Another Podcast list on the way

There was one podcast I meant to add to that list and forgot to, a videogame podcast. Instead of mentioning it here I’ll be having another podcast list of gaming related podcasts. I’ve downloaded a good handful of popular ones so I’ll sift through them all to find my favorites and put them up on here. Expect that in a week or so.

I also just rented Battlefield:Bad Company 2. I know I’m late for this party but I’ve only played a demo so I wanted to check out the multiplayer everyone’s raving about and also see what the campaign is like. So expect a review on that within the next week at the very most—thanks to blockbuster’s stupid return to 5 day rentals—as soon as I have a decent job again I can fiiiinalllyyy reactivate my Gamefly account and get a decent flow of games to play and review.

I’m guessing the review will come before the podcast list but I can’t be certain; either way expect one of them before the end of next week.

 

Until then,

 

-Ben

FINALLY! A Review

NOTE: I’m still unsure on how I want to format my reviews here but I think I’ll be dividing them into the categories of Visuals (graphics), Sound, Gameplay (controls), Overall Fun (entertainment value), Immersion (how easy it is to feel immersed in the game world) and Replay Value. I’d like a format like that and it’s what I’ll stick to for now but I’m sure I’ll keep it loose and make some changes until I get it just right. Here we go.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

 

Prince of Persia 2.0

This Prince of Persia game is clearly an attempt at a revival with a taste of the traditional Prince of Persia that we all loved; redeeming the failure from the previous game which was visually beautiful but in every other way a major disappointment.  Unfortunately it fails at this. It certainly does bring back the original art style and focused the core of the gameplay on agile combat, acrobatics and puzzles. The only problem is that the puzzles are nothing special and certainly not original, the combat is absolutely atrocious and the acrobatics are good but not nearly good enough to hold up the other two aforementioned failures. It’s great to see the developers bring the prince back to what we loved about him in the first place; but a lack of any innovation makes this game come off feeling painfully stale.

A Tale as Old as Time

Yeah, Beauty and the Beast reference,  what of it? The story in this game is very much like the usual deal: The prince comes home to find his kingdom under attack, an evil genie gets released and it spawns sand monsters of no particular origin. The prince gets help from a magical woman whose back story is just as boring as everything else blah blah blah. Everything about this story is predictable and it’s just solid enough to press the game onward but not enough to actually be enjoyable or interesting. If the story was better I may even push through the sluggish combat to see how it plays out but still having not finished the game (something I haven’t done in a very long time) I have absolutely no interest in whatever bits of that dull story I’m missing. There is very little beauty in the visuals of this game but a whole lot of beastly flaws that tear up any of the positive points to shreds. While on the topic of visuals that’s about all I have to say: It looks good but not great. It doesn’t stack up to that stylistic visuals of the last game and somehow even the originals look better than this one. Atmospherically everything’s there but everything about the environments (with only a few exceptions) feel dead and uninspiring. Some areas have more unique styles to them that do look nice but when they’re the backdrop for mediocre gameplay in a snore-inducing story, well they lose any flare they had.

Dynasty Warriors but simplified.

In another review I heard the combat in this game compared to Dynasty Warriors—which is insulting to Dynasty Warriors. Yes, DW has a very simple control scheme and consists largely of button mashing; but it’s actually fun to play. Whereas in Prince of Persia combat always feels tedious and wasteful of your time. So much in fact, that I would consider setting up a Dippy Bird (one of those little bird figurines you hang on the edge of glasses that repeatedly dip in and out of the water) on my controller over the square button and finding a letter use of my time through the combat sections. Maybe a second Dippy Bird on the X button and perhaps an elaborate setup of a laser pointer jumping around the d-pad to lure my cat into swatting at the arrows in order to activate the lame magic powers you get. Actually, setting up that contraption would be a much better use of my time than playing this game.  I guess I should explain it a little bit, as fun as just clarifying how horrible it is can be. Square swings your sword in an extremely basic combo set—but wait, you can even hold it for a power attack! Unfortunately said power attack is just slow and boring to such an unexciting that I ended up never wanting to use it. You can kick enemies individually or in groups with triangle and jump over or on top of most enemies to set up a fancy aerial stab or slash (of which there aren’t more than three or so varieties). When I realized that these were the controls I immediately thought, “Oh, well there must be some sort of drastic improvements on the combat throughout the game right?" Wrong. The only other real additions beyond your usual time powers (which you’re more likely to save for puzzles) is a variety of magical powers and upgrades that do a get a bit more impressive as you go on but are never enough to balance out the dull button mashing that the combat is comprised of.

