Warrior Within: The Prince of Persia (and his software quality assurance team) plummet to their demise

Above all things, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is probably remembered most as a symbol of a an era of faux-grit, where even a whimsical, sophisticated, and self-assured tale like Sands of Time could be brazenly supplanted by MTV's Godsmacked in a leather bikini cutting a dog in half (with fully real-time BloodParticle (TM) effects) without any justification whatsoever. While the gameplay mechanics were well-received, sales were fine, and an important lesson was learned for the next sequel, Warrior Within still managed to tarnish the perceived integrity of what had been the crowning achievement of the sixth console generation: Halo. Or, um, Sands of Time. (which, and let's not get into this here, but which had a far greater impact on game design-to-come than did the conservative, if blockbusting, Halo). With Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Featuring Godsmacked, Ubisoft reminded everyone (who cared enough to pay attention) that games are soulless entertainment products and that artistic vision is only permitted in commercial media so long as it doesn't conflict with demographic analysis.

Ignoring the stifled critical outcry, I actually don't think there's anything wrong with the concept of Warrior Within as a downer sequel to Sands of Time. Taking a youthful chummy character who went through a seriously traumatic experience and reflecting that in his development is actually... well it's a lot more honest than having Nathan Drake or Max Payne toss off a one-liner after their 1,445th murder. The Prince, and most video game heroes along with him, should be kinda insane. You heard of this thing called PTSD? Even the Ninja Turtles got a bit shell-shocked here and there d;^) The strands of that transformation definitely lurk amidst Warrior Within's story - for instance when the Prince transforms into a wraith and murders himself. For all it's association with baby teenagers, angst can be a sophisticated narrative subject. I think it would've been a mistake to continue in an ever-darkening pattern, but it's only the aforementioned cynicism that would make us assume that would happen. 

The art design of the new Island of Time setting is pretty excellent too. More Persian sandcastles would've been really boring, especially considering sand is generally thought of as not that interesting a thing to look at. Rather than another mystically transformed period backdrop, Warrior Within offers a glance through the looking glass to the reality-defying world that spawned the fantastical Sands of Time, adorned with clockwork machinery (get it? clockwork? like time?), eternal gardens, and demonic inhabitants. The Sands were actually a pretty horrific thing in the first game - the kind of thing you don't want Saddam Hussein stocking up in a secret bunker - so it makes a lot of sense that they come from this haunting otherworldly fortress.

What I'm trying to convey is that the game shows a lot of potential and seems to come from a sensible place. There's no real need to ask "why did they go dark?". There is, however, good reason to ask "why did they go Mature?". It isn't the tone or the concept that feel wrong, it's the weird superficial trappings hinting at a lack of faith in the concept's sales potential. The nu-metal soundtrack, the salacious female foes, the sprays of blood - they're all an escape from the macabre tone of the story, a means of backing down tragic angst to something more teenager-friendly and marketably "gritty". There is nothing challenging or mature about a stripper with a knife moaning in pleasure as the Prince cuts her to pieces. That's abject sleaze. The sad thing is that all of these embarrassing elements are utterly irrelevant and surface-level, as if one of the developer's 14-year-old sons sneaked into the studio the night before release to do a little "tweaking".

And that's probably painfully close to what happened. Warrior Within came out right before God of War, but not right before the God of War two-year hype-train launched into orbit. In fact, the entire development of a Sands of Time sequel probably took place under the shadow of Sony's behemoth brainwashing campaign (iirc as launch approached G4TV was running a 24/7 picture-in-picture live feed of David Jaffe's personal bathroom). So while Ubisoft had Developer A off making his cool Labyrinth fantasy concept art, Developer B was in an isolated room studying God of War trailers and secretly developing a Teenagerizer Ray to convert the finished product into something sure to embarrass everyone.

Unfortunately (again), there never was a "finished product" with Warrior Within. This is of course pure speculation, but holy shit is this game incomplete. The rushed quality makes a lot of sense taking into consideration it was developed in a year and assuredly "guaranteed" (by someone who was not at all a developer) to make a December 2004 release - critical both in preempting God of War and in capitalizing on the final holiday season belonging to sixth gen consoles.

Perhaps the most cringe-inducing evidence of the crunch is how goddamn little sense the plot makes. Time travel logic is notoriously difficult to establish and Warrior Within's solution is not to try. At a critical moment in the game, the Prince goes back in time and kills himself to stop himself from creating the sand that allows people to travel back in time to kill themselves. So he returns to the present without the existence of the time-traveling sand and he was very clearly murdered by himself last week before he went back in time to murder himself and extinguish the time-travel-sand and that's a-okay? Is this Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah? It is so fucking lazy it begs the question why bother with the time travel in the first place. The answer is because it doubles the gameplay space (every area has a past and present version) without doubling the development time, so who cares if we can explain it.

