POP dev expected "pats on the back" Comments by Robert Purchese

Of course it's everyone else's fault.
Never heard that one before.

What a load of bollocks. There's nothing "innovative" about the new PoP. Everything about it is a poor copy of another game, from the visuals to the gameplay to the main character (who is Nathan Drake in a Halloween costume).

Okay, everyone form an orderly queue, we all need to show our appreciation for a platform game with a big 'ol virtual cock-sucking.

I was actually disappointed by its poor reception as the game was remarkably good. The presentation alone (that black cardboard box just as a start) was great and I thought the game was very well-made. But yeah, some people just can't deal with the lack of a Game Over screen.

People gots to troll, I guess.

"Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I think perhaps I was expecting a few more virtual pats-on-the-back for our attempts to do something new."

I was expecting a better game. Swings and roundabouts innit.

OK Mr Mattes, well done for innovating and creating one long quick time event. Seriously though are we expected to praise every new idea even the ones that don't work, Mirrors Edge for example is horribly broken and flawed.

I thought it was superb so you can have a virtual pat on the back from me.

Mowgli no! It's cool to hate things now.

I'd give them a pat on the back. If they'd gone the old tired route of 'When the player dies, make them repeat the last large section of gameplay', then it wouldn't have been half the game it was. It took all the fustration out of the game.

I love the fact that these guys are trying to push things forward. The fact that most 'Gamers' were opposed to it doesn't surprise me at all, but I really hope the team don't start taking them seriously.

I think he needs to be aware that the reason these new IP's didn't do too well isn't because they were new, but because they simply weren't quite good enough. Mirror's Edge being a fine example of that; its almost brilliant, but lets itself down with some bungled design decisions towards the end of the game.

"Mowgli no! It's cool to hate things now."

It's even cooler to be sarcastic on the internet every time somebody doesn't like the same things you do though.

Mowgli no! It's cool to hate things now.

No, it's cool to like the things that other people don't and then moan about how they just hate them because it's trendy. That is truly cool, my friend.

Portal on the other hand was fairly innovative

Good example. A clever, unique concept with great execution, and it was very popular. Fancy that. Braid, World Of Goo and other titles also got lots of praise.

And you know, sequels and remakes aren't a bad thing so long as they are actually good games. It's when they're endless mediocre sequels cynically pumped out year after year that people start to complain.

it is frustrating to repeat large sections of game but the difficulty is broken, its the same in Fable 2 tho and most people seem to love that, and dont try and tell me that getting scared was a reason not to just die and respawn in Fable.

I still think the new POP is really good fun even tho the difficulty is broken, does seem to be happening more and more these days. Possibly stems from a weak attempt to encourage casual gamers to play through.

Thankyou you asshole for raping the Prince of Persia IP and turning it to shit. Thankyou for taking all challenge from this game- no one likes a challenge asshole!!- If we would have wanted this obscene level of hand holding retarded non gameplay we would be playing mario waggle princess barbie picnic babbeezz waggle wand party NOT FUCKING PRINCE OF PERSIA YOU ASSHOLE GO TO HELL AND BURN FOR EVER FOR DESTROYING PRINCE OF PERSIA and turning it into a eezee baby non game with ZERO challenge YOU GO TO HELL

No, I get tired of people who just shout "GENERIC" and "COPYING!" whenever they don't like a game. That's great, you don't like it, there's lots I don't like. I'll at least actually try to find a reason to criticise it if so, instead of just bandying about some buzzwords to try and sound like I've got a clue. It really is a much better game than people give it credit for, but because it's a big Ubisoft release (and you see the same thing for a big EA release too), people jump straight to their happy conclusions that it sucks.

You sure took a risk and revolutionised the idea of "new IP and innovations" by making the seventh game in an established IP spanning 20 years, which had recently been re-ignited with a high-profile trilogy, Mattes!

By most accounts you made a decent platformer in a well-establised series. Be happy in that. Don't try to paint it as some maverick, auteurist move though. That just makes you look a bit silly.

Seems to me the key difference is between trying something new and actually achieving a successful result.

Games do want original ideas, but they also want quality games.

Now on the whole PoP was very good. We gamers do get bogged down in the minutae sometimes and far too often we either declare love or hate with nothing in between, based on the most unobrusive things. However, it wasn't awesome and in many ways it wasn't as good as Sands of Time (though I think too many of us forget how cocking awful the combat was in SoT).

So change is good, and we DO want change, but only if it change for the better. If we get change and we don't like the result we won't be patting anyone on the back (and some would say, neither should we).

Its was oooookay I suppose. Nowhere near as groundbreaking or innovative as I think the developers would like us to believe.

And as nice as it looks, it provided very little in the way of risk/reward during gameplay. I don't buy games to watch them, I buy them because I fancy a challenge, and PoP provided very little challenge.

Still... looked pretty didn't it?

On a related note, I am sure I have been seeing a trend over the last year or so for developers to get vocal when people pick faults with their work. Specifically, they seem to get vocal in a very "its the gamer's fault" kind of way (I am looking at you Burnout Paradise and Duke Nukem Forever).

Personally I have never felt that was appropriate behaviour, and it borders on embarrassing. In this particular case its not a major deal as he is just expressing some mild surprise and disappointment, but one the whole it is behaviour that I think should be completely avoided.

Our job is to make games that our target audiences like. If the target audience DOESN'T like a game, the only reason its dev should be opening their mouth is to ask why, so they can hopefully find out what went wrong and how they can improve the sequel.

Any kind of "actually, you should have liked it more, but you didn't because you failed to understand XYZ" type talk just makes my toes curl.

"sigmagoat"

Why don't you go and suck off your "space marine" boyfriend in the back of your generic "urban racing" sports car.

Good game, one of the best endings to a game this year... well, maybe the best ending to a game this year.. (hopes Peter Molyneux (Spelling!) gets to play it!!)

"Still... looked pretty didn't it?"

It looked AWESOME. One of the prettiest games out there atm in my opinion. And the core mechanics of running about were tight enough (some odd choices with the whole jump/claw functions I thought, but aside from that). And even the combat moves themselves worked pretty well.

It was just the meta game that glued it all together which, I think, people felt was lacking. Lost a little in implementation, as always.

@sigmagoat

You have some deep issues.

And might I recommend using the full stop a little more often. You might even find it fun.

Messrs. Holkins and Krahulik save the day again
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2004/...

I almost felt for him, I'm all for innovation and trying new things but then I read that he called gaming 'art-tertainment' and that was it, no pat on the back from me

What's the major innovation in the new PoP? Taking an artistically beautiful game and deliberately ruining the atmosphere with scooby-doo cartoon voices?

EA took some major risks this year with new IP and innovations - Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, for example.

Yeah but thats the point isn't it? These were new IP's whereas players are going to find it hard to swallow drastic alterations to the formula of established IP's such as PoP. What did they expect?

Innovations and risks are better spent on new IP's that don't already have a fanbase to moan about changes to a proven formula.

Call him a Waaaaaaambulance!
Cry more, good on you Mr Dev for making changes, well done. The fact that those changes weren't necessarily for the best doesn't matter does it? Good art doesn't make a good game.

As for the rest not selling well, don't release them all in bloody November then! 0_o
It's not rocket science that people have a limited budget. I think EA have done a stellar job this year with their new IPs and i've supported them. The fact they may be going back to churning out DRM ridden dross means that they'll probably be the last EA games i buy.

Am i allowed that opinion? :)

Lets be fair, Mirror's Edge and Dead Space sold because of the hype, not because of any perceived innovation.

Mirror's Edge hasn't sold very well (but was innovative because who else has tried doing a first-person game about platforming instead of combat?) and Dead Space being a sci-fi survival horror is, frankly, quite a new thing of late. Not a great many games coming out under that banner, and the dismemberment was brilliant, as were the zero atmosphere and gravity stuff.

So, yeah, they were innovative and have under-sold.

He used the word 'art-tertainment' which clearly makes him an utter cunt.

It also makes you wonder if the sales expectations for these games was realistic in the first place?

Bah. This is the kind of comment that typifies the industry at the moment. Bemoaning the lack of enthusiasm for "innovation" when that innovation isn't actually all that great.

As far as I'm concerned, people are craving "the new", but that new has to be really good and supported by compelling marketing for it to succeed. The problem here is that many design decisions that are seen as innovative by head-in-the-sand producers are actually a backwards step. As we've seen from the likes of Half-Life 2 back in the day, gamers are more than happy to embrace innovation where it actually exists. I'm struggling to think of a genuinely iinnovative game that's been a failure - apart from, arguably, Boom Blox, which flopped because of the pisspoor marketing strategy.

jstar + fucking 1 :)

dude, the prince can fly now - wtf - no thanks :)

POP SOT and all other POP games ever since were total shite. How could they make it even worse with this new one?

Now THAT'S an achievement!

In general I would prefer a non-innovative game that get's everything right as opposed to an innovative game that get's nothing right. An innovative gmae that get's most things right is the most welcome of all however.
The new Prince of Persia is a beautiful game to look at. It is a great example of what can be achieved on next-gen platforms other than brown-grey space marine epic fps 247. But the voice acting made me shudder. It's so americanised and cheesy for what is essentially a game set in the middle-east. Sands of Time is a much better game and even now it's unique and haunting visual style is lovely. But with the sequels, they made the prince little more than a violent thug and again americanised the whole thing and suddenly a bigger emphasis on combat.

In short, innovate when you can do something truly useful and brilliant (like Portal). Innovation for innovations sake usually leads to disaster (Mirror's Edge).

