Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands (Wii)
Wow, that ending went all Majora's Mask on me. Really creepy and weird. I didn't even understand what exactly happened and had to read the description on Wikipedia.
Final boss turned out to be a mess. It's quite apparent they just stopped caring by the end of the game -- lots of unpolished moments. I basically had to do three same actions and each time they showed me the same cutscene. There were very slight variations, but it just felt extremely lazy.
I remember listening to rather lengthy discussion of this game on one of the podcasts, but now i can't find it here. Forgotten Sands isn't even in the database and my Google skills are failing me.
Can anyone help me out or i am imagining things?
Oh and i still can't unlock anything, no developer diary, no art, and most importantly -- no original game. What's up with that? What am i supposed to do there?
I also tried additional "secret maps", hoping beating them will unlock me original game.
Damn that
speedrun challenge is absolutely brutal. Also it's funny how little they cared about this post game stuff, because this particular speedrun challenge looks unfinished, looking almost like Portal or Mirror's Edge with it's sterile environments with no textures on them.
These levels feature pure 2d and 3d platforming which was always my favourite parts of both Prince of Persia and it's sister series Assassin's Creed.
There is no way i am going through main game again, achievements or not. But i think i will spend a few more days trying to beat these "secret map" levels.
Prince of Persia: Rival Swords (aka Two Thrones, Wii version)
I am not sure if i will start the game proper right after finishing another PoP. I just checked if the disc was working after getting the game.
First of all, yesh, this game looks
rough. Models are almost PS1 level. I remember playing Two Thrones on my PC, and i think it was rather a beautiful game for its time. Also apparently this game only support 4:3 aspect ratio (or it could be a glitch in the latest firmware update that changed a lot in Wii mode).
Controls feels surprisingly great though. Even better than in later Forgotten Sands. My main problem with PoP: FS controls was that prince was too eager to run up the wall -- basically if you just run into it, he will start doing that wallrun thing. In Rival Swords, prince is doing wall run only when you hold B button and it feels much better for me.
Surprisingly, camera also feels better, even with wii controls. When you twist wiimote, camera rotates left and right, which is great because it's quick and doesn't interfere with any other buttons. You can run and jump and control camera at the same time. Feels so much better than camera control in Forgotten Sands where you had to stop and then work with unwieldy and slow pointer controlled camera.
I never finished that game on PC so now i am looking forward to beating it properly. Sometime next year...
Donkey Kong Country Returns (3DS)
That Donkey is a huge bulking monster with lots of momentum. This game is even more momentum based than recent Rayman games. I don't remember him having THAT much weight in the first DKC game...
Speaking of old DKC games, i probably shouldn't have started this game, and should have tried to beat DKC2 and DKC3 on GBA first...
Controls are kinda weird: default scheme with circle pad is workable but it doesn't let you control the game with D-Pad. Why. Alternate control scheme with D-Pad changes all the button layout and now you have to use shoulder buttons to stomp and stuff. Again, why? After playing a bit i got used to playing with circle pad, but i wish i could use d-pad with normal button layout.
Still a great game, lots of secrets. Time attacks are very challenging and basically are made for you to break the game's system's apart -- just like with Rayman, only in time attack i started to get platforming in this game.