Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, The drawbridge fight - Unimaginable torture
I really don't know if this is worth a post, but the amount of frustration and pain I've endured crossing the infamous 'drawbridge', that I decided to write something here, and frankly I'll take out a lot of frustration against the game makers and the game itself in this post, and you'll find a lot of abusive words in here. So if you are a big fan of the either or you just want to read a decent article with nice and clean language, please stop reading here and go read one of those millions of posts which would leave you with a pleasing impression about the game-play of the game.
First things first, I love Prince of Persia, well that's why I play. I fell in love with PoP when I played the 'Prince of Persia 3D'. I loved it because the wonderful levels, the castles, the mysterious Persian structures, and graphics. At that time also I hated few things about it, the camera movements, the way the player was allowed to control the prince, etc etc. Now after almost 7 years I decided to play 'Sands of Time', I know I'm outdated regarding this, but please keep in mind, I'm one of those occasional video game players.
Things started well. I liked the graphics, the structures, levels, everything which re-instantiated my nostalgia with PoP. A lot of the glitches (or the things which were done, the way they were done) from PoP 3D were gone, fixed. The game flow was smoother. Controlling the prince was far better than the previous installment. I started advancing through the game. Started facing some situations where I was supposed to do some cool acrobatics - 'the mario move', as some blog suggests them. Slowly I started evolving my own skills to fit in with this game. Things started growing difficult, obviously they are supposed to be like that, otherwise where's the fun? As the going got tougher, the tougher got going. I was constantly adjusting to the growing difficulty level of the game, as it was advancing. The real problems started with the battles involving the 'blue guards'. Each one of them are seasoned bastards, ready to fuck you by surrounding you and constantly chopping you. To name few super tough battles - "A Booby-Trapped Courtyard", "The baths" and "Daybreak". Mostly all are in part 4. I was evolving, adjusting. passing every one of those tests of patience and adaptation, and was wondering 'why the hell they have injected so tough fights, in otherwise such a nice game'. Things went out of control when I nearly finished "A Soldiers' Mess Hall", when I was at the Drawbridge.
The Drawbridge, unimaginable amount of pain, frustration which would make you feel like committing suicide, break your keyboard on your girlfriends skull, yell out tons of "fuck" words, make you feel miserable, make you feel if you never existed, your life's a crap, you're doomed and finally - go fuck yourself and go to hell.
To more logical things now. Patience, innovation and time are the things which eventually will make you cross the drawbridge. Someone with my skills (for that matter, I doubt anyone leaving out the people who eat PoP, sleep Pop and... oh yes, play PoP) cannot win this fight without using the above 3 things and sand powers. To be more specific, you have to use - "The power of haste" or the "Mega freeze" built into the game-play to get over with this. I won't say what are the prerequisites or how to activate "Mega freeze" as they are documented thousands of times in hundreds of blogs and sites. What I'll describe is the improper documentation in the game manual, the official sites, fan sites and almost every other places describing the mega freeze. All say, what you need, what you should do. I do what all say, yet nothing happens. I was left surrounded with tens and twenties of those blue bastards and pressing the correct key combination and checking out the prerequisites, but where the fuck is mega freeze? Such a fucking experience. While I was desperately pressing keys to activate the fucking freeze thing, the son of bitches were chopping me, my health bar was dropping like a pebble in free fall. To add on to the mental torture, as I was being knocked out repeatedly and could not get up and still being chopped constantly by those assholes, some of them were fucking my sweet companion "Farah" too. She was crying for my help - "Ahh...help me, ooh...ahhh...help me please" as she was getting fucked up badly, surrounded by four to six of those bastards all taking it out on her in turn, one by one. Such a mental torture, unimaginable pain as you see yourself and Farah dying after taking a series of fuck and the "Re-start" option popping up again, the Prince being telling you - "No no no, we didn't die like that". All because of what? I was unable to activate the fucking MEGA FREEZE. All sand powers were usable - Power of Restraint, power of delay, power of destiny but not the POWER OF HASTE. It was completely unusable by me.
