Prince of Persia Rocks |

So Ubisoft has this deal where if you buy PoP you get Splinter Cell free. Couldn't pass that up. It'll be my third time owning Splinter Cell, (first time I returned it, second time I got is used on sale then traded it in back a few weeks later for pretty much the same price I got it for). I probably still won't get past the part I was stuck at, but it's nice to have it as part of the collection.

Prince of Persia I've been meaning to get for a while. Glad I waited! I was just waiting for a used one really, but free a SC is better. I got stuck in one of the first rooms after the "prologue" for a while. The rooms in the palace are crazy. Most of it was destroyed when the Sands of Time were unleashed, and the way it ended up is really "gamey". And there are an awful lot of bars to swing on. I hate games where half of it is figuring out how to get from one place to the other. They're usually called platformers. Tons of jumping in this too, like a platformer. I hate platformers. And the first puzzle I come to is like "WTF??". I barely understood what I was supposed to be doing. I was really regretting getting it. I eventually got past it without even using a walkthru though.

And it's all uphill from there. This is the best action adventure game I've played in a long time. Or ever. It's convinced me to get Beyond Good and Evil, which I was going to pass up because I don't usually like action adventures. The rooms aren't that hard, you just have to look around and think about all you acrobatic abilities and you'll see pretty easily how you can get past them. The fighting, despite only having one real attack button, is awesome. You'll mostly be mashing one button, but you'll also need to leap over enemies, attack multiple enemies at once to keep them at bay, and use your time control abilities quite a bit starting about 30% into it. Rewind not only saves you from bad jumps, but it helps you avoid hits in fights, too. Instead of replaying the same fight 5 times, just rewind when you messed up. Zigged when you should have zagged? Rewind. Slow-mo I don't use much. You can freeze a single enemy with a special attack (counts as a time-control attack) and then it will only take two hits to finish them. Fast-forward uses all your sand (which is used to control time), but it freezes everyone around you, and lets you zip to right to them and take them out in one hit. That's the crowd clearer attack. It's like the bomb that blows up everything on the screen in old-school space shooters. You're also not by yourself through the whole thing. About 15% into it, you get a sidekick, whose only fault is hitting you with her arrows every once in a while. She can handle herself pretty well, and never gets in the way like NPC friendlies usually do. I think I figured out a plot twist coming up though.

POSSIBLE SPOILER!!!!
Leet spoken to reduce accidental reading.
SPOILER!5h3!!5h0udn0!h4v3!!5urv1v3!!!!SPOILER
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Also got Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. It's a good RPG with a nice fighting system. Turn based, but there are real-time elements. Good timing after initiating an attack deals more damage, special attacks require timed button presses, and you can dodge enemies attack in real time when it's their turn. The only decent Nintendo games are on the GBA now.