Once again, this is a gaming post. If you’re not into it you may want to look away now.
I recently started playing Prince of Persia for the PC and thought I’d share a few thoughts with you about my playing experience so far. Let me first explain that I’m not sure if I’ll actually finish the game or not. I’ve finished the first 4 areas for cleaning and done a few which require access with one of the special powers, but perhaps you can enlighten be as to whether the game is worth finishing, given the information I am about to give you.
Nobody can deny that this game has achieved some interesting things. First of all, the animation is quite interesting. I hadn’t read a lot about it before I started playing but upon initial installation I was quite surprised. I hadn’t expected what I saw and all I can really say to describe it is that the whole thing sort of looks like a painting, and not a crap one done by a little kid. The movement overall is very fluid and the way the 2 characters interact with each other is quite good as well. I never feel that Elika is getting in my way so much that she becomes a huge nuisance, as can sometimes happen in other games. As for the dialogue, while not inspiring in any way and sometimes a bit cheesy, still changes as more story is revealed. Another great thing is that this game doesn’t require you to have the disc in your PC while you’re playing. Eureka!
The most fun for me in Prince of Persia is during very fluid movement periods on the way to and from each fertile ground. In some ways, this interesting gameplay reminds me of Mirror’s Edge but with less available options. I think that if this part of the game had been expanded a bit more so that more areas were open for interaction in a creative way, it would have allowed a more interesting playing experience. As it is, you have to backtrack in generally the same path on which you came in. Although things change a bit after the battle to heal the fertile grounds, this generally isn’t enough to keep me extremely excited about the gameplay. It’s usually fairly familiar territory.
A couple of slightly niggling things which annoy me are the fact that this game was very obviously created for a console. Instead of clear indications of what I should be pushing in certain situations, I get color coded nonsense and strange directional indicators. It doesn’t really fly well on the PC. It isn’t a huge deal, but it can be annoying. Another such annoyance is the fact that they’ve obviously tried to make you feel connected to the healing process for each fertile ground by tapping a button repeatedly. This isn’t interesting and it doesn’t make me feel connected to the process. It’s just annoying. Just show me the animation while she’s healing the fertile ground, or let me have a more complicated role in this process. This is just a silly token offering which doesn’t work for me.
As for the combat, we’re looking at pretty basic stuff, on the whole. While the steel and magic duo thing is interesting and can make for some fun times in the beginning, the combat system soon feels a bit boring. Also, there is no real way to lose a battle, since Elika bails you out of every situation. This also applies to falling off cliffs, stepping into goo or anything remotely dangerous. It really removes the thrill and anticipation from the game and turns her from a love interest into a more motherly figure, in my view. It just isn’t exciting, and that’s the problem.
The real problem lies in the fact that you’re generally just doing the same thing over and over again, and there is no real urgency or reason to go on. You’re going to head to a fertile ground by navigating through the same sort of obstacles. You can’t die on the way because Elika won’t let you. Any illusion of time constraints is really thinly veiled and I personally feel no urgency to get anything done. When you get to the fertile ground, you’ll battle some baddy. This won’t be difficult because even if you mess up horribly, Elika will save you. Your abilities are generally limited to block, whack with sword, acrobatics thing (this one is pretty useful in interacting with Elika during switches between magic and sword attacks, etc), gauntlet and magic. Magic is just one thing, not many. Oh no, not the MAGIC attack! Any way, it isn’t horrible but it isn’t great. The problem with it is really just the fact that you’re going to have to do generally the same thing many times in order to finish the game.
I’ll readily admit the good things – the art, the fact that I love running around on walls and stuff and that the story is intriguing (but not gripping) so this is why I am at an impasse. Does the story warrant me going on? Is something great going to happen or am I going to be disappointed? Don’t tell me what happens, but what do you think? is it worth healing a lot more of these blasted fertile grounds just to get to what for all I know may be a lackluster cut scene?