I was thrilled and devastated to finish Prince of Persia today. The game that had been my welcome obsession and favorite form of relaxation had ended. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won't share the ending, but I was more than a little disturbed by what I saw before the final credits rolled.

Fortunately, there was an epilogue released recently, which I hastily downloaded. I paced back and forth, wondering what would happen. How would they resolve the story?

I started up the DLC, and found it to feel entirely different. There was a dark tone, and Elika and the Prince had been reduced to bickering children. The DLC takes place inside a deep, cavernous palace, eliminating the lovely vistas and scenic views I so loved. The incentive to explore is all but eliminated, and the healings are gone. The lovely rewards of this level are gone and all that's left are the dank, diseased areas.

I would feel better about being stuck in diseased areas if they didn't become so dramatically difficult. The game was clearly trying to stand up to reviewers that criticized the game for being too easy. Instead of a relaxed, balanced level, the game resorted to annoying arcade mechanics to make it more "difficult". For example, when there was once one patrolling enemy blocking my path, there were now two or three, each on their own timer. While the Prince could often narrowly miss each enemy with one fluid, carefully-timed run, he now was stuck waiting for three balls of goo to line up just so. It completely ruined the momentum and spirit of the game.

Another frustrating element added to create a greater "challenge" was giving the player no clue as to where to go. At one point, I had to slide down a wall, dodging almost 12 diseased balls of goo. When I finally made a successful trip to the bottom, I had no idea where to go and fell to my death. Finally, I figured out that I had to jump offscreen to an area that I had no clue existed. This creates a lot of unnecessary frustration for the player. Developers should recognize that those who buy and play the DLC are those that finish the game; those who complain wouldn't bother. The DLC should be modeled to match the game, not to punish those who enjoyed it.

My final frustration with the DLC was the boss battles. I encountered one boss in the course of my time playing the DLC, and I chose to quit the DLC forever in the middle of the boss fight. The boss was invulnerable until knocked off the edge (a process I understood, as I often defeated a boss that way in the original game). It took about five minutes for me to knock the boss off the edge. Then I had to attack the boss in his alternate form. I began an attack, but, given the acrobatic nature of combat, attacks take some time. I got one hit in on the boss before he became invulnerable again (about 15 seconds after becoming vulnerable). I tried again, with the same result. I was so frustrated and felt completely defeated. I was not going to spend an hour fighting a boss, most of which would be spent trying to coax an invulnerable monster off a ledge. That was when I quit.

I absolutely loved Prince of Persia. Despite its shocking ending, I enjoyed everything in the original game. It was a wonderful experience for the many reasons that I mentioned in my previous post. I was so disappointed with the DLC; they removed almost everything that I loved about the original game. I would not recommend the DLC to anyone who enjoyed the original.  

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.  

When a game about the past is mixed with science fiction, it runs the risk ruining the realism of the game. Even if we have not lived during that past, previous eras are often carefully represented in games with characters we can understand. Fortunately, Assassin’s Creed has Altair, a very solid lead character who feels more real than his descendent in the near future.

The best part about Altair is how believable he feels. When he moves around, he feels heavy. There are clinks when he walks from his weapons and gear. He can push through a crowd or weave through less dense groups. He can also collide with people if he runs into them, and they respond accordingly. Despite his weight, Altair is still graceful enough to carry out acrobatic feats reminiscent of Prince of Persia.

Supporting the realistic Altair is a fantastic population of NPCs in towns. There are so many people in the towns, each traveling to and fro as if they have their own agenda. They make surprised comments if Altair leaps up onto a rooftop and notice disturbances he causes. The towns feel believable to a degree that has rarely been achieved in games to date.

Some of the visuals are fantastic, but other visual elements detract from the realism. The scenery is beautiful. The backgrounds in particular are incredibly real. However, the eyes on people are a little too bright and look slightly odd, slipping into the uncanny valley. Also, the motion capture technology is inconsistent. The doctor in the future looks great, but the assassin leader in the past has movements that seem a bit stilted.

