I would now like to recount my attempt to playthrough the entire Prince of Persia Sands of Time Trilogy (Before trying out the latest in the series, Forgotten Sands), all of which I acquired during the last Steam sales.

So, first I get Sands of Time. My rose tinted glasses of recall + 2 tell me that the game had good story, voice acting, platforming (Which wasn't great, just interesting and fun) but had boring combat and lame boss fights. When I first fired it up, the first thing that hit me was the random slowdowns that kick in every now and then (Especially during the cutscenes). So, off I go to the Steam forums to find a solution... Turns out, the game doesn't understand what dual core CPUs are, so you have to disable one core. No biggie. Random slowdowns occur less often but still come in during the in-game cutscenes. But that's not the biggest issue.

The biggest issue was still the controller support. I got this series fully expecting to play it with my Xbox 360 controller and this game didn't support it quite well (Menus couldn't be controlled with it for one). Plus, there was this annoying bug that would happen whenever I change the Prince's running direction, where he would suddenly start walking in a direction instead of continuing his run (Something to do with the diagonal axis detection working not quite right).

Anyway, the game proper seemed inline with my rose tinted glasses' prediction (Except the cutscenes which aged badly). Finished it in 2 sittings and so proceeded to Warrior Within after that.

I liked Warrior Within despite the bad rock music and gothic undertones. The platforming was harder and more challenging (But less awe inspiring like SoT) and the combat was pretty sweet.

But, unlike SoT, the first hitch happened before I even fired up the game. The game, refused to start. The configuration utility that starts actually has the "Launch Game" button greyed out despite checking ever checkbox in the requirements. Looked up the Steam pages and found no such issue with anyone else. Desperate, I looked up the requirements of the game in the game's store page, and I made a horrible discovery...

Supported OS: Windows® 2000/XP (only)

I'm running Vista.

Crap, there goes my quest to finish the trilogy before the new game. Will I need to do a quest to do a dualboot with XP or just give up? Undeterred, I tried various tricks to try to get it to work (Starting the game from the folder, messing around with some compatibility options) and then I found it! Administrator rights enabled and go!

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that silly fog fix that I need to hack into the config because of the engine's quirkiness on nVidia cards.

Fired up the game proper and lo and behold, slowdown is still there... But at least the controller walk bug is gone. So, after putting one core to sleep, I was off on the Prince's quest to save himself from the Dahaka, except that the slowdown WAS STILL THERE. Disabling the extra core just LESSENED the slowdown, it was still prevalent in just about every cutscene, and in random locations around the game (I'm guessing about 40% of the time). To add insult to injury, the slowdowns differed in scale. When there was a lot of ambient light, quite slow, when there was water, a little slow, a lot of fog, super slow. There was also those weird slowdowns that kicked in whenever the camera moved, resulting in combat and platforming being quite frustrating to do.

In spite of all that crap, I pushed on... Rose tinted glasses started cracking a little (So, now its +1 instead of 2). The platforming wasn't that challenging, but was mostly uninspiring and the constant backtracking annoyed me quite a bit. The Dahaka chase scenes which I thought were pretty good, turned out to be pretty crap instead. The voice acting was bad and the story was even worse than I remember. The combat just felt frustrating instead of hard as I struggled in those multi-enemy encounters way too much (To think that I actually finished this game in Hard before) and the boss fights were quite stressful on my old self. Funny thing was, the music wasn't that bad or maybe I've just gotten better at zoning out horrible emo metal.

The worst part about this revisit was realizing that the camera is really crap compared to SoT. It often lingers too long, way too lazy and amazingly enough, it sometimes doesn't show where you're supposed to go correctly (Which was one of the best things about SoT, whereby the camera guided you're platforming path), which results in a lot of needless deaths and rewinds.

After perhaps 14 stonking hours battling both the enemies and the game itself, I was finally done with it... Well, not quite. In my haste, I only picked up a handful of the Life Upgrades, so I only got one ending and was too half-arsed to get the rest... So, I downloaded a save file and tried to do battle with the Dahaka... After a few attempts, I was at this point quite aggravated by the game and just quit entirely and moved on to the next game, hoping at least that my rose tinted glasses were wrong for the next game as well.