The weird selection of voice actors also reeks of "didn't have time to get the right people". Why is the Prince played by a new actor? The Prince's character from Sands of Time was all about that external monologue performance. He doesn't feel like the same person anymore. And you know someone at Ubisoft knew that, because the original (Sands) actor returned for Two Thrones and Forgotten Sands. Possibly even worse is that new main character Kaileena is played by two different actresses! In the same game! That is some hardcore low budget shit right there. There's also not that much voice-over content. Or at least it seems that way, since...

The bugs in this game are insane. Sound effects and voice-over disappeared from my playthrough PERMANENTLY around the halfway point. Never to return. For all intents and purposes, Ubisoft may as well have saved the time and budget on audio, because I never got to hear half of it. This is a AAA holiday release Gamecube game from a major publisher! Not some bargain bin Christian Bible Big Rigs shit. I continued to follow the story thanks to cutscene subtitles, but if the Prince was externally monologuing the same way he did in Sands of Time, I missed it. I wasn't about to replay the first 8 hours and this time cross my fingers that the game didn't completely shit itself.

Perhaps in an attempt to replace the missing sound effects, the game caused my console to make all kinds of loud clicking and disc-reading noises that it has never made otherwise. I finally decided to queue up some Allman Brothers Band on the iPod and tough it out to the end. I did want to see the credits at least once, as all-told it's a fun game and the only one in the series I'd yet to complete.

Despite my best efforts, Warrior Within shall remain the only game in the series I've yet to complete. That's because the portal to the final boss fight doesn't work. At all. In this game. There is no way to get to the final boss fight and see the ending. The game ends for good at the final save point. I've read online that there is a rare bug that lets you continue through to the conclusion - it requires deleting your save file, playing all 15-20 hours a second time, and saying a prayer that the portal will work this time. If it wasn't for all the other random glitching and audio not working, maybe someday in 20 or 30 years I'd regain the enthusiasm to see through Warrior Within. Looks like it just isn't meant to be.

I'm not going to write a conclusion because it's not like I got one for this piece of shit game. I'd be genuinely pissed if I had bought it for full price in 2004. As is I'm just kinda depressed because my OCD doesn't let me take this off the "games to complete" list.

What surprises me most about Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, revisited

The writing is actually not awful. I've more than once caught myself chuckling at the zingers thrown back and forth between these clompingly lovable bots. The Sanford and Son dynamic of Jazz and Cliffjumper is likely to be a hit with fans of all ages.

I remember this episode.

These days every game wants to be Star Fox 64; if that doesn't necessitate a landslide of AI buddies clogging up the shooting field, it at least means a persistent chirp in your ear to tell you what you're doing. Everything from Vanquish to Lords of Shadow to Skyward Sword includes some form of companion navigator, team dynamic, or externalized internal monologue. If you're playing a game, you're gonna have voices in your head. Deal.

More often than not, you'll barely notice these voice bytes thrown into the theatrical clattering of clinking clanking battle sounds and jangling or soaring soundtracks. That said, when you DO notice them, you NOTICE them. Like, in a bad way. An immersion-breaking way. A technologically limited way. A "hey, get out of the way!"

There are some fairly obvious reasons to employ the chit-chat device, but the risk doesn't necessarily seem worth it. Often it characterizes the player-character, as in the enthralling 2003 Sands of Time. As a matter of fact, let's just talk about Sands of Time, because I think it's gonna work for all of my examples. The Prince likes to talk about what he's doing. He occasionally without instigation goes into an anecdote or tirade. It gives us a feel for the character and the backstory, even though the world is lifeless. A reason to keep moving.

Later in the game you'll hang out with Farah. She provides relational dialogue, to make you further identify with the player-character and develop your relationship with the game world. This approach is often taken with female characters: Ashley with Leon (RE4), Zelda with Link (Wind Waker), and whoever that woman in Vanquish is who keeps telling me to do things. Because you're assumed to be a guy, and the easiest way to write dialogue that male teenagers will fantasize about is by adorning them with a dedicated female. Whatever. Gender issues are another day. And these days people throw around terms like "Bromance" which I think is meant to cover male-male relations of this sort.

Even later in the game, I think, because I haven't played this game in like five to ten years, is a part where Farah is gone again, and there are puzzles. And during the puzzles, you're going to repeat the same mistakes a lot and probably straggle a bit. So the prince (or Farah) chimes in with a suggestion to help you along, but it's vague and ineffectual. And you screw around with the puzzle a bit more. Then the prince (or Farah) chimes in with the SAME suggestion to help you along, this time equally as useless and an annoyance too. By the time you've finally made your way past the obstacle, you'll either have heard the same quip repeated a fucking thousand times, or wisely have muted your TV.

All I'm trying to say is, WHY do they play that same clip over and over and over again. Dozens of games do it! Sometimes it's a randomized draw from a pool of ten, but you still end up hearing the same ones again and again. It's not guidance, it's not character development, it's not backstory, it's just fucking incessant nauseating yammering, as if the television HAS to be making noises at you. So fuck you, stupid fucking developers. Stop doing this.

