Prince of Persia 2008 | new anime

I finished Prince of Persia 2008 today, and I’m tossing up whether or not it is the finest game I’ve ever played. The hardcore gamers will laugh at that, which is fine, it’s what I expect. I used to be one of you. I used to think that all a game had to offer was pretty graphics and complex game mechanics. I won’t go into detail explaining it though, I just can’t be bothered. I loved PoP ’08, and I’m going to play it again and again. It is one of the most beautiful games ever to be crafted, with an emotional ending that plays out in such an amazing way as you actually have to perform the actions that conspire to bring about the final chapter. Every moment of this game is poetry, and I cannot fault a single mechanic, not the combat in its simplicity and execution, not the platforming in its wonderfully fluid and refreshingly non-broken mechanics, and not even the plates which threw a few reviewers, particularly the yellow flying ones. Failure in these actions brings you back no more than 30 seconds of gameplay, it’s hardly punishing.
Having unlocked almost all of the skins, strangely I prefer the Prince in his ’08 outfit and Elika in hers. Farah’s hair is too stuck to her head and while Jade of Beyond Good & Evil looks amazing, especially with Elika’s hair, the jeans-adorned princess looks a little strange among the sandstones and parapets.

My one reservation is that there will be a sequel, most likely a trilogy, and that future games may pander to the hardcore audience as sales weren’t as stellar as Ubisoft may have hoped. On the plus side, the ending bears a startling resemblance to the prototype I wrote about earlier, though PoP was finished well before I wrote it. It would be utterly amazing and totally welcome if the Prince ends up following something so similar to some of the things I want in game design.

–

I’m back into anime having no light-hearted films to watch. I’ll get around to the serious ones but I have to be in the mood. So, bring on 2005 series La Corda D’Oro – Primo Passo; an anime about a girl who is a normal student at a high-school that is divided into the normal students and the music students, she gets chosen by a music fairy only she can see to be a bringer of joy through music though she doesn’t even play an instrument, the fairy gives her a magic violin… and we are joined by a cast pretty much made up entirely of bishies! Can you say shoujo-anime? I think you can! I love girl’s anime – for starters it’s not all crushingly feminine, as long as you aren’t afraid of honesty, there’s no reason why guys can’t get right into this stuff, and heaps of them already do. It’s just wonderfully warm, light and often very emotional drama. Ultimately though, these shows are all about encouragement and reaching emotional mile-stones in life, and this is one of the main reasons why I love them so much. They’re not about saving the world, they’re not about revenge or violence, they’re about normal, everyday emotional learning and celebrating simple but meaningful joys in life.
Plus they’re just jam-packed with classic anime comedy that most of the time you have to be seasoned in to catch and appreciate. Not always the case, but I guess the more you’ve seen, the more you’ll laugh. La Corda D’Oro isn’t as crazy as things like Ouran or Wallflower, but still in that vein of humour.

–

If you need to teach yourself to touch-type, type in the dark. That’s one of the ways I taught myself.