Afro Samurai (PS3)
The controls are clunky and kind of broken, but managable.The foes you'll be fighting are repetitious and predictable - one kind you can easily kill by just kicking then finishing off with a heavy attack, another kind by just hitting the light attack button, another kind by kicking, then light attack then heavy, repeat. Oh, and you can be killed without ever getting hit sometimes.
The voice acting is pretty good, though alot of the time it doesn't feel like the character on screen is actually saying what they're saying (the audio's usually directional, except for a lot of the dialogue isn't and really feels disconnected).
The camera takes turns controlling itself and letting you control it. If you point your right pad to the left, the camera moves right, up, it moves down, and there's no option to change that schematic, or to change anything in the game - like brightness, sound effects, subtitles, nothing. That, and you usually can't tell who's fighting you from where, but just randomly pushing buttons solves that.
Visually, the art design's pretty good, but the animation is often clunky, weird, and usually unconvincing (watch for foes running with swords - who carries swords like that?!). And a lot of the cutscenes can't be skipped, so if you die a lot in one area you have to watch the same lame cutscenes over and over.
The platforming is a chore, as is fighting as it's tedious. The story is taken from the movies, which I thought was bad to begin with. And the much advertised slicing foes feature isn't as special as it sounds.
Overall, the game isn't atrocious, but it isn't really worth playing either. It should probably be noted that there's a lot of gore, nudity, and language, like a lot.
3.5/10
Prince of Persia (PS3)
The worst thing about the game is the characters. They're flat, with interchangeably random moods, and have barely anything worhwhile to say, and talk A LOT.The main point of the game is to get to certain areas marked with a circle and explode what looks to be light from out of yourself, that heals the land. Fine. But usually when you get there you could easily just head straight to the spot and do that exploding healing, but instead your characters will stop for innane banter and wait for a villain to come.
The game consists of doing this some twenty or so times, over areas that all look about the same, and you can only access about 5 areas at a time, then you have to stop go over the areas you've just beaten and collect small glowing star-like things. Like at least a hundred of them, then the next 5 areas are unlocked. And, that's all you'll be doing, collecting star-things, and playing what looks like the same level 20 times.
Oh, and you fight the same 7 or so villains over and over and over. And I don't mean they look the same, I mean they are the same. There's no real sense of accomplishing much.
Now, on to the good. It's kind of fun for about an hour. The platforming is overly simplistic, sometimes not even listening to your command (doing something ridiculously dumb instead), but usually working okay to well enough. And, the day scenes are a beaut'.
If there's a demo available, play that around 10 times instead, and it would be as though you've played the whole game.
4.75/10
Author: J-P
