Review: Prince of Persia (2008)

PC – Keyboard / Mouse – 2008
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Playtime: 11 hours
Paid: $24.99US on Steam

Metacritic scores for Prince of Persia range from 81 to 85 across the three platforms.
Sales were recently estimated to be over 2.2 million worldwide.

Previous experience: I played the demo for The Sands of Time a few times and decided that I needed it. After buying the game for $100AU, I proceeded to play roughly a quarter of it. Sigh. Fortunately, this means I’m not attached to the “old Prince”.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about this game is the art style – 2D characters traversing a 3D world. Both are beautiful. The character outfits and textures are detailed and suitably designed. The world itself is nothing short of magnificent, and I occasionally took pause to rotate the camera and just have a look around. As you progress through the game, you clear the Corruption from each area, gradually cleaning the world and making it more beautiful – from polluted, dank, and dangerous to vibrant, healthy, and shining.

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

PC – Keyboard / Mouse controls – 2008
Developer: Rockstar North (Rockstar Toronto for PC)
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Playtime: 25 hours.
Paid: £20.48 shipped from 365 Games.

Grand Theft Auto IV has a Metacritic score of 90 on PC, and 98 on PS3 / Xbox 360.
Sales were stated as over 13 million as of March 11, 2009.

Grand Theft Auto IV was one of the most highly-anticipated games of 2008, and received incredible reviews from the gaming media. The open-world action gameplay of the series took its first step into this generation (can we not call it next-gen anymore? Thanks.) and people were absolutely ready for it. This release is huge in scope and influence – but does it live up to the hype? A year-late investigation follows.

Introduction

Welcome to Busy-Handed Gamer!

Here, you will find reviews of games both old and new, as I trawl through my backlog and acquire fresh meat, as well as comments on news I find especially notable.

What will you not find? To-the-minute updates on every piece of gaming news. Exclusive previews! Interviews with CEOs and top developers! All this (and more) can’t be found here!

Why did I start to do this? Partly because I’m eager to develop my writing and communication skills, partly because I’d love to get into the industry of game journalism (which admittedly feels pretty full already), and partly because I had the month off, giving me a nice chunk of time to play some games. Writing about it seemed to make the time spent feel slightly more productive.

Why the title? I have (two) hands, and I play games. They are almost always utilised somehow in this process, for you and I. Thus, it seemed a relevant pick. Also, my hands tend to be fiddling with something or another when they’re not grasping a controller, portable, or other input device. (Oh, shush.)

It is my hope that you will find something worth returning here for, and provide feedback on both the content discussed and the quality of the articles.

Thanks,
Andrew Smith.