but more importantly, no one would ever read them - why pause the action to read some text?



Special mention should also be made of Andrew Ryan as a character compelling in his conviction and dedication to his strict moral code as well as in how this makes him at once both the most sane person in the city and the most insane at the same time.

BioShock
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
Released: 8/21/2007
Obtained: October 2007

9.5/10