When I first saw my friend playing Prince of Persia, I thought it was a beautiful game. Screenshots couldn't capture the beauty of the game - it looked like a painting in motion. There were beautiful vistas, fluid animations, and an overall fantastic flow. My friend claimed that it was fun to play, but I had no idea just how fun it was until I got to play it myself.

After so many frustrating game experiences, Prince of Persia is a welcome change. The game is an absolute pleasure to play. Much like one of my other favorite games, Okami, the game involves traversing through diseased areas and healing them. As a player, my job is to beautify the area, bringing light to it and driving out the evil. I could heal an area in about half an hour, creating a very satisfying experience, much like a good TV show. Each level had a beginning, middle, and end.

The best part about Prince of Persia is that I enjoy each part of every level. While traveling through a diseased area, I have to solve small puzzles and do some amazing acrobatics. Unlike Mirror's Edge, I am completely relaxed about doing ridiculously acrobatic moves. The Prince is drawn to nearby holds almost with a magnetic pull. Then, if he dies, his companion will rescue him and place him nearby. I absolutely love this feature - it greatly reduces the stress and cuts down on time spent fuming over loading screens. The player is punished enough for missing a jump with their frustration; the Prince's companion simply brings levity to annoying but inevitable situation with clever comments.

After traveling through a deserted area, there is usually a boss fight. There are a few main bosses, each providing a different challenge. The combat moves are beautifully acrobatic and fluid. Fights are an elegant dance. Although I have had a few frustrating moments, mainly due to movement limitations during fights, I have been impressed overall with the fluidity and grace of the fights.

Once a boss has been defeated, the area can be healed by the Prince's companion, Elika. After the healing, the area becomes beautiful, and the level then becomes a playground with collectable light seeds scattered about. The levels are cleverly designed to be fun not only with the enemies as obstacles brought on by disease; they are also great fun to traverse once cleared. The Prince can travel with a speed and fluidity reminiscent of flying. This is a wonderful experience that I had not had in a game before, with the exception of a few moments in Mirror's Edge.

Another clever element of this game is the dialogue. The game took a risky move with the narrative, breaking the story up into mostly on-demand story chunks unlocked by sub-areas. I really enjoyed it, as some nights I wanted to chat with Elika and other nights I didn't. I love the relationship between the Prince and Elika, and the comraderie that comes from being in such a situation. The Prince is arrogant but undeniably amusing, and Elika is intelligent with a wicked sense of humor.

I'm really looking forward to playing more Prince of Persia. It has become a wonderfully relaxing way for me to enjoy my evenings. It is an unusual game that took a lot of risks that I really appreciate and it is a fantastically immersive experience.  

For months, it seemed like all I heard about was Fable. As an RPG fan, I considered it my duty to at least try Fable II when it was released, as I had never played the original. I rented it with a friend, trying to keep an open mind.

The game began with a sweeping, lovely cinematic typical of many RPGs. The narrator had a lovely voice, and I happily got lost in it for a few minutes, until it ended rather abruptly, after following the path of some bird poop. I was willing to let that slide, and decided to focus on the gameplay. The character I played was a young girl with an older sister to introduce me to the world. My sister had the annoying habit of constantly calling me "Little Sparrow". I tried to ignore her, hoping that she would soon leave me alone.

As the game continued, I grew more and more frustrated with it. The dialogue was often laughable and sounded ridiculous for a fantasy setting. In a time of games such as Lord of the Rings: Online and TV shows such as Legend of the Seeker, the dialogue in Fable II had no excuse. In addition to the poor quality of the writing (at least in the opening area), the conversations were slow, taking forever to start and forcing me to wait an eternity to get a response. The voice-overs were slow, and it was difficult to tell from the audio cues if a conversation was starting or if something was simply an NPC bark. Poor conversation mechanics such as these are unacceptable in a game like an RPG that depends heavily on dialogue.

However, we persisted with the game, hoping that it would get better past the tutorial. Unfortunately, the game continued to aggravate me, with tedious mechanics such as holding down a button to collect experience from defeated enemies. Then the game only had one save slot, which seemed ridiculous. If I made a choice that did irreparable damage, it would become very difficult to get back, especially with just one save. Then the quest path was outlined in a conspicuous glowing highlight, which distracted greatly from the world around me. Although I can suspend disbelief by allowing game interfaces, this type of glowing path seems more distracting than if the developers had used an actual interface.

Still unwilling to give up hope, I wondered if there was something else that would make this game redeemable for me. There was, in fact, an interesting element similar to emotes in MMOs. Fable II has a social menu that allows the player to do certain actions, trying to gain or lose favor and other social elements from bystanders. There seemed little point to it, other than trying to amuse yourself with farts or get some helpless NPC woman to marry you. I was opposed to the idea of this - Fable isn't WoW or The Sims - and the whole concept of treating NPCs as expendable resources who are so easily influenced. This seemed to detract from the authenticity and took me out of the game.

I'm not sure what there is to love about Fable II; I found a lot that drove me away. While I respect what the developers were trying to do, they seem to be creating games for a very different type of RPG player.