Exhaustion, Surrender—Just Get it Away From Me

Normally, my reviews would be a lot longer and comprehensive than this but I’m almost as sick of talking about it as I was playing it. This is easily the worst nine dollars I ever spent and I once invested nine dollars in BP. Regardless of how true that is the sentiment remains; this is easily one of the most unbearable games I have played in quite a long time. I don’t even remember the last game that I not only couldn’t force myself into finishing but also couldn’t even stand to play for more than fifteen or so minutes at a time.

If you are a diehard Prince of Persia fan there may be enough of the usual atmosphere and the acrobatic feats to keep you interested but in terms of straight up great games; this was just utterly disappointing and barely playable. Don’t get me wrong on this either, I loved the original Prince of Persia games and I can fondly remember my friend mike yelling “Erra Erra!!” as a cue to rewind time whenever I fell into a pit of spikes but this iteration just doesn’t stack up—whether it be to today’s standards of gaming or even stacking up to the original classics. I can’t stress enough how rarely I don’t finish a game (especially one I plan on reviewing) and how even more rare it is that my patience allows me to only play a game in such short intervals. Check this out if you’re a big fan of the series but even then I think a rental would be the best idea.

So onto the scoring. I’ll try it out like this and see how it goes in the future. Keep in mind that as far as I’ve decided now: The overall is an overall estimate from 1-10 from 1 being so bad not a single person of any state could ever enjoy it and 10 being a must have that anyone with any interests should own; and that is in now way an addition of the other specific scores. These other six will probably be accompanied by comments in the future but I have very little more to say about this game so for now just a 1-10 score.

VISUALS	7
SOUND	6
GAMEPLAY	5
IMMERSION	3
REPLAY VALUE	0
FUN	4

OVERALL—5.5

Ten Great Podcasts to Check Out

• FitzDog Radio
• This podcast is GREAT. I listen to this consistently and as of recently it’s the main podcast I’m always antsy for a next episode of. If you don’t know Greg Fitzsimmons by name you may recognize his face but regardless; his podcast is hilarious and packed full of celebrity guests almost every episode, unique comedy segments and some insight into how Greg has survived a mid-life crisis and 20 years of sobriety. He’s just a really funny guy who very much has his shit together at this point in his life and it’s just very clear that although his stand up is amazing—he is meant to be a podcaster.
• The Moth Podcast
  • The Moth is a great organization that produces this easily addictive podcast. Hosted by Dan Kennedy, The Moth consists of people telling true stories in front of a live audience without notes. The always interesting and often humorous stories range from strict humor to horror or purely inspiring true stories of conquering adversity. The storytellers consist of all kinds of people from comedians to authors  to NY Police officers—really anyone with the courage to share a true story and the charisma to entertain with it. Definitely a must have for anyone with interests in stand up, storytelling or any other such live performances and something that everyone should check out at least once.
• Stuff You Missed In History Class
  • This comes from a section of HowStuffWorks.com (a great site if you’re not familiar with it) which is a great source of basically finding out about how almost anything works. I originally fell in love with this podcast shortly after high school, when I suddenly became enamored with history, for two reasons: It always has somewhat obscure and always interesting tidbits of history and also had some sort of aural-crush on one of the original hosts (who is still the History editor for the site but no longer does the podcast) Candace Keener. How I could have a crush on someone based purely on her articulation, enunciation and fascination with Jefferson is beyond me but it’s totally true. Although my beloved is no longer hosting the podcast is still a favorite of mine and a great source for interesting I-never-knew-that’s of history.
• Stuff You Should Know
• This is yet another from HowStuffWorks and although they have many other great podcasts these are the two I couldn’t live without. Hosted by the sometimes hopelessly nerdy but always loveable Josh and Chuck this podcast covers everything from how memory in dogs, serial killers, flamethrowers and hangovers work to even more hypothetical or random topics such as how to best clean up an oil spill or top ten most bungled crimes. This is a must-have podcast with tons of interesting information and a good portion of it is even useful! At the very least you’ll have some awesome conversation pieces for your next cocktail party—or kegger or tea party or whatever such social event you attend.
• NPR Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
• Any list of great podcasts without an NPR podcast is pretty lacking. NPR produces several great podcasts and I listen to three of them pretty consistently but probably this one the most. It can basically be summed up as weekly game show that uses the past weeks events as a base for trivia. The questions are organized into entertaining segments and is played not only by listeners calling in but also a panel of three celebrities that always make humorous contributions. This is one of my favorite ways to catch up on the weeks news—which actually leads me one of my other favorite ways to do so…
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• This is a show that airs on HBO and the podcast is merely an audio recording of the show. Seeing as I don’t have HBO this is the easiest way to catch the show and only very rarely is there a visual-specific gag that you’ll miss through the podcast. There’s a lot of humor in this as you’d expect from a comedian and although there is a small helping of pop culture included in the shows they are heavily based in politics; as are the guests on his panel with the exception of one “token celebrity” on each episode. I actually feel like a jerk for recommending this since he just finished his finale episode before the summer break but you can check out older episodes to see if you’re into it and he’ll be back in early September!
• WNYC’s RadioLab
• Think This American Life meets fringe science and the most fascinating of fascinating bits of culture. I really can’t describe it better than its own description so I’ll just type that up here: On Radio Lab, science meets culture and information and sounds like music. Each episode of Radio Lab is an investigation—a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea.It is very much like This American Life in terms of format but I just find that This American Life puts me in a tone of pensively stroking my chin with interest whereas RadioLab is much more likely to cause me to slide to the edge of my seat or exclaim in excitement or want to share it with a friend. In two words: Absolutely Fascinating.
• WTF with Marc Maron
• This is much alongside the style of Greg Fitzsimmons’ podcast in the sense that it’s a comedian who often has other comedians as guests on his show. Marc is a much more acquired sense. He is self-deprecating and neurotic but very aware of that and seeking solutions. When I first listened to him he was so much of a mess that I would get annoyed listening to him complain about not having enough success or whatever else and since I’ve started listening again he’s seemed to be much more together. He was always funny and his interactions with his guests (mostly comedians) are full of laughs and insight into the world of stand up. Not my favorite but definitely worth checking out and it’s a great source of comedy while I’m waiting for the next FitzDog update. Which leads me to my other source of comedy while awaiting Greg’s updates…
• The Adam Carolla Show
• I don’t even know what to say if you don’t know who Adam Carolla is. When Loveline ended, a little part of me died. It was only in the past year or so that I discovered Adam had his own podcast and well it just so happens to be THE podcast in the podcast community. Adam is often considered to be for podcasts what Howard Stern is to radio. It’s a great podcast. For some reason I’m not nearly as into it as I was into Loveline and I’m not usually dying to hear the new episodes but I always listen to and enjoy them. Each episode includes over an hour of Adam ranting, the wonderful Teresa Strasser reading some news, and great interviews with guests that often (mostly due to Adam of course) go all over the place in a way that is always entertaining.