I tried at least 50-70 times before actually I was able to get over with this hell. I discovered that the power of haste or the so called mega freeze doesn't get activated untill and unless your are in proximity of your enemy to fight with. Initially what I was doing is the moment the enemy started gathering up, I was hitting the key combination to start up the haste. Wasn't working, by the time I was getting surrounded by the enemy and the fuck fest was starting which I was not being able to cope with.
Two most important things - your resources (sand tank, power tank blah blah) must meet the prerequisite, and you must be in close proximity of your enemy. Then only the haste thing kicks off. Once started, take my words for it, its your turn to fuck them, and that too at the speed of a blink which would leave you with a orgasmic sensation once you are done with all of those fucking bastards. This too has a downside, ironically as with orgasm, this too lasts for a short time - 10 seconds to be exact.
Personally how I ended this torture - Started of fight, kicked off haste, killed around 10 to 15 of those blue guards, once the 10 seconds of free fuck for me was over, still I found 7 - 8 of them were alive. Normal battle with cool head got me out of it. Oh yes, when everything was over, my life bar was nearly to zero. That's why I said, luck is also a factor to cross this mega torture.
To the developers, if anyone is reading - does it really justify to put in a fight which was best suited to the climax instead, rather than at around 45% of the game? Who is going to tell all the people who love PoP, these minor things like, unless you are in proximity of your enemy you cannot start up haste?
General notes - some might find the above as a whine, they might be experts. I would ask them to look at it from my shoes. IMO, this whole battle thing could be a bit more relaxed. There should have been an AI engine built into the game which would have decided the difficulty of the game play on the fly on the basis of performance of a particular player. The more I cross levels without re-loads, the tougher it becomes automatically and the reverse.
Epilogue - I'll continue with Sands of Time from the drawbridge save point. I'll post more as it goes with me. To people who are in similar conditions to that of mine in the game, my suggestion, patience and the power of haste should do it for you.
Cheers!
First things first, I love Prince of Persia, well that's why I play. I fell in love with PoP when I played the 'Prince of Persia 3D'. I loved it because the wonderful levels, the castles, the mysterious Persian structures, and graphics. At that time also I hated few things about it, the camera movements, the way the player was allowed to control the prince, etc etc. Now after almost 7 years I decided to play 'Sands of Time', I know I'm outdated regarding this, but please keep in mind, I'm one of those occasional video game players.
Things started well. I liked the graphics, the structures, levels, everything which re-instantiated my nostalgia with PoP. A lot of the glitches (or the things which were done, the way they were done) from PoP 3D were gone, fixed. The game flow was smoother. Controlling the prince was far better than the previous installment. I started advancing through the game. Started facing some situations where I was supposed to do some cool acrobatics - 'the mario move', as some blog suggests them. Slowly I started evolving my own skills to fit in with this game. Things started growing difficult, obviously they are supposed to be like that, otherwise where's the fun? As the going got tougher, the tougher got going. I was constantly adjusting to the growing difficulty level of the game, as it was advancing. The real problems started with the battles involving the 'blue guards'. Each one of them are seasoned bastards, ready to fuck you by surrounding you and constantly chopping you. To name few super tough battles - "A Booby-Trapped Courtyard", "The baths" and "Daybreak". Mostly all are in part 4. I was evolving, adjusting. passing every one of those tests of patience and adaptation, and was wondering 'why the hell they have injected so tough fights, in otherwise such a nice game'. Things went out of control when I nearly finished "A Soldiers' Mess Hall", when I was at the Drawbridge.
The Drawbridge, unimaginable amount of pain, frustration which would make you feel like committing suicide, break your keyboard on your girlfriends skull, yell out tons of "fuck" words, make you feel miserable, make you feel if you never existed, your life's a crap, you're doomed and finally - go fuck yourself and go to hell.
