If you don't care about computer games you'll want to skip down till I start talking about Sigur Ros... If you do, then feel free to read on.
I finished playing through the
Prince Of Persia series over the weekend. As I've mentioned
in the past I love the first game in the series, so it made sense to pick up the following two when I had the money. Once again, I'm late getting round to playing them, but that's the way it goes when you have to buy all this stuff second hand on ebay...
So, Warrior Within was OK. I got a bit hacked off with all the emphasis on the combat - sure, it looks fairly nifty to leap over a sand monsters head, steal his axe and then cut his head off with it in slow motion, but that's not really what I'm here for, you know? That's not really my thing. The combat actually put me off the game for a while, as I first tried playing it about 6 months ago, but laid off it until I got hold of a gamepad which actually made it feasible to play. So... the combat annoyed me somewhat. The gothic, dark, angsty setting was a bit too emo for my liking, and the
improbably clad,
large breasted women did rather make me wonder whether the focus group behind the game had an average age of above 13. On the plus side, behind all the drek the platforming, puzzle solving side of the game is still there. The time travel aspect works well and the level design is good. So on the whole the game probably scores about 7/10 for me, which surprised me somewhat given how negative some people are about it.
Then I moved on to play The Two Thrones. It's better than Warrior Within, but still not as good as Sands Of Time, sad to say. The setting is brighter, and the Prince is less of an angry bastard, so that's nice. The levels are still good, and the plot is far more engaging than WW, which brings things back into line with the quality of the original game. The challenging combat system is still there, but the addition of speed killing (a technique that allows you to stealthily kill enemies before they get a chance to react) means you can avoid much of the frustrating, button mashing combat that Warrior Within often descended into. The game wraps up the trilogy nicely, and ties everything together. I'd give it 8/10.
So, neither game is as good as the original (which I'd give a 10/10 rating to without hesitation) but they're certainly not bad. Perhaps it's just a pity that the series peaked so early - with such a fine start it was almost inevitable that any sequel would have to be truly masterful to live up to it.
Right... let's talk about something else...
I got the
Sigur Ros album off ebay for the rather low price of... about £6 if I recall. I'd heard people go on about them, but it wasn't until I found out that the brilliant music on the BBC's excellent
Planet Earth series was by them that I decided to splash out. It's a bit of a weird one to be honest... If I'm quite brutal with it, it's actually kind of like listening to a baby's mobile that's playing the original, full version of Radiohead's
Treefingers. It's nice and relaxing, and it certainly makes a nice change, but I'm still not sure what I make of it overall.
The baby is due in 40 days. That's pretty soon, which is kinda scary. We have our first ante-natal class tonight, so I get to learn all about birth and such like. I'll try to post again tomorrow to let you know how it goes.
