Chefelf.com Night Life: Andrenavarro - Viewing Profile

Wow. Now liking someone's work is being a "fanboy". He he he he.

Interesting how my opinions on the PoP series differs a lot from most people's.

I thought "Sands of Time" was an amazing, innovative game - which wasn't a surprise, being developed by Jordan Mechner. The surprise was - I liked the combat.

"Warrior Within" - I agree with most people on this one - is a pathetic attempt to appeal to the macho audience. The prince's character became a ridiculous testosterone-sweating moron, the good soundtrack by Stuart Chatwood was replaced by pseudo-metal tracks and the map system was disastrously bad.

"The Two Thrones" brought some of the "Sands of Time" magic back, while marrying it with the acceptable combat system from "Within", and the result was a good, if flawed, game.

Finally, the newest Prince of Persia tries to innovate like the first one did. I liked it a lot - the platforming was good, the combat is flawed but works (I like to string combos together, even if the system as a whole is clunky), Elika never gets in your way... I had fun with it.

But it's flawed. I like the actor Nolan North (Nathan Drake from "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune"), but, as the prince, he's forced to spit out some ridiculous anachronisms, like "it's not like gravity ever killed anyone". Ancient fucking Persia, Ubisoft, remember?

But I loved the art direction, even if the prince's scarf was a little too much. It's a good game, worth a rent, at least for me -- but most definitely, a good number of people won't like it.

I think he deserves the popularity. I love his reviews and Game Damage seems promising. He's an intelligent guy, I don't think he "sold out" or is "overrated" - he's simply working for money now, and the quality of his reviews is pretty consistent.

Yahtzee's review is great, which doesn't mean I agree with it. I thought "Dead Space" was a superb example of good gameplay and narrative, and it has the only mute protagonist in gaming that I actually like. Bland is definitely not a word I'd use to describe this one.

In my opinion, Mirror's Edge suffers from a poorly-delivered story, horrible level design and flawed climbing mechanics. There's too much trial and error, and falling a hundred feet stops being fun after the fourth or fifth time. It's rare for the game to actually be fast-paced, often forcing you to look around for the next corridor or obstacle to jump over - since very few things are tinted red with "runner's vision". The game also requires you to GUESS when you have to turn around and head a certain way, so at the first time I always went face-first into a wall.

And the game DOES have collision detection issues. I lost count of how many times Faith didn't grab a pole, a ledge or didn't understand I wanted her to balance herself on a thin railing instead of missing it and falling in the chasm below (and I am experienced with games, so blaming all the countless occasions this happened on lack of skill is not valid). The combat is weak: isolating enemies to take them down one by one? Nice, IN THEORY. When said enemies have excellent aim, x-ray vision and your character is apparently made out of cardboard, that doesn't work so well.

Frustrating game, really. I'll be more than happy to forget it.