DrainingSouls.net

Blog Banter is a group of bloggers passionate about anything and everything video games. We enjoy getting together once a month to write about the same subject. You will be amazed at the different viewpoints so many people can have on the exact same topic! If you are interested in participating, contact bs angel for more information. You can find the rest of the articles at the bottom of the page.

This month’s Blog Banter asks:

Discuss one game you quit before completion because of a particular flaw it had.

What was that flaw and how could it have been fixed so that you would have finished the game?

I usually try to tie these articles to WoW or MMOs in some fashion, but this one doesn’t really lend itself to that easily. The only MMO I’ve played is WoW, and while it does have flaws, I’m still playing and loving it. So, I’m going to reach back a ways into my gaming history and talk about a game that fits this month’s question perfectly. Allow me to set the stage.

Innocent Beginnings

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was the sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time, which was itself essentially a remake of the original Prince of Persia game that was made back in the 1980s. The Warrior Within was also the game that crushed my soul and turned me into the broken shell of a man that I am today. But more on that later. (Also, I’m going to refer to The Sands Of Time as TSOT and Warrior Within as WW. Just so you know.)

Did you ever play WW? Aside from a few glaring errors, it was actually a very good game. Great gameplay (a bit of a button masher, but nothing too bad), lovely graphics, intriguing plot (with a few great twists) and solid voice acting/cutscenes/sound. So what was the problem, you ask? We’re getting there, but before I can fully explain it, you need to know a bit about how the game worked.

In both PoP games, you play as The Prince - no other name is given for your character - and you are indeed, as the name suggests, the son of the King of Persia. In TSOT, your father and his armies defeat the Maharajah of India, and in looting the city, find a mysterious dagger and a giant hourglass filled with sand. You are given the dagger, which turns out to be the Dagger of Time, and are unwittingly tricked into opening the hourglass with it, thereby unleashing the Sands of Time.

As the Sands are released, nearly everyone in the city is turned into a lumbering, mindless, zombie-like Sand Creature, including your father. Only a few people are protected from the effects of the sand; you being one of them, saved by the power of the Dagger. So, you set out on a quest to reverse the effects of the Sands, aided by your Dagger, which gives you limited control over the flow of time. Long story short, you manage to recapture the Sands, put them back in the hourglass, and are suddenly transported back in time to just before you were going to release them. Everything that had just transpired now exists only as a memory in your head.

Everything seems fine for a time, but before long you learn that your adventures are not yet over. By recapturing the Sands and reversing their effects, you somehow managed to sidestep what Fate had in store for you (i.e., that you would die as a result of releasing the Sands). As WW begins, you find that you are being chased by a big, mean beastie called the Dahaka, the embodiment of Fate. Your continued existence is causing a disturbance in the space-time continuum, not unlike Marty McFly allowing Biff to have the Sports Almanac from the future, and the Dahaka is out to kill you, thereby fulfilling your original fate.

Getting There

In an effort to appease Fate in another manner (one that hopefully would not require your dead body), you travel to the Island of Time, home to the Empress of Time, to stop the Sands from ever being created. This is where things really began to get interesting. Time, on the Island, is easily manipulated through the use of various portals scattered around. These portals allowed you to travel back or forward in time, and also served as save points for the game.

Clever use of the time portals allowed you to solve puzzles and sort out obstacles that you found along the way. For instance, if you came to a hallway that you needed to go through, but it was filled with too many traps to make it safely (spinning saw blades and sharp spikes, that sort of thing), then you could backtrack to a portal and zip a thousand years into the future. When you came back to the hallway, the saw blades would be rusted stuck and the spikes would have broken off, allowing you to traverse the hallway safely. At another point in the game, you come to what appears to be a dead end - the path you are taking is completely overgrown by plants, trees and other greenery. Heading back in time allows you to come to the path before it became overgrown and find your way easily.

Soul Crushing Time

At the end of the game, you have to fight the Empress to stop the Sands from being created. A few minutes into the fight, she realizes that she’s being beaten, so she runs through a time portal and disappears. You are supposed to follow her through and finish the fight.

Easy enough, right? The end of the game and sweet, sweet victory are just moments away, right?

Here’s what happened when I tried to follow her through the portal.

Nothing.

I ran right up to the portal, and just stood there waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever did. It was one of those slow, drawn out moments when it begins to dawn on you that something is going terribly wrong. I run up to the portal and wait. Nothing. I run out to the other room and then back to the portal. Nothing. I try jumping into the portal. Nothing. I reload my last saved game and try the first part of the fight again. Nothing.

Finally, in the depths of my despair, I went online and to try and find some help. After a bit of searching, I find a statement from Ubisoft on the matter that went a little something like this:

We understand that many players are having trouble with bugs that are keeping them from being able to complete the game. We apologize for the problem. The only solution that we’re going to offer is that you try to restart from a saved game, and if that doesn’t work, then start over completely from the beginning. Also, we’re evil, money-grubbing bar studs that care more about getting our games released according to a marketing schedule than we do about releasing a quality game. We’re jerks. Really, we are.

After a bit more searching, I found that there were actually at least three different game-breaking bugs that you could encounter in the game. I managed to dodge two of them, but the third one got me.

It just kills me that this game, which otherwise could have been one of my all-time favorites, had a few bugs that made it completely unplayable. After essentially beating the game, I didn’t really feel like starting all the way over at the beginning to try it again. In fact, I don’t think I ever picked it up again, and I’ve never bought another game from Ubisoft since.

So, to answer the second part of the question, how could this have been fixed? It’s really pretty simple. Finish your freakin’ game, Ubisoft! Or at the very least, release a patch over Xbox Live that takes care of the bugs. To my knowledge, they never addressed this problem in any manner, other than the statement above.

So there you have it. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the most memorable game that I’ve stopped playing before completion. If my good friend, the Master Chief, hadn’t been there for me, I might have never recovered.

Check out these other Blog Banter articles! Silvercublogger, Unfettered Blather, Triage Effect, Gamer Unit, Delayed Responsibility, Man Bytes Blog, CrazyKinux’s Musing, Zath!, Game Couch, 8-Bit Brigade, thoughts and rants, Hawty McBloggy

 Subscribe to DrainingSouls.net.

Random Posts

• Rare Spawn Mega Post 2
• Carebear No More?
• What’s The Point…
• I’m Thankful for Rare Spawns 2
• C’mon Blizzard…