Prince of Persia is not bad game (and here comes the but), but I am finding it difficult to get engaged in.  Part of the problem is I just can’t grab onto the characters and world.  Yes, Elika and the Prince are cleverly written and provide witty banter in their exchanges; and the Prince is as excellent a copy of Han Solo as I have ever seen.  It doesn’t matter though, it just feels wooden and unnatural. Which isn’t to say the acting is bad, that’s not the case either, it just doesn’t gel.  In fact that is a common feeling in Prince of Persia.  The world doesn’t gel with what is being said on screen.  When Elika talks about a city lost to the corruption of a noble king I only see a bottomless pit with wood planks sticking out everywhere for no discernable reason beyond being necessary for me to jump around on.  As beautiful as the world is, it is just a series of rooms with no real connection beyond what Elika tells you.  That wouldn’t really be a problem, a story can be easily ignored, if the gameplay was gripping.

Again, PoP falls flat in this regard.

The game flows so seamlessly, a single sequence can quickly transition from running off a ledge, jumping at the last minute and grabbing a pole sticking out the wall.  You’ll quickly launch from that poll while wall running across a gap, jumping from that wall to another wall landing on an incline and sliding to your apparent doom only to jump across the bottomless pit and at the last second have Elika grab your hand hurling you to safety.  When it goes right, and it goes right more often than not, it is cinematically breath taking.  Here’s the rub, the consequence of all this fluidic movement, I’m bored.    There is no challenge in any of those moves.  Ever.   Last week a story broke about how Nintendo had copyrighted a game that could play itself.  I think Prince of Persia already beat them to it.

A big stink has been made about how Elika’s instant save feature renders the game impotent.  That seems to be off the mark though, it isn’t that Elika makes the game easy for the player, she simply is the intermediary between the player and the save screen.

More to come as I make my way through the trials and tribulations of our beloved Prince.