The Prince Of Persia (Sands of Time) Game Trilogy

DLCrews is a member of the Two Tons crew, and will be contributing his rather cynical and usually technical perspective on things from time to time.

To be honest, I won't pay much attention to these movies until, at the least, I can actually go out and see them. Heck, even just a trailer maybe! But that's me and my rarely cracked cynical view on preview information. For now, what I can comment on whole heartedly is the Prince Of Persia games. The original had a special place in my heart, regardless of my royally suckage in it at the time. When I heard a new one was out I was intrigued, but had my doubts. Thankfully someone I knew bought it and after playing their copy I quickly fell in love. It had wild and free acrobatics, a variety of cool time effects which were sanity saving for a platformer, an epic and mysterious feel to the locations, characters, and events, and, well, even if the combat was repetitive and fairly boring, it didn't really matter. The game rocked. The Prince was a great character, unsure of how to prove his worth, both to his father and himself, but still determined to move ahead regardless. Sometimes it was in the small details where it really came to shine. It was ironic how many times I found myself unable to solve a puzzle just because other games had conditioned me to not try obvious solutions that should work! Want to get on the other side of that ladder? Tap to the side, he just flips around it. Sliding along an edge hanging with you hands and come to a corner? No problem, he just works his way around it. There were plenty of things like that to be found where it just worked.

Some time later I heard news of a sequel. And what's this? An interesting view of the Prince as a man on the run, hunted by a physically manifest force of fate it's self, to kill him to set right his his manipulations of time, as he grows more haggard and desperate to survive and evade the hoards that pursue him. Then, uh, you know, the game was delivered. Except not the one we were promised. Suddenly the Prince was no longer a believable a character, one who you could take part in and root for. Understand on the one level why he was so desperate and yet wonder on the other if perhaps he was being selfish and cowardly in evading his fate. He became an anti-hero, a bad man, who dropped one liners and lost all believability. Penny Arcade fittingly mocked this by giving him the line, “I smolder with generic rage.” Aw heck, who am I kidding. They've already said all that needs to be said about that debacle here http://www.penny-arcade.com/2004/12/03/pop2/

But the key point to take away is this. Some people loved it for the platformer it was and just worked through the combat. Others ignored the platformer and complained about how the combat was neither good nor prominent enough. Alas, when they made that second game, guess who they listened to? The combat may well have been slightly better, but it should have largely gone away, not been made the focus! At anyrate, I gave up on that game, and although the third one is supposed to be better, I've just not bothered to find the time to try it out. I'd love to see that first Prince take to the screen and continue his story telling (a theme of the games), but I have serious doubts as to what source they will choose to emulate for the movies.....