I’ve been playing on the XBox quite excessively as of late. Here’s the problem: I keep renting XBox games thinking, “Oh, this looks neat,” and coming away with a game that really stinks. I must admit that I have a different taste for games than most people, and have avoided many games that I’ve seen reviewed simply because they don’t look like they’ll appeal to me. Well, I’ve finally come to my senses a bit and tried a couple of the highly-rated games.
I got Dave a bunch of used XBox games for his birthday, and - um - tried all of them to my XBox before I gave them to him. (Hey, I got him a gift card, too, so I’m not a complete cheapskate!) Anyway, I got Knights of the Old Republic, Prince of Persia, and Breakdown.
I played Knights of the Old Republic only briefly. Suffice to say that I’m still not a big fan of the Star Wars franchise. This game was supposed to be the end-all of RPGs (for the currently released games, anyway), and it’s really not that great. Maybe I expect too much of RPGs on consoles/PCs, but this is just not good. Better than Baldur’s gate, but not good.
While I’m on the topic of the worst XBox RPG of all time, let’s continue those thoughts. Let me reiterate that Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance just stinks. People go on about how great the game is, and I just don’t see it. What exactly is roleplay-like about this game? Everything is linear. The dungeons are basically giant walk-through puzzles with monsters interspersed. It’s like the game expects you to level up at certain specific points - and you do! It’s horrible. Hopefully the upcoming D&D-based RPG for XBox won’t suck, but I doubt it.
I also gave PRince of Persia a try, and I’m still goofing with that one a bit. Prince of Persia is a 10 out of 10 game if I’ve ever seen one. The graphics are solid. The gameplay is intense. The story is at least genuinely affected in the dialogue, even if it’s not a driving force of the game. Some of the scenes are downright freakishly hair-raising. It’s like Tomb Raider on speed. This is the type of game that I really like. Minus the fixed save points.
I’m not crazy about save points in any game. My suggestion to make Prince of Persia 2 improved over its prequel is to allow a player to save the game at any point. When reloading a game, it would continue from the last “doorway”, just as when you die in the Sands of Time. There could still be the little sand fountains for visions, but the game wouldn’t require them to save.
Truly Excellent Game.
I did not even started up Breakdown, but I did play the demo on the official XBox magazine disc, which is what prompted me to buy that one for Dave. It seemed like it might be an interesting adventure game. All of the reviews for it are bad, so I suppose this is my bad taste at play again, but I only played some of the starting level.
I also got a separate copy of Sudeki, which is a beautiful game (as I’ve said here before) but very very linear. Save and I discovered a hole in the game where there is a trigger that causes a group of enemies to appear. You can go the wrong way and turn back and cause them to appear over and over again. So basically, you can keep doing this until you level up a few times and advance through the game more easily. Not that I did this, just that it’s an option.
My opinions of these games don’t compare well to the professional reviews. Prince of Persia is the only one that both I and the pros liked. All of the other games were reversed. The magazines like KotOR, and I’m not crazy about it. Sudeki was pretty much panned as a flat RPG (and how this game isn’t better than Dark Alliance, I can’t figure, but…), and I like it well enough to keep playing it. The verdict is still out of Breakdown, but I imagine that I’ll like that, too, based on my initial play through it. Unlike DeusEx, which has dodgy controls and kind of goofy logic behind what drives your character, Breakdown seems pretty straight forward. Oh, well.
Everyone is waiting for next month (It starts tomorrow, yay!) for the likes of Fable. I’ll also be looking for some GameCube game called Donkey Konga. Yes, I told you my video game tastes were different.
