Prince of Persia Classic Comments by Richard Leadbetter

Wow, a review at 7:00. Lost sleep?
Reads like a 8 or 9. Surprising score really.

Automatic article activation FTW :)

Not as good as Halo then?

I don't know what to believe.

7 seems fair for a what it is, I'll definitely be getting it.

The description of the swordplay here doesn't sound that different to what I recall of the original. You could block some attacks with your own attack and the like there too. I'm sure there's a little more to it now, but to be fair the original PoP was pretty good in this aspect already.

Personally I'm really looking forward to this. I haven't played PoP since my Master System died, and that was over ten years ago.

teehee...if i blur my vision juuuust a little bit i can imagine that the score is 8!

aah..time for meds...

Not as good as Halo then?

Better than Halo 2 though.

Not as good as Cloning Clyde? :s

Seems more like a 7.5 to me.

At least, we should be told the reasons for that 7. Maybe the game's too short for an 8.

So how much is it?

Only a 7? With an 8 for the first two Pacman games? (Sorry,you're never going to live those down...)

why are the first and last screen grab the same?

Whhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!

Sounds like a 7.000001 to me!!!! (satire)

Tycho says:

This has been simmering on some tertiary heat source for awhile, and it may be time to serve it. When a classic game is re-released for digital delivery, by what criteria are they being reviewed?

The reality, of course, is that in order to maintain healthy relationships with publishers you need to review their product - great, and small. This no-doubt includes "channels" like Xbox Live Arcade, which must be where these workaday, worthless reviews come from. In some cases there's simply no need (beyond the business realities alluded to earlier) for young men to toil in describing them, because these games are so elemental: they have two buttons, and one mode of movement. What is it? It is Xevious. End of review. The word even sounds like an adjective.

These games are cheap, cheap, cheap, but ironically something that costs ten dollars and has a Goddamned demo is scrutinized more in terms of value. Is it Xevious? How much more Xevious should it have been to rise to the ten dollar level? Could, perhaps, the enemies enter the screen more Xeviously? The game appears to lose points in graphics and sound simply for being old.

It isn't impossible to discuss fundamental games in a way that is interesting and valuable. But I don't know if plugging ancient games into the Hardcore Review Machine and outputting your stupid little number improves the world.

Like your fancy writing style flightrisker, I'm with you. I suspect though, in real life, you are a bell end.

Uncle_Fishboy: who's the bell end here? That's quoted from Penny Arcade.

@ uncle_fishboy

I was quoting from Tycho from PA. My own writing style is almost unreadable. Like the scrawlings of a drunk 8 year old.

So sadly I cannot take responsibilty for that quote, although I do agree with his sentiments.

This does however absolve me from your "bell end" reference which I'm sure Tycho will gladly add to this collection online insults.

I'm a bit confuzzled. Are scores weighted at all? DiRT got 8/10 and this gets 7/10, just one point less. If there isn't any weighting then a reeaaally old game, made for a fraction of the cost of a modern AAA title, is almost as good. *boggle*

Sounds great... will probably pick this up, but I'm too busy playing Forza!

Surely these should be maked out of 5 like they marked those kids' game a while back?

@defdaz

Hopefully you are trolling... The other option would be bad news for you.

Maybe EG should consider having different ratings for XBLA/PSN/VC games as they're in their own category. Maybe 0-10 for full-price games and A-E for arcade games. That would leave (still some but) less whining about scores and we could at last get rid of the "better/worse than..." quotes.

@SpacemanX

Heh. :) I take it you're a PoP fan then. A different rating system as suggested might work, I like them. I'm not really trolling, just trying to make a point.

@defdaz

I think he was pointing out your mis-interpretation of a scoring system rather than defending PoP

"Not as good as Halo then?

Better than Halo 2 though"


HAlo 2 got a 9. ;)

Hang on, that's what I'm asking about. :)

@ Flightrisker & LeD

I see what you mean. Hadn't noticed that. My apologies. I jsut enjoy calling people bell ends I guess!

@defdaz

Do you honestly believe that EG's scoring system puts an 8/10 full price game exactly equivalent to an 8/10 game that costs £6?

Pacman 8/10 LOL

For all of the 27 seconds of playing it before I get bored and switch to one of these lower scoring 'modern games'.