The dialogue and visual presentation are two of the game’s main weaknesses. There are many lengthy cutscenes that could be a lot shorter if the dialogue were tighter. The lines are often repetitive and give too many details. Unfortunately, the camera angles during cutscenes can be controlled by the player. I frequently found myself flipping through the angles out of boredom and it severely detracted from my immersion in the game. Sometimes none of the angles would look right, and it felt like this mechanic was a cheap substitution for a cinematographer.

I had a few more frustrations with this game. First, the tutorial was way too long. It went on and on, going over abilities I didn’t need to know until much later. It is impossible to remember everything when too much is presented at the beginning. I was so excited to play the game that I could not retain as much as normal. Also, the game soon takes away all these abilities that it spent so much time teaching me. It seems pointless to learn how to use several abilities only to lose them. Why not learn them gradually? Finally, the combat system is essentially a few non-strategic button presses. It felt unremarkable and dull.

Assassin’s Creed is not a horrible game. It does a lot of things well, most notably many visuals and the realism in towns. However, its weaknesses detract from this game’s merits and can become frustrating. While I did enjoy playing Assassin’s Creed for a while, I hope that games in the future can model themselves after its strengths and learn from its weaknesses.  

I downloaded Prince of Persia: Classic to play with my friend over the weekend. He had told me that it was supposed to be great and he was very excited to try it out. Assuming that it would be worth the $10 or so, I decided not to waste my time with a demo and go straight for the full version.

First, my friend and I took turns playing. When one of us would complete a level or die repeatedly, we'd switch off. This worked pretty well through the first few levels. The visuals looked great and the Prince moved swiftly. The combat mechanics seemed a little rough, but I thought that I just needed more time to get used to it.

We progressed until the fourth level, when suddenly we got stuck. Perhaps it was the fact that we had found so few of the health increase potions. Maybe it was the combat system. Whatever it was, we both got frustrated because we had an incredibly hard time defeating a common enemy. Once in a while we did beat the enemy, but there was no checkpoint right afterwards, and a misstep in a difficult jump sequence made it all worthless. Prince of Persia: Classic is very unforgiving.

I stopped playing the game after multiple attempts at the fourth level. I was ready to give it up entirely. Fortunately, my friend is more patient or perhaps just more stubborn. After a short break, he continued to play through the game and is nearly finished now. However, it was not without repeated swearing and complaining that he progressed that far. While he did not face the same block that we found earlier, he still didn't seem to be having a lot of fun.

It seems that we may have run into such frustration for two reasons: not finding the life potions and the lack of consistency in combat. The fact that we didn't find all the potions to give our Prince more health was entirely within our control, but the combat was not. Although we could have looked up the secret locations to extend our health or explored more on our own, many of the potions were well-hidden. Areas that don't appear to be accessible until you jump to them suddenly become visible. However, this leap-before-you-look philosophy can be very dangerous. As I mentioned earlier, one bad jump can set you back several minutes, especially when there are difficult enemies. While the areas become very obvious once you discover them, it seems to work well only upon repeat plays of the levels. I am not the kind of player who enjoys returning to games over and over, and I think this type of play may have worked better in the arcade setting.

The second most frustrating part of the game was the combat system. If you tried to counter an attack one way and it failed, the next time that same method would work (and vice versa). It was incredibly inconsistent and lacked a cohesive pattern. In this way, it felt less like a skill-based game and more emphasis was placed on chance. Also, attack animations could take a long time, and button mashing would cause the Prince to execute all the commands in order, but slowly. It felt like watching a slow computer, clicking away while the cursor spins and you just have to watch while your Prince dies.

Although I did not play the game for as long as my friend, I experienced enough frustration to show me that Prince of Persia: Classic is not my type of game. If you want to read a more in-depth review from my friend who played with me, check it out here: Design Review: Prince of Persia Classic.