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Platform Peril: Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands and Super Mario Galaxy 2

That's a long ass post title, right there.
Maybe it would help if I split them into 2 posts?

Yes, but that ain't happenin'!

So, let's start with Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands, the latest addition to the long-running wall-climbing pole-vaulting parcours games starring the Prince of Persia.
Man, it must be sweet to be the Prince of Persia. You never actually seem to do a lot of governing from what I can tell.

It's another decent romp through the kingdom of Persia, which seems to be perpetually plagued by some kind of disaster that involves sand at some point (not much else there, is there? Hur hur!), but there are some new gimmicks for the Plucky Prince to work with.

For one, there is the ability to freeze water in order to change waterfalls into walls and fountains into poles to run off and jump from. Secondly, there's the ability to create platforms that were there before but not anymore, but only 1 at a time!
Both new abilities require lots of switching back and forth in mid-jump/run/fall/whatever and it can get pretty hectic and challenging later on in the game.

The problem is though, the game's creators don't give you any of these new abilities until you're already several hours into the game. They must've figured the 5 people who've never played an Ubisoft Prince of Persia game before needed some time to get a hang of the controls, so in the beginning you spend your time pulling off some very basic moves which will be all too familiar to most people for what feels a bit too long.
Christ, if you've never played one of Ubi's PoP games before, there's better games to start out with, so you shouldn't be bothering with this one in the first place.

The new abilities add some new twists though, so it's definitely a fun adventure, but I'm starting to think that the formula is perhaps groing slightly stale.
The scene leading up to the final battle is pretty awesome though.



Second up, is Super Mario Galaxy 2.

And Super Mario Galaxy 2, like Super Mario Galaxy 1 before it, is all kinds of Awesome.
I never thought I'd say it, but they've come to the point where Mario just works BETTER in 3D than in 2D, which is insane enough in and of itself.

It's going to be hard to top this in the category "Wii Game of the Year", but unfortunately that's not saying all that much.

The only question I have is, whereto next!?
We've had Mario Land, Mario World and Mario Galaxy, WHAT NEXT!?
Where could they possibly take the plumber next, that is going to be better than Super Mario Galaxy!?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

posted by Ingen! @ 2:23 PM