Two Thrones: The Prince Wears Out His Welcome
I just gave up on Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.
It wasn’t because it’s a bad game. It’s not. In fact, in most cases, it’s a solid refinement of the franchise’s previous iterations, and a welcome return to a style of storytelling much more in keeping with The Sands of Time than last year’s adolescent Warrior Within. And the Prince has a few new combat and platforming moves, including a gratifying stealth kill system. But there’s something missing.
It’s in the level design. At about halfway through the game, I just got bored with the Prince’s endless leaping and swinging through environments that lack the grandeur and complexity of the previous games. Though the streets, rooftops, and sewers of Babylon are interesting to a point, they simply don’t offer the same breathtaking sense of scale. So far, there aren’t any beautifully designed clockwork rooms or breathtaking water-drenched caverns or enchanted palaces to explore. Just too many mundane alleys, streets, and courtyards. It’s lazy level design, and it’s boring.
I’ve got a few other minor quibbles. The Dark Prince’s attempts at wit and sarcasm often fall flat. And the GameCube version appears to lack the graphical polish of previous GameCube releases in the series. It looks much more like a PS2 title. The engine doesn’t seem to have been improved or optimized in the slightest since the last game.
There’s a massive structure in the distance of the game’s landscapes that hints at the presence of the vast, complex levels that I loved so much in the previous titles. There’s good reason to expect that maybe the developers were saving the game’s best platforming and most impressive environments for the story’s latter portions, but the bottom line is that I don’t have enough patience to see if that’s the case. I’ve seen enough.
I honestly didn’t think I’d ever get tired of the Prince’s platforming mechanics, but here I am, mailing the game back to the rental service without hesitation. I’d like to think that at some point Ubisoft Montreal might rethink the property. It’d be nice to see a reimagined Prince on the next generation of consoles — but only after a break.
Three games in three years tends to wear out a character’s welcome, in my opinion. I thought that the Splinter Cell franchise’s single-player game suffered from the same treatment (also at the hands of Ubisoft). By the time Chaos Theory rolled around, I’d had enough Sam Fisher for a while, despite the game’s improvements.
A great game every two or three years is enough. Annual releases of more of the same don’t hold my interest. Plus, these back-to-back sequels that the industry generates are too often merely phoned-in updates to previous versions with only superficial refinements.
Unfortunately, milking popular franchises until they’re dry seems to be the standard. I guess it’s easy money.
(February 23rd, 2006 at 3:09 am)
“Though the streets, rooftops, and sewers of Babylon are interesting to a point, they simply don’t offer the same breathtaking sense of scale. So far, there aren’t any beautifully designed clockwork rooms or breathtaking water-drenched caverns or enchanted palaces to explore. Just too many mundane alleys, streets, and courtyards. It’s lazy level design, and it’s boring.”
Exchange Babylon for Venice and you’ve just described Tomb Raider 2 (or Tomb Raider 3, for that matter). They took Lara out of the tombs and into the city streets, and it was a disaster. There is absolutely nothing in those two sequels to compare to even one level, like St. Francis’ Folly, in the original Tomb Raider. (I am hoping the new game’s gone back to the original formula, but there is still that distressing focus on gunplay…)
“The engine doesn’t seem to have been improved or optimized in the slightest since the last game.”
Again, this is the Tomb Raider problem. They used minor improvements on the original engine (developed in 1995-1996) through five games (1996-2000, if I’m figuring right).
“Three games in three years tends to wear out a character’s welcome, in my opinion. … ”
From this point to the last sentence (about “easy money”) you are describing the painful situation of Eidos, CORE, and Tomb Raider. It’s just eerie.
Even worse: the original 2D PoP was obviously a great inspiration to TR, but with TR run into the ground, a 3D PoP shows up with some influence from (and much innovation on) TR… and it also inherits the TR sequel problem. Will these updated PoPs positively influence TR while PoP is on the decline?
(February 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 pm)
Very good points, jvm. I hadn’t thought about Tomb Raider, but the phenomenon certainly applies.
There are some indications the upcoming Tomb Raider: Revelations might reinvigorate the series, and offer some of the spectacular level design and platforming I found missing from The Two Thrones. Here’s hoping.
(February 23rd, 2006 at 1:05 pm)
I found it to be a strong return to form personally. Not as good as the first one, though the combat and stealth kills made up for that. Sneaking around a courtyard at roof level to get to just the right spot to stealth kill a bunch of guards one by one without being spotted was fantastic. I even liked the dark princes cutting comments to be honest. *shrug* a perfect ending too.
I lost my Chaos Theory save a few levels in but still plan to revisit and finish it simply because they finally nailed the stealth element - it really does feel like a futuristic Thief game if you decide not to fire a single shot, something which is entirely possible from what I’ve played. I love that. :) Pandora Tomorrow was fairly naff though, purely down to being a different studio working on it I think.
Oh, and welcome back! :)