I wasn't going to review this game. I wasn't even going to play it ever again. I had it sealed in a bubble padded envelope; I was going to trade it in for ebgames.com credit. Forty dollars for Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. I bought them in January, there was a deal from Ubisoft where you got Splinter Cell free with Prince of Persia. So I would only be out 10 bucks for what was essentailly a 3 month rental.

But I forgot to go to the post office. For a week. Your package has to be postmarked within a week of the date you print out the packing list. I printed it out, put it in the envelope with the games, and sealed it, planning to go to the post office the next day. Then I just kinda forgot about it. When I remembered, it was too late. I was going to just go buy a new envelope and send it the same day, but for some reason I had an urge to review it. I had something to say, dammit.

I woke up around 1PM today. Usually I don't sleep in that late, but it was raining so I used that as an excuse to sleep longer. I planned to review Prince of Persia sometime today. About half an hour later I started playing. I had a previous save from the first time I played the game, right after I bought it. But for the sake of the review I started a new game. It's probably a good thing I decided to do that, because by the end of this review I still haven't gotten past the point I was at in the first save. And I never will, most likely.

The point that I stopped at is, according to the game, 14% of the way through the whole game. There's a big battle against the undead old man and his minions. This battle isn't horribly difficult. It's harder than anything that comes before it, but it's something I could beat if that's what I really wanted. It's just hard enough to make you consider whether you want to continue playing. Was what I played in the first 14% enough to make me want to get past this battle and keep playing? Obviously, for me, the answer is no.

The camera in this game sucks. I know, 3d games almost always have bad cameras. And it has the same problems that most games have. When you're in a battle, it's often very difficult to see what you're doing. Either the bad guys or a column are blocking your field of view most of the time.

But on top of the common problems, there's bad design. Sometimes the camera angle changes dramatically when you walk from one room into another. You're walking through a doorway and the camera switches to the opposite view, causing you to walk right back through the doorway again. It's annoying. Sometimes it's worse than annoying, causing you to miss the landing of your jump and possibly die.

A lot of the time this game is annoying because it tries too hard to be cinematic. Like when you take a drink of water. You drink water to restore your health, so you do it pretty often. Every time you take a drink it cuts to a close-up of you drinking water. Why do we want to see that? It's excessive. Or when you've killed all the bad guys in an area, you get a mini cut-scene of you putting your sword away. While this isn't a bad idea in theory, a lot of the time it just doesn't make sense. Like when there are three little bugs in an area. Do I really need to see the cut-scene for killing those three wimpy things? Nothing changes because I killed them in this case, there's no need to alