Forums > Submission Feedback > Suskie's Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands review

[rotw stuff]

It's tough to discuss a sequel without going to a laundry list, and I think this game does it very well: identifies the good games and why they're good, and the bad predecessors and why they aren't. I think it also captures disappointment at the developers choosing the entirely wrong new direction to go in, and how once they start it can't be reclaimed, and it makes a good case for more of the same. I'm saddedned by the experiments in conformity you describe as it is so different in spirit from the original PoP. The review touches on the stuff we don't quite know we want/don't want in sequels in general and even points out how PoP's attempts to get in line with traditional genres resulted in some weird choices and dead ends.

Now to grammar police/minor points:

"what they created never need to be tampered with" -> "never needed" or, better, "they got it right the first time" to avoid that ending with a preposition snafu.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/acrobatics shows acrobatics is used with a plural verb.

Stuff like "I commented to myself that you could be floored" rings slightly hollow--perhaps "watching the Prince perform...floored me. Then realizing how simple it was on replay (something else than floored me.)

Also "Man, you should see some of the things you’ll have to pull off by the game’s final act." OK, conversational voice is up to the writer, but this feels the wrong sort of conversational--of someone tugging on my sleeve to get me interested instead of being interesting. It's another riff that's engulfed by the fun stuff that follows, thankfully. I'd also ditch the "y'know." Maybe I have a ton of the reviewing equivalent of personal space. But it seems this review is strong enough without it. Maybe I just get upset by this because the rest is so interesting and I know you have the ability to put the other stuff fully in your own words. What you've got is more than good enough, of course.

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

Ha. I honestly don't like this review, precisely because I thought it was too plain. You really don't like my casual reviewing style, do you?

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I get the feeling that you don't follow current games very closely so I would have guess that you'd have trouble following what I was saying here, so I'm glad you at least found it tolerable.

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

Plain can mean just plain good. What others find plain, I might not. You know that professor/teacher who INSISTED biology or chemistry or physics was beautiful, especially in the laboratory, even though you never got experiments to work right?

It was scary once I realized some of them were right. And I think with writing, there are times it is better off ornate, and times it isn't, and sometimes plain stuff can alert us to something we missed before--because it is not too focused on itself. I think it requires a great leap of faith to write something relatively plain and hope it holds up. People won't be dazzled and they may rip it right away.

I generally look for a combination of addressing the game and what games should be. I can't say for sure what I want, and I'm pleasantly surprised when I find something I haven't considered. In fact, it's good when something that seems plain shows you something you weren't expecting. Sometimes, it's easier to learn that way, or have confidence you'll learn other stuff, because it's good to know there's straightforward stuff out there that you can still get a lot of mileage out of.

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips