I rented it and, because I’m unemployed, beat it in about 3 days. I think it’s very enjoyable overall, although I do have some complaints. Foremost is that the fighting is terribly repetitive. Its just the same stuff over and over and over again. Granted, it’s pretty neatly animated same stuff, but still, once I’ve killed 20 indistinguishable baddies, I have no desire to prove that I can kill 25 indistinguishable baddies.
The puzzles also weren’t difficult enough for my taste, but then, I’m a fan of very difficult puzzles.
There were also a few minor bugs, although nothing devestating.
Good things about the game:
-The plot was interesting and generally well-acted, and the conclusion was extraordinarily satisfying and surprisingly sophisticated
-The wide variety of moves and animations the Prince has, particularly the silly run-along-the-wall stuff, really makes you feel like your’e Jackie Chan. It’s quite a bit of fun
-The manipulation of time stuff is quite cool. So you miss a jump and are falling to your death, so you press and hold L1 and time rewinds and you’re back up on top of the jump. Neato! (Granted, it’s frustrating when you let go of L1 too soon and immediately jump to your death again, but that’s not fatal).
-For whatever reason, perhaps due to the combination of good graphics and animation, this game really gave me a sense of vertigo. I actually felt physically nervous when the Prince was teetering around on narrow beams hundreds of feet above the floor. Which is kind of fun, in a almost-wetting-oneself way.
Overall, an excellent game. Quite similar to ICO, with better animations and control, but a little rougher around the edges and not as much interaction with your friend.
The dagger you find early in the game offers the abilities like reversing, slowing or freezing time - mainly to assist with fighting or ‘undo death’.
Agreed that the fighting gets a bit repetitive, but no more so that shooting people in GTA gets repetitive really, it’s just part of the game.
The puzzles aren’t hard either - but the difficulty level is nice, easing you into the game bit-by-bit.
It’s greatest beauty is it’s simplicity really - the manual is tiny and you don’t even need to read it because it’s utterly intuitive (hints appear if you get stuck).
Anyone tired of the ever increasing complexity of games REALLY needs to play this.
Also - when you reach a savepoint you get a ‘forward dream’ of what you’re about to face next - which really encourages you to continue rather than head-off for a coffee or whatever
This is like what Duke Nukem 3-D did to that fracnhise.
Prince of Persia was known for being either a mediocre platform game or its previously terrible 3-D version. The commercial for the new game alone blew the previous versions out of the water and evolve on land.
You said it. I had no interest in this game at all; I’d read good reviews and good stuff about it on message boards, but still wasn’t interested. I figured, even if it were the best jumping-puzzle game ever made, it’d still be just a jumping-puzzle game. But I was in the store to get something else and after reading this OP, I figured what the hell and picked it up anyway.
And it really is astoundingly well-made. The story-telling is so well-done, the animation is so well-blended (and that’s really hard to do), and everything fits together perfectly. I knew about the jumping puzzles (it’s Prince of Persia, after all), but I wasn’t expecting the Onimusha-style combat, and I wasn’t expecting it to feed back into the game so well. Having it just replenish your health or “mana” would’ve been obvious, but having the combat feed into your reverse-time ability was ingenious.
The whole reverse-time thing I’d dismissed as a gimmick, but seeing it in action, it’s one of those things that seems so obvious that you wonder why nobody had thought of it before. You have a game that relies on jumping puzzles and the frustration inherent in those, so you include an “undo” button. Genius. And like everything else, the effects associated with it are so cool; when I first “discovered” it, I was using it without even needing to.
And just controlling the guy is fun; it’s similar to the feeling I had when I first played Super Mario 64 and discovered all the moves you can do. When you’re doing all those acrobatic moves, running up and along walls, and vaulting over enemies to slash them on the way down, it’s impossible not to feel like a total bad-ass.
I’m not shocked that there’s not much buzz around this game, because I imagine a lot of people have the same misconceptions about it that I did – jumping puzzles, big deal. And I’ve heard it’s fairly short, and I still wouldn’t put it in quite the same class as ICO, just because it doesn’t seem quite as novel as that game did. But still it’s one of the most impressive games I’ve played this year, and this has been a very good year for games.
Take that back now and I may let you live.
Sheesh. Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2 are two of my favorite games ever, and were very highly regarded in their day.
Mediocre. Hmmph.
I agree, Max. Definitely Prince of Persia was groundbreaking in its time, adding that was made by an independient programmer (Jordan Mechner), with home techniques (videofilming his brother in action). Everyone who remembers it does it with love and nostalgia.
It’s just that most people reckon on it taking 10-20 hours to complete - which is a lot of ‘one day’
It’s worth bearing in mind that
a) you have the original PoP to play at the end of that
b) it’s so good you’ll easily do it again for the sheer pleasure!
ICO was a shorter game - I actually entered a compo to see how quickly I could beat it and did it well under 4 hours (and was nowhere near winning!) - but again it’s so fabulous that’s not a problem whatsoever…
It’s my game-of-the-year without a shadow of a doubt.
The developers of trash like Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness need to look at this and say “OK - that’s what we should have done - we’re useless, let’s get another career eh?”
Well, I rented it at 9 PM and played until 1 AM, then I slept until 10 and played it on and off throughout the next day, beating it around 6 PM. I’m annoyed that I beat it in less than 24 hours, which is very atypical for me. It is a great game though, I don’t deny that; probably the best entertainment I’ve ever gotten for 5 bucks. I just won’t be spending 50 more to own it.
Alright, I just checked my save. It took me 8 hours to beat the game, not counting the 3 minutes or so with the final boss. The Gamecube version (which I rented) doesn’t seem to give you the original PoP just for beating the game; it seems I would also need to beat the GBA version. That sucks.
I’d heard it was “short” when I bought it, but I figured if it were as good as everybody says it is, it was worth the money just as a “vote of confidence.” If enough people buy the game, hopefully it’ll encourage Ubisoft to stop making lousy Batman games and start funding development teams that can make games like PoP. Maybe 3D Karateka?
(And for the record, I’m only a little bit further into the game and it’s still very neat, but is definitely wearing on me. I think I underestimated just how much I hate jumping puzzles.)