Oh, those cinematic platformers, revisited

Cinematic platforming is something that comes in and out of fashion from time to time, so let's take an odyssey to another world where a prince lights the way to the future. Okay. Writing device of the day taken care of. What? I kinda left off in a way that doesn't lead into the subject? Of course I did. It's called BAD WRITING. Try it sometime! Coming off a brilliant segue like that, FUCK, GODDAMNIT, IT'S NOT A SEGUE IF IT'S AT THE BEGINNING. Whew. This is going poorly. We better take a line break.

*That's him.

Ha! What a pun?! Don't think it was a pun. Cinematic platformers are those games where you have to jump from one movie theater to the next. Or jumping games based on Stephen Spielberg's latest output? No, no more word games. I'm not the kind of guy to do a joke and then do the same joke again. And then do the same joke again and then do the same joke again. That's not me*. A cinematic platformer is a game in which the players interaction initiates a tiny cutscene. This probably isn't the first definition that comes to mind for you, but I'll tell you why it's the right one. Because it is.

That's what cine-plats are. When you're playing Mario (regular platformer), you press right and Mario scoots a bit right. He may animate for a second, but the end result is - and I'm going to get really technical here so bear with me: [while player presses right -> Mario_x_velocity = 1]. Remember that games operate on a coordinate plane, familiar to you from high school math and your brother, Descartes. When you're playing a cine-plat, its more like: [if player presses right -> trigger step_right_cutscene]. It's the WHILE vs. the IF. Continuous vs. Discrete. It's hard to convey this in words, so do me a favor. This'll sort it out. Go get your local NES emulator [legal] and a copy of Super Mario Bros., and a copy of Prince of Persia. Boot Mario, start the game and hit the [right arrow] key once. Mario moves like basically not at all. Boot PoP, get into the level and hit the [right arrow] key once. What happens? That's right. He took a step. That's a logical, observable process with a beginning and an end, fully animated (with rotoscoping!) for your delight. There you have a cinematic platformer. A game you kind of play, but you also kind of watch.

The game that brings this subject to the tip of my tongue is the recently released XBLA title Deadlight. At first glance, Deadlight is yet another woefully unwarranted zombie game. This one seems to crib heavier from Half-Life 2 than Resident Evil, but it's just exhausting. Does our entertainment media really need to cycle between fascination with zombies and vampires? It's so boring. So I couldn't get even remotely excited about Deadlight, and playing [the demo] has taught me a little cine-plat lesson. About how important it is, what you're watching.

What you have to pay attention to here is framing. These games present you with one screen at a time. One 'room', as it were. Entering a room is both a reward and a challenge - you're high on the rush of beating the last room! but holy shit what's all THIS about?! You have to want that next room. The puzzle element of the game is manifesting! Puzzles I'll talk about a lot, because along with exploring and killing, they're one of the primary tools for interacting with worlds. So cine-plats are puzzle games! - not exactly news. Moreover, they are hard-line narrative-driven. If you don't care what's beyond that door, you sure as hell don't feel like fucking around with Abe's love of accidentally taking one too many steps. This is your discretized linear adventure narrative. You get it in chunks, so to speak.

That's structure, so let's talk substance. Cine-plats tend to opt for instant-kill hazards and invincible enemies - this is their heritage in PC and adventure games. What you get from this is trial-and-error gameplay. Sure it feels good to run the right route the first time, but I bet you feel like you missed something. A lot of the fun of the cine-plat is in those mistakes - both the "hey cool death animation" and the "HAH you got that far just to screw up THAT" type. Remember - this is a game that we kind of play, and we kind of watch. If two people are in the room, it doesn't really matter which one has the controller, they're both getting the same experience. Each failure is in itself a scene - otherwise every obstacle would be the same exact spike.

And that's where we get to the problem with Deadlight. See, here's a game that's being advertised as cine-plat - but wait! even more! it's ALSO a survival horror! Awesome, this could be great! Awesomely enough, this could also be completely fucked from the concept, and the demo leads me to believe the implementation hasn't helped. It's just that one word - survival - that gets it so fucked up. If you're always playing it safe, if you're actually trying to stay alive, there's no trial and error. There's nothing to watch - it's just a guy running through rooms. You have a health bar for christ sake! Trip up here, take a scratch there, you keep going. It's BORING. By supposedly adding tension, they've actually completely drained what made the style worthwhile. And why, what for? You guessed it.

Combat.

Can't sell a game to the kiddies these days without some ax hacking and ammo managing. So even if another boring brown screen of decomposing whatever and society fallen into whatever wasn't a poor enough drive for the narrative, we have a cinematic platformer with essentially no cinematic platforming. And what a shame it is. Do yourself a favor and grab some of the Oddworld games off Steam or GOG, or check out last summer's criminally overlooked War of the Worlds instead.