I never quite liked The Two Thrones. I felt like it was the uncomfortable middle child of SoT and WW where it had quite inspiring platforming and passable combat, but nowhere near as good as either for each. So, as I fired up the game, I figured "Ok, this one probably works in Vista since it might be using a new engine". It didn't. Upon starting the game, the same configuration utility starts up and the same issue is repeated. Check Steam store page, and same requirements. So, I decide to check the SoT page to see if that one had the same requirements.

It did.

So, in effect, I'm playing all three games on an unsupported OS, so all my experiences are technically tainted... But whatever.

Admin rights enabled, one core to sleep and go! Ok, slowdown bug is almost non-existent this time (Except in some ingame cutscenes) but all is not clear, because the stupid diagonal axis walk bug is back! AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!! Oddly enough, it didn't interfere with my experience as much since it almost never happened. Probably because there were less static cameras being used now (Which was often when that would kick in).

Played through the game until I reach the last boss. Story's really bad, but at least they got the original voice back for the Prince (WW's one was godawful) and he reminded me of the SoT Prince (Which is good). I also now smash my proverbial rose tinted glasses as my impressions of the game beforehand were completely off.

The platforming was quite atrocious (Just boring really) and the combat wasn't as bad as I remembered (But still boring mostly and the stealth kills were lame). The boss fights were quite meh and the chariot races were sterile. But the biggest crime of all... Was the voice acting of everyone else and the script.

Farah and the Vizier... Aside from the fact that these two characters now had American accents, they had moronic dialogue as well whereby they use modern slang phrases that kill the atmosphere completely. The really sad part is, that the Prince speaks EXACTLY like he does in SoT (The whole regal and dignified talking style which was perfect) and these two other jokers seem to be doing everything in their power to kill it instead.

I mentioned earlier, I had just hit the last boss... Up until this point, all of the bugs on modern systems, didn't do anything to hinder my progress or spoil my experience... Except when I hit the last boss. During the second phase of the battle where he floats around (Waiting to be QTEd), and the floor has these rotating rocks that you have to avoid (Meaning you need to be quite fast on your feet), the stupid controller walk button kicks in. It doesn't just "kick in", it lands its foot square up your asshole and goes so far in that you can taste the rubber sole. The walk happens EVERY TIME you try to turn while running simply because its using a single camera in the middle of the arena. It made it almost IMPOSSIBLE to win using a gamepad as I would constantly walk face first into rocks or just fail to mount the boss.

I finally had to resort to using the keyboard to get around this issue. And once I did, the ending that I got didn't seem like a proper reward.

So, after about a week, I was done with the trilogy and was now read y to start the next in the series... Forgotten Sands. Now, after realizing how much I liked the Prince's voice actor, I decided to wiki the game to find out... And I find out something else instead: Forgotten Sands takes place between SoT and WW... Meaning that I didn't need to play through the two prequels beforehand. Also, Forgotten Sands is like 6.5 gigs, which is slightly smaller than the first three games combined. I passed. Maybe later.

And that's my retro adventure with the Sands of Time Trilogy.

tl;dr:
Don't play it if you have any PC built after 2006.

Just Cause 2?

It's like a crazy, arcadish and totally insane version of GTA. Worth the money if you like fooling around in sandbox games.

Actually, if I wanted to sell the game, I'd just say two things:
Unlimited Parachute
Grappling Hook

Well, I managed to see it on D2D, but it's got an awful USD 5 preorder discount only.

Well, the core of the game is roughly the same (You build cities, go to war, research different stuff, etc.) with a few differences in some of the implementations (Like Happiness). The biggest difference though would be the combat. Unlike Civ V, where every the map is comprised of hexes and each could only hold one military unit, in Civ IV (And all other Civs before it) the map is made up of squares and each could hold multiple units (Unit stacking).

So, the combat for each game is vastly different, but otherwise, mostly the same.

Achievements built around progression (Rather than, being actual achievements) are often employed by developers to generally gauge how much of the game their players play, based on Steam global statistics.

So, I think it's more to that purpose than to give you an actual sense of achievement.

Sweeeeett... Though I did buy from them beforehand. Wonder if it can be activated on Steam? No matter, at least 100% of my monies went to the developers

Tell that to the big name retailers in the UK and US that pretty much do the same except that they actually make money from it through their retail buyback schemes.

