The Colonel T Show

From all of us here at Colonel T vs. the World Crime League, to all of you in Internetville, see you in September. I’m packing up the ladyfriend and a couple bottles of tequila and heading to the beach. No laptops, no Blackberries, no GameBoys, just a toothbrush, a pair of pants, and my hairpiece. That’s all I need. That’s all anyone needs.

Updates will resume on September 3rd. Peace y’all.

I did about 20 minutes on last night’s A Shanty No Lemon and I think it’s my best appearance yet. Unfortunately, the sound quality seems to be borked. (Just my part…the rest of the show sounds excellent.) Since they are in Columbus and I’m in Chicago, I’m using Skype, and it maxes out the performance on my crappy (and hopefully temporary) laptop, so I blame myself. (Although last week’s appearance sounded great, so who knows….) Anyway, I encourage you to download the following for a tale of, well, I’ll let you experience that for yourself. FYI – my best line gets cut off. The word you’re not hearing is “mythology.”

Colonel T on the 8.24.2005 A Shanty No Lemon (MP3 File)

The first stop on my “Games Everyone Else Finished Months and Years Ago Tour” is Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, or as I affectionately call it, Prince of Persia: Superfluous Angst Crusader.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Now and again I enjoy a video game, and I’ll occasionally write about the experience here. Please keep the following in mind when you read these wee write-ups: 1) It now takes me forever to finish video games. I don’t have the time or inclination to play very often. 2) I absolutely refuse to pay more than $30 for a game unless it has the words “Half-Life” and “2” in the title. So if you ever get frustrated that I’m not discussing the latest and greatest, that’s why. I prefer to spend my time and money on the ladies. I think you know what I mean by that.)

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PoP:WW) is, of course, the direct sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is the spiritual successor to Prince of Persia 3D, which is the sequel to blah blah blah aren’t you impressed I know how to use Wikipedia? The Sands of Time is arguably one of the most polished games ever. It’s a brilliant design, with uncannily tight gameplay. Warrior Within had a lot to live up to.

So of course, it’s a good thing that developer Ubisoft ensured that the first three hours of PoP:WW are mind-numbingly terrible.

Awful, even.

Put differently: It’s crushingly disappointing in every way imaginable.

The loading times suck. The graphics suck. The new combat system sucks. The sound and music sucks. The level design sucks. And to cap it off, the first game’s dreamy “Ripped from the Pages of Arabian Nights” tone and theme have been replaced by “Look How Edgy I Am – I Can Grow Stubble, Decapitate Goons, and Yell B***h All to the Tune of Some Wildly Inappropriate Godsmack Music.”

But would anything less than perfection have been acceptable?

POP:WW reeks of 1) A kneejerk reaction to the poor sales of The Sands of Time and 2) Rushed development. To the first point, Ubisoft will tell you that the all-new, all-bitter PoP:WW was a smashing success, since the game sold twice as many copies as the original during the first week of its release. I can’t dispute that. But consider this: The Sands of Time was one of the biggest word-of-mouth games ever, and was “discovered” through rampant internet message board praising, which led to tons of rentals, and peeps lending out their copies to, um, other peeps.. In my mind, all those extra PoP:WW sales actually belong to The Sands of Time.

Or to put it more succinctly: Do you know anyone – ANYONE – who thinks Warrior Within is a better game? No, you don’t. Stop lying, you filth.

As to the rushed development, well, certainly the sound bugs point to a lack of playtesting. The load times aren’t optimized. The early graphics are muddy and washed out. It’s all very unpleasant.

However.

Some people I trust (the same people who told me to grow my hair long, so you know they’re legit) urged me to keep playing – they swore to me that Warrior Within starts getting really good around the five hour mark. Sure enough, those cats knew what they were talking about — the game grew on me. The levels get prettier (particularly the “Hanging Gardens,” mostly because of the color and sunlight – the endless gray brown castle interiors of the early levels are just awful). The design becomes deeper…richer…more creative…more challenging. As for the sound, well, you eventually train yourself to ignore the Godsmack and the Prince’s witty barbs (examples: “I don’t have time for this!” or “You’re in my way!” or “I’m a prick for no reason!”).

As for the revamped combat system, well, the game claims to provide unprecedented variety and that’s true. After I got used to it, in Warrior Within I used the same TWO moves over and over instead of the ONE move I used over and over in the first game. But in all truth, no one plays Prince of Persia for the combat – they play it for the puzzly/hoppy/swingy/climby bits. I suppose it’s good to have more fighting bits to provide a little variety, but the really choice new additions to the franchise are the “chase” sequences — they give the series a much needed adrenaline boost. If there was any flaw in the first game, it was the lack of urgency…playing the game was like floating in an inner tube on one of those lazy rivers…you could periodically nap, and nothing bad would happen to you, other than receiving a severe sunburn or having the kid on the next tube over urinate on you.

(Hmm. That paragraph took an odd turn.)

Finally, there’s the plot. I’m a sucker for time travel stories, and this a good one. In fact, the game does go a long way toward earning that shift to a darker tone, given the way the story develops and how it SHOWS us and lets us EXPERIENCE what the Prince has been suffering through for the last three years.

(And the big “twist” two-thirds in is really swanky, though in retrospect it’s incredibly obvious and I’m a wiener for not catching it earlier.)

Cutting to the chase: Did you dig The Sands of Time? Persevere through a miserable first few hours, and you’ll like Warrior Within, too. It’s a definite rental, if nothing else.

On my Colonel T Ten Point Integer Scale, I give Prince of Persia: Warrior Within a solid 7.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The game would have gotten an 8 if it had continued the “Degrees of Shirtlessness as an Indicator of Game Progress” gimmick from the original. I loved that.)

…I quit my job, and started a new one. So did Elizabeth.

…James “Scotty” Doohan died on my birthday. I was 31. He was 85.

…All my “Poker Odyssey” money was lost, save for $.55, which ain’t good for no nothin’.

…I hung out at the beach, throwing rocks by day and singing rock by night.

…I secured celebrity endorsement for my blog (look about two inches to your right, then up or down).

…I started and finished Harry Potter Part VI: Jason Lives.

…There were other random and assorted other happenings not worth mentioning.

Alrighty then. Let’s get back to the big fun, shall we?