Games, Sketches, and Thoughts

Most of the video game reviewers complain that the new Prince of Persia is too easy. The prince cannot die since Elika, his new sidekick, will always save you. If you jump to the wrong place or pit, Elika with her magic power will grab and save you from falling down to the bottomless pit. The fighting mechanism is very simple that some people can do it with their eye closed.

I am quite surprise that the game gets a bad review for these features. Because for me, this game is a bless.

As a grown up with a full time job, I am juggling between work, family, gaming, exercise, sketching, facebooking, friends, and my personal game projects. Game which requires long time to master or finish cannot fits to my schedule anymore.

Some people might have said to me, why don’t you buy or play casual or easier game? Well, I am not a casual gamer. I’ve played Prince of Persia since it was on PC. I played all the Sand of Time trilogy. I enjoy frustrating platformers like Megaman series, Yoshi Island, or Super Mario Bros. I am hungry for more hardcore game titles!

I am a hardcore gamer (so does my wife) but I realize that I cannot finish games like Final Fantasy XII anymore despite I like it very much. It’s too long and takes a lot of dedication.

I already schedule every weekend for Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on my DS. So I have only 30 minute (or 1 hour if I am lucky) on workday evenings.

This prince of Persia fits me. I feel that I can achieve something in this tiny amount of time, and the game is very forgiving. You actually can die on Prince of Persia but instead showing the traditional game-over-continue screen, you get a short animation of Elika saving you from falling. This gives you the feeling of ‘hey, I don’t die. Let’s do it again’ feeling.

I’ve tried the demo of Mirror’s Edge. After 30 minutes playing (with a lot of fallings/dying), I was frustrated and I stop playing it. I am not saying the game is bad, it’s just not for me.

Some gamers said the more forgiving games are not challenging. For me it is. Allocating time for following and playing good games is already challenging enough for me. I wish that more and more games are friendly to people like us, older and used to be hardcore gamers.

Beside, don’t those game designers also getting older and have family too?

Namco may change the main character for the next Klonoa game for American Wii (from a recent post at Kotaku). This decision is based on a survey which concludes that the participants like the new Klonoa better than the original one.

The original Klonoa (on the left) has long ears which make him unique. The long ears also act like an additional pair of hands or wings. The original character has more cartoon body proportion with big size gloves and boots.

The new Klonoa looks more like a bat. No more long ears. It has more realistic body proportion with smaller gloves and boots. The new character has the ‘cool, slim, and fast’ feels. I could imagine that this is the ninja-version of Klonoa. It still looks cute but definitely more powerful and fierce than the original one.

Both characters are good and look great, but I prefer the original one Namco want to take more risk to make Klonoa character more recognizable in North America. Maybe they feel that the original character has not been so popular outside Japan, so maybe it is the right time to introduce a new and more acceptable character. However, most gamers who play Klonoa before might hate the new design.

Will it worth the risk? We’ll see..