Plus, are you suggesting that console games aren't resale-able? Seriously?

For the PC, we have EULAs, DRMs and all sorts of other bullshit that has pretty much been turning games into a service rather than something you own and it's been this way for awhile (It's kinda tolerable now with Steam because we can get these super cheap sales)... But don't mistake the consoles for doing the same. There's a reason why they have "VIP" codes and one time use DLCs that are bundled with their games; they are aware of the resale market and that's all they can do about it.

So, no... Going to someone's house to play their console doesn't count as piracy. Not even in the slightest. Stop insinuating that.

PS. On the issue of depriving developers, I could levy the same accusation to you; if you really wanted to support developers, you would've bought the game at full price on release instead of waiting for a sale where the profits they earn are significantly reduced.

This post has been edited by H@H@: Mar 23 2011, 02:46 PM

Yuki Ijuin, I'd recommend taking a chill pill. Yes, kianweic was out of line, but it's not worth getting mad over.

You do realize that if local retailers like youbeli or TSB go out of business, that means we'll never get new releases at <RM 150 anymore as we'll be subjected to Steam's standard USD 50 (Which is RM 150+ depending on the exchange rate). Furthermore, a lot of EA games are moving into that USD 60 range and gamers.com.my is still keeping those titles priced at RM 140.

I'd say that's something worth defending.

By other sources, I assume you're talking about those flithy CD-key resellers? Ironically, did you ever wonder how they got those keys? Yeap, from retail copies in regions where the games are priced significantly lower than anywhere else. Those companies are scum.

The thing is, that's exactly how sales work; If you want the product now, you pay full price. Otherwise, you wait an undetermined amount of time for the product to drop in price. It's basic economics 101.

If all you ever care about is getting games at sales prices, by no means am I stopping you from enjoying it. But, don't assume that because you think it's the best value for money, then others should automatically follow suit.

PS. I paid RM 139 for Batman and I enjoyed it for almost 2 years before Steam made it RM 30. I do not regret that purchase one bit.

I'm pretty sure it does because there's this thing called RRP. AFAIK, online DD services are never allowed to sell below RRP for new release titles. They can do promos and whatnot, but are never allowed to undercut it. This actually holds true to retail as well. Plus, brick and mortar retailers are given free reign to undercut as much as they want (Just look at our own pbbseller), unlike DD sites where it has to be approved by the devs (And unlike retail, the devs still get the same cut of the profits)

Fact remains though, all this perceived perks of online DDs where you can get cheaper games usually only apply for games on sale and never for new titles. Unless of course Steam decides to localize themselves to our market, I'd say a lot of local distros have them beat here.

Enjoy your sale, I'll be enjoying the game while you wait.

I'm trying hard to understand what is your point?

If he had gone to his friend's house and played with his friend's XBL account, would it then be ok? If so, your piracy argument will make even less sense than before.

First of all, those are preorder deals... Preorder deals are different and are actively used by both retail and online DD services, so it's not really a boon to either side.

I'm talking about straight up buying a game, fresh (Without preordering) from either retail or online DD services. Find me a game that sold well below RRP if you bought it day one without a preorder.

Frankly speaking, if you couldn't care less about our local retail industry or even where your games come from, I don't think I want to care what you think. I'm just grateful that there are many here that do not think the same as you.

No offence really. It's just that your ideology conflicts heavily with mine and you seem set with it and I can only foresee any argument resulting in tears and blood.

This post has been edited by H@H@: Mar 23 2011, 03:48 PM

Anyway, to our regular forumers, if you're really that keen on looking up promotions, I suggest using the Great Game Promo thread instead where it's nice and clean and free of opinions.

I was actually going to use an Astro analogy, but that works as well

Ooops, I think I came off a bit strong there.

You didn't attack me at all... I was just stating that your opinion was... quite the opposite of mine and I think we would be at loggerheads, so I opted to just let it slide.

Well it is kinda pertinent though and it did stem from a discussion based on Steam. I don't really like splitting threads over small diversions like this. It'll run its course in a day or two and then we'll get back to complaining about how the midweek sales are crap and how Steam's update isn't working

Yeah, that happens sometimes. Not nearly enough to warrant heavy handed action though, but I'm still keeping an eye on it.

It was actually announced back in March during GDC. It was only on April 1st that they announced the price.