Sounds good - may get it once the MS fucks pick up my 360 and fix it. They were supposed to arrive on Monday! Have had the "ring of fire" for a couple of weeks now.

I dunno: people get all cynical about the next-gen being a polished version of the last-gen but all mooshy when the next-gen is a polished version of the last-last-last-last-gen.

Bloody gamers...

800 points = £6? At last, someone has put a real price on them!

I would have purchased quite a bit of stuff from XBLA already if they hadn't used these stupid "points" - I have no clue (and why doesnt it tell you this in XBLA itself?!?) what the points cost.

Total and utter nonsense.

MGG: actually I was slightly off, 800 points is £6.80, if you're buying points at the MS price - obviously you can buy 2100pt cards from retailers that will be slightly less... And although the points abstraction can make things confusing, it's possibly better than having to have loads of separate stores for every currency and not having things all go up at the same time as everybody else (like someone else's online store...)

7/10? That's a suprise. The review reads like a 9.
All semantics anyways. Sounds like a great game.

@asphaltcowboy

No, not really so yeah I guess I am trolling. I think the point I'm badly making is that it could be easy to judge that PoP is better than it is if you just think 'hmmm, 7/10, must be good!' when you are used to reading reviews of full price AAA games.

> At last, someone has put a real price on them

You get told the real price of points when you buy them. You just have to do a bit of maths to work out how much things have cost you.

> why doesnt it tell you this in XBLA itself?!?

Because XBLA doesn't know how much you paid for your points (price per point varies depending on where you buy them, and whether you got a bargain or not), so it would be lying to you, and then you'd come and post on the internet about how stupid it was.

> stupid "points"

They really are points, so there's no need for the quotes there.

... and points mean prizes! Yay!

That was reading like at least an 8.

I want. A lot.

Hmm. It looks nice. But having got to the third level (and it's amazing how much I remember of the layout of the levels - it's all flooding back to me), the controls are really quite bad.

They may get better over time as I get used to it, but the analogue stick just doesn't give the same precision/feel that the keyboard gave all those years ago; especially in this game, where time is literally of the essence. I don't have time to be faffing around sorting out that he actually needs to turn one way or the other. I just need to be able to fling him off the high jumps like he used to and get on with it. Even the mad, skidding turns that he used to make have been toned down, and to my mind they don't look as fluid as the original.

I'd give it a 6. It's a solid effort. If only I could map movement to the D-pad perhaps I'd get on with moving him around better. At the moment, I'm fighting the controls, and in this game, they need to be second nature. Hopefully I'll get better with time.

And on a final note, I just wish they'd kept the princess's swishing animated hair that she had as she turned around in the intro of the original.

I like this much better than the original. I could never be arsed with the finicky movement in PoP, but it feels much smoother and more free now. Again, though, I wish they weren't going the 800-point route for what must have been a pretty minor amount of work - copy the nice graphics from another version, tweak the controls a bit and you're done. No physical costs, no stock, no manufacturing, no whopping great retailer margin, and a game that's 20 years old - I'm not sure why this justifies twice the price of Time Pilot, Rush'n Attack or (most obviously) Jetpac Refuelled.

I don't know what to believe.

Neither do I!

I'd give it a 17/20.

My favourite version of this was on the Game Gear, it was a beaut, unfortunately it was a Sega Master System port, and they hadn't enlarged the font for the password screen, so if the password had an "O" a "D" or a "Q" in it you couldn't tell them apart. Still loved it though. This looks fantastic, if it shows up on PSN (Can't think why it wouldn't) I'll be getting it.

Better than Halo 2 though.

Depends on who you believe.

Can you guys just settle on a way of scoring these games please? I mean you rag on Shadowrun's score for being too expensive, but say it's a great game... and then you say this is a great game and cheap, but offers less absolute value or whatever. Either price should be taken into account or not, but don't just appear to use it on a whim.

... not to mention (according to IGN.com) that it only takes a couple of hours to complete.

Talking about XBLA, why didn't you review Soltrio Solitaire?

And now I'm waiting [probably fruitlessly] for someone to rejig Another World or [preferably] Flashback for XBLA. Ah, Flashback, how I did adore thee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashback_%...