Prince of Persia

Wikipedia tells me that they’re making a movie based upon the Prince of Persia franchise. I’m hoping that this is either a joke or an attempt by a fictitious Wikipedia geek to fulfil his greatest desire. Regardless, I’ve  just played an hour or so of the latest Ubisoft ‘masterpiece’ (LOL) and I cant quite figure out if we’re playing Prince of Persia eight, or nine.

I remember sitting in front of my 286 failing to complete the original PoP, and simply getting to the same point time after time. Remember that part around level eight, where you have a huge gap to try and traverse? My seven year old brain simply couldn’t comprehend how the prince was supposed to navigate such a difficult space.

I doubt this twenty-three year old brain would have the patience to reach such a spot.

Which brings me nicely to this latest incarnation; it’s so fucking easy. This makes me happy, as I’m one of the few members of the gaming community seriously impaired by the difficulty in games. I need something that will either tell me exactly what to do, at all times, or take me on a journey, carrying me on their shoulders, like a fat Otaku does with his Vietnamese wife whist visiting Tokyo Disney World.

So why should we applaud its retard friendly gameplay? Because it’s December, I’m up to my bollocks in work, I’ve got a family to look after over Christmas, and I’ve got no times for bullshit. As a man who gets extremely frustrated when I take the incorrect line around a corner, pushing for the reset button at every single opportunity; it’s nice to be given the opportunity to play a videogame where it takes very little skill and ability to do very specific and stirring movements through the level.

Now I’m not going to pretend that this won’t get extremely boring, very quickly, but for a videogame that looks as pretty as it does, and carries this amount of majesty, there’s no shame in playing for half-an-hour and turning over to watch Coronation Street with the wife.

Another reason that I get a little hard thinking about this game is that it combines a few elements from some wonderful games, and works them in seamlessly. We all know about the Ico references, and it’s tedious to continually bang on it; but how do we feel about Okami and Assassins Creed having their innards thrown into the mix? Fuck, it even manages to remind me of the earlier PoP incarnations, which is something a number of sequels have a huge amount of trouble with. Should I be shocked that a franchise game actually reminds me of the earlier games?