Prince of Persia
Diabolically bad choice of voice and character for the prince aside, I’ve actually found the new Prince of Persia to be a rather enchanting and slightly different game. Free from the frustrating inconvenience of ever having to die and witness a “Game Over” screen, it seems that they’ve finally gone the whole nine yards with the death cheating mechanics unlike Sands of Time. This means you can get on with enjoying the beautiful scenery and the prince’s monkey-like dash across it completely uninterrupted.
When you plunge to your death or a battle turns sour your new-found, female companion will leap to your aid, using her magic to pull you from the brink of death and plonk you to safety.
This pseudo invulnerability isn’t the only daring addition to the series, a new graphics style has been introduced that can be closely approximated as cell-shaded but is a little bit more than that. The artists have sought to re-create the charm and style of concept art drawings in a 3d world and, despite the characters looking jarring and strange at first, you will quickly find yourself getting used to the style and, perhaps, even liking it.
Finally, the battle system has been completely overhauled, forcing you to face only a single enemy at a time until it is defeated. The benefit of this is that battles are far more fluid and beautiful than ever before, but I can’t help wanting something a little more epic.
The new Prince of Persia is proclaimed to be the first in a trilogy. I can only hope that the sequels retain the frustration-free gameplay mechanic but it would be nice to see the one-on-one combat elaborated somewhat to reflect the fluid battles against multiple enemies that I enjoyed in Sands of Time.