So I guess that’s it. I listen to a few others here and there and that doesn’t include any video podcasts but

Heyy I’m actually back!

I’m still working on that review of Prince of Persia and actually playing the game is still the hardest part. Ugh so enjoyable. I would actually prefer to outsource this at this point; have someone play the game for me and just describe it to me. It just has such a sluggish boring progression in both the gameplay and story. There isn’t a single likeable character yet.

Agh. Anyway, I thought I would update with some podcast recommendations in the meantime since they’ve been taking up so much of time recently. Since reformatting my Zune I’ve been trying a few different ones so coming up in the next post is a list of some of my old favorites and a few new ones as well.

Revival

 

So, it’s been quite a while since my last post and its promises of a God of War III review. I never finished that review but if you’ve been paying attention to the gaming community at all in the past few months you must know by now that it’s one of the highest rated games of the year. Great game, no doubt about it.

Recently I’ve been spending my time playing Red Dead Redemption as much as possible. What a magnificent game. The atmosphere is so immersive, so complete. I never realized how much I wanted to play a western game until I first played this one. Everything about that game is about as perfect as it could be, within reason of course. There are some very minor glitches but I haven’t run into any that actually impede upon gameplay or anything so drastic as that. Just your garden variety collision glitches and things like that. I may write up a review on that game but considering how well it’s selling, I think the consensus is out anyways so there isn’t much point. Not only that, but I think I’ll be reviewing the new Prince of Persia game. There’s only one problem: It’s soooo bad I don’t even know if I can play any more of it. So far I haven’t had the patience to play it more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. It is just so abhorrently unimpressive in everything it does. The puzzles are just horrible God of War rip-offs from what I’ve seen thus far and the combat is spectacularly dull. All combat I've experienced up to this point  has consisted of pressing square a lot, occasionally holding it for a boring and painfully slow “power attack” and then jumping around on enemies heads—mostly just to give some buttons other than square a fair chance to participate. There is a very, very small chance I will get much further into this game. I rented it and have it for about another week but I expect to play some more and write what I can about it before bringing it back to Blockbuster and overwriting the painful memory of this game with some quality time in Red Dead Redemption. I cannot stress enough how little I enjoy this game—and I’m really trying my best to get some entertainment out of it to no avail—but I will do my best in expressing that in a short review to come soon.

I really shouldn’t be surprised to be so disappointed by this game if you consider how my review of the last Prince of Persia game turned out. You can find it HERE. Looking at it now I realize how easy I went on that game, giving it a 7.2 out of 10, when it really deserved much less.

Anyway that should be coming up soon and I might actually start updating a little more consistently in the near future, not all about videogames even; but no promises.

 

-Ben