Final thoughts on Prince of Persia
Currently, I've finished PoP and am grinding away through the downloadable content. Prince of Persia is a very pretty game. Technically, it's pretty inspiring, with huge areas and incredibly long views across some beautiful architecture. As I've mentioned, combat isn't too fun, with controls being fairly unresponsive to my button-mashing sensibilities. Interrupts are few and far between, and the Prince gets stuck in context-sensitive combat poses depending on what the enemy AI is doing.
The acrobatics and wall running are decent. The most incredible thing about them is how well the levels were set up so that it feels fairly seamless when the Prince does three wall jumps in a row, lands on a power jewel, gets flung into the air about 500 yards to another wall, where he instantly wall runs to another jewel, etc. That takes a lot of precision, especially if it's physics based. The level designer in me was impressed, especially since you know that, at one time or another, someone decided that the Prince could jump a little too far, or that power jewels weren't powerful enough, and suddenly every freaking wall location had to be changed to accept the new parameters.
As I said, the level design was good, but the gameplay depended a bit too much on the "Learn By Dying" principle. For instance, two of the power jewels, the green and the yellow, gave the Prince some freedom of movement. For the yellow jewels, the Prince would be flying through the air on some sort of rail. You could never figure our where the rail was going, so many times you would slam into a column that you felt for sure you were going to the left of when, instead, you were expected to go to the right.
Another minor complaint would be that the distance the Prince could fall wasn't consistent. I realize that the developers didn't want the Prince to go to some areas, and they would put "Death Triggers" wherever the Prince shouldn't be able to jump to the ground below, but it still felt like the game was cheating.
I play these games with my wife watching, and so she ends up being the final judge of the story. Her feeling was that the Prince and Elika's relationship had grown enough by the end of the game that they could at least admit that they have feelings for one another. Since this hasn't happened, she feels frustrated and disappointed that the relationship was developed to a certain point and then was pretty much forgotten and then pointedly ignored thereafter.
Final thought: PoP is a decent game with spectacular production values but, perhaps, a bit of an undeveloped soul.
The acrobatics and wall running are decent. The most incredible thing about them is how well the levels were set up so that it feels fairly seamless when the Prince does three wall jumps in a row, lands on a power jewel, gets flung into the air about 500 yards to another wall, where he instantly wall runs to another jewel, etc. That takes a lot of precision, especially if it's physics based. The level designer in me was impressed, especially since you know that, at one time or another, someone decided that the Prince could jump a little too far, or that power jewels weren't powerful enough, and suddenly every freaking wall location had to be changed to accept the new parameters.
As I said, the level design was good, but the gameplay depended a bit too much on the "Learn By Dying" principle. For instance, two of the power jewels, the green and the yellow, gave the Prince some freedom of movement. For the yellow jewels, the Prince would be flying through the air on some sort of rail. You could never figure our where the rail was going, so many times you would slam into a column that you felt for sure you were going to the left of when, instead, you were expected to go to the right.
Another minor complaint would be that the distance the Prince could fall wasn't consistent. I realize that the developers didn't want the Prince to go to some areas, and they would put "Death Triggers" wherever the Prince shouldn't be able to jump to the ground below, but it still felt like the game was cheating.
I play these games with my wife watching, and so she ends up being the final judge of the story. Her feeling was that the Prince and Elika's relationship had grown enough by the end of the game that they could at least admit that they have feelings for one another. Since this hasn't happened, she feels frustrated and disappointed that the relationship was developed to a certain point and then was pretty much forgotten and then pointedly ignored thereafter.
Final thought: PoP is a decent game with spectacular production values but, perhaps, a bit of an undeveloped soul.