I'm really enjoying PoP. I can understand why people dislike certain aspects of it, but what really confused me is how it got the absolute opposite reaction to Fable 2, for doing exactly the same things. The "player can't die" and "path of light" mechanics in the two games are practically identical, yet Eurogamer praised one for reinventing gaming and being a breath of fresh air by removing the difficulty, and berated the other for destroying the game by removing the difficulty.

I guess I find it particularly grating because PoP is a beautiful game to experience and is very enjoyable as it is, while Fable is just painful with its annoying minigames, repetitive voices and generic fantasy world. The only reason for the different reactions to exactly the same mechanics that I can see is the relative marketing budgets of the two games...

I wonder how many people who are criticising the dialogue and voice-acting also bitched about Disney's Aladdin. Because it's basically the same thing.

Their intentions aside they made quite a ho-hum game and convincing themselves how brave they've been doesn't make it so. A next-gen 3rd person platformer based on a long running and succesful franchise doesn't seem that much of a risk to me.

The fact that you can't die alone doesn't make a game less fun. Look at the lego games: dying means nothing there, but the games are still barrels of fun besides being incredibly easy to finish. And hey, I prefer just starting again right where I died over the endles traipsing all over town again just because you got blown up near the end of the mission in GTA4. But making it less frustrating alone does not make a good game.

It could be a good idea to have some sort of discussion with this guy. He might have some good points, but obviously there are arguments against POP too. Could be interesting to see both viewpoints unfold. As long as nobody says art-ertainment.

I'm really enjoying PoP. I can understand why people dislike certain aspects of it, but what really confused me is how it got the absolute opposite reaction to Fable 2, for doing exactly the same things. The "player can't die" and "path of light" mechanics in the two games are practically identical, yet Eurogamer praised one for reinventing gaming and being a breath of fresh air by removing the difficulty, and berated the other for destroying the game by removing the difficulty.

I guess I find it particularly grating because PoP is a beautiful game to experience and is very enjoyable as it is, while Fable is just painful with its annoying minigames, repetitive voices and generic fantasy world. The only reason for the different reactions to exactly the same mechanics that I can see is the relative marketing budgets of the two games...

Amen to that brother.

His own examples, Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, are good examples of why he's talking shit.

He kinda shot himself in the foot there tbh.

"How much do you reckon a game like portal would've sold if it hadn't been bundled in the orange box? "

I have no idea, but I would've bought it if it wasn't. I already had HL2 and Episode 1, and I didn't care about TF2, so if I could have bought Episode 2 and Portal separately, I would've.

@Interfector

Pretty well I'm guessing since it was a fantastic game, not for the portal malarkly though because of the excellent writing and ok yes the half life setting.

Death in games is really stupid as a mechanic these days, its a remanant of arcade design, when at home dieing is merely and incovienece. Did anyone complain when they worked out that the res chambers in Bioshock mean't that you could beat the game (It would take a while) with the wrench allone? after all there was no major cost for using them if you didn't use your ammo or eve it cost you nothing. Or quick saving in PC games being more or less the same mechanic in PoP.

I though PoP was a great game, innovative? maybe a bit. With regard to Mirrors edge I'm not sure how first person parkour is not innovative unless a game did it before that is an innovation and personally I'm a time trail fan.

butler, why? Both Mirror's Edge and Dead Space are innovative games that have undersold compared to expectations.

Funny, I was a bit 'meh' on the Mirror's Edge demo on the Xbox. But I bought a PS3 and it came in the bundle, and I'm really enjoying it. It is something quite new, and I guess it deserves some credit for that.

Ubisoft are such a bunch of whiners. They expect everyone to love their big November games no matter what, and are prepared to take revenge on magazines and websites that don't kiss their ass.

Who's expectations though? EA are saying that ME is a disaster yet i suspect they may have been a little enthusiastic in their sales forecasts. Do we have any sales figures for POP? Until we do it's really only FUD and i suspect the start of their "we tried but you didn't buy the game. Now we'll require a DNA sample before you can play the game".

I suspect some Pro-DRM shenanigans to appear soon.

Yeah we do, NPD numbers. Mirror's Edge is pushing about 200,000 and Dead Space somewhere between 400,000 - 600,000 (apparently enough to warrant a sequel). When games of this type are needing up to a million to start turning a profit (I'd wager a bit less, but say 750,000 is a decent estimate), they've under-performed.

Apparently no-one here is used to repetition yet... even though it accounts for about 99% of games.

Prince of Persia is a good game, and Ben Mattes is actually very right. People complain all the time that sequels are exactly the same as the original. "# point 5" is the most commonly used bullshit on the internet when describing sequels that don't turn out to be something completely different to the original. When a game changes the formula the same people complain. "Next-gen" is still getting thrown around too and no-one has any clue as to what should make a next-gen game.