To more logical things now. Patience, innovation and time are the things which eventually will make you cross the drawbridge. Someone with my skills (for that matter, I doubt anyone leaving out the people who eat PoP, sleep Pop and... oh yes, play PoP) cannot win this fight without using the above 3 things and sand powers. To be more specific, you have to use - "The power of haste" or the "Mega freeze" built into the game-play to get over with this. I won't say what are the prerequisites or how to activate "Mega freeze" as they are documented thousands of times in hundreds of blogs and sites. What I'll describe is the improper documentation in the game manual, the official sites, fan sites and almost every other places describing the mega freeze. All say, what you need, what you should do. I do what all say, yet nothing happens. I was left surrounded with tens and twenties of those blue bastards and pressing the correct key combination and checking out the prerequisites, but where the fuck is mega freeze? Such a fucking experience. While I was desperately pressing keys to activate the fucking freeze thing, the son of bitches were chopping me, my health bar was dropping like a pebble in free fall. To add on to the mental torture, as I was being knocked out repeatedly and could not get up and still being chopped constantly by those assholes, some of them were fucking my sweet companion "Farah" too. She was crying for my help - "Ahh...help me, ooh...ahhh...help me please" as she was getting fucked up badly, surrounded by four to six of those bastards all taking it out on her in turn, one by one. Such a mental torture, unimaginable pain as you see yourself and Farah dying after taking a series of fuck and the "Re-start" option popping up again, the Prince being telling you - "No no no, we didn't die like that". All because of what? I was unable to activate the fucking MEGA FREEZE. All sand powers were usable - Power of Restraint, power of delay, power of destiny but not the POWER OF HASTE. It was completely unusable by me.
I tried at least 50-70 times before actually I was able to get over with this hell. I discovered that the power of haste or the so called mega freeze doesn't get activated untill and unless your are in proximity of your enemy to fight with. Initially what I was doing is the moment the enemy started gathering up, I was hitting the key combination to start up the haste. Wasn't working, by the time I was getting surrounded by the enemy and the fuck fest was starting which I was not being able to cope with.
Two most important things - your resources (sand tank, power tank blah blah) must meet the prerequisite, and you must be in close proximity of your enemy. Then only the haste thing kicks off. Once started, take my words for it, its your turn to fuck them, and that too at the speed of a blink which would leave you with a orgasmic sensation once you are done with all of those fucking bastards. This too has a downside, ironically as with orgasm, this too lasts for a short time - 10 seconds to be exact.
Personally how I ended this torture - Started of fight, kicked off haste, killed around 10 to 15 of those blue guards, once the 10 seconds of free fuck for me was over, still I found 7 - 8 of them were alive. Normal battle with cool head got me out of it. Oh yes, when everything was over, my life bar was nearly to zero. That's why I said, luck is also a factor to cross this mega torture.
To the developers, if anyone is reading - does it really justify to put in a fight which was best suited to the climax instead, rather than at around 45% of the game? Who is going to tell all the people who love PoP, these minor things like, unless you are in proximity of your enemy you cannot start up haste?
General notes - some might find the above as a whine, they might be experts. I would ask them to look at it from my shoes. IMO, this whole battle thing could be a bit more relaxed. There should have been an AI engine built into the game which would have decided the difficulty of the game play on the fly on the basis of performance of a particular player. The more I cross levels without re-loads, the tougher it becomes automatically and the reverse.
Epilogue - I'll continue with Sands of Time from the drawbridge save point. I'll post more as it goes with me. To people who are in similar conditions to that of mine in the game, my suggestion, patience and the power of haste should do it for you.
Cheers!
Comments
Also the first time I completely ignored defense like my step son. I shouldn't have. Defense or blocking is your friend here. Most enemies employ an attack pattern. For example 1, 2, 3 and rest, repeat. So basically all you have to do is block the first 3 hits and when they are resting, counter strike.
Overall the PS3 experience was way better than the first run on PC.
Happy gaming!