Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. It’s not a bad game, but its definitely nothing to stop time over (see what I did there?). In any event, it’s not up to snuff for Ubi. Amrit’s right too, the combat does feel tacked on, and they have replaced the sands of time with a tanned genie girl.

I did manage to play the Tomb Raider Underworld demo … if both Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider series are in need of taking a dirt nap, I know where we can get a shotgun and some molotov cocktails.

So what do they do? Let’s change how we look at combat. Let’s alter the way we punish the player for missed jumps. Let’s change the colour pallet and characters. Let’s re-think how players will navigate stages.

It seems, however, they failed to re-capture their still-jaded audience. It’s just too hard to get excited about Prince of Persia anymore. Wall-running was really cool six or seven years ago, but gamers demand more. And why shouldn’t we?

I’m wondering how this game compares to the new Tomb Raider, another fledgling franchise not immune to the occasional reset. To the indiscriminate gamer (or for someone like me, who hasn’t really spent any time with either), these games draw a lot of parallels in terms of basic gameplay. Run, jump, shimmy, roll – followed by the occasional baddie. And while both games were generally well received, neither managed to resonate with gamers the way Sands of Time did way back on the last gen consoles.

I think I’m just yammering at this point, but if I have to distill my long-winded soap-box commentary into something coherent, I’d say that there are some franchises you have to let die in the ground before you go digging it up again. Prince of Persia deserves a good dirt nap.

Splinter Cell, on the other hand, is a franchise I’m looking forward to getting into again. I thought Double Agent was a fun diversion, and I think Conviction has a lot of potential, provided they can get that ’social camouflage’ thingy working correctly.

Finally got past my first campaign on expert today! Dead Air is my bitch! haha

Plus I learned of a really awesome tactic to get past the last chapter on Dead Air that worked amazingly well that anyone can do and which I will be going into more detail on later when I start putting up the first parts of SF’s Left 4 Dead Strategy Guide in the coming days.

So yeah just to reiterate, I’m not excited to play Prince of Persia at all, the one on one (or 2 on 1) combat feels a little tacked on to me. The real gameplay, lies in the platforming elements but I find the the addition of Elika makes it seem a little too easy. If you die trying to get across a drop, she’ll just grab you and tell you not to do that again. They replaced the Sands of Time with this chick, and while she does her job admirably, not getting in the way, having smooth animations and the like, she actually removes the depth that could have made the game a little more challenging and therefore a little more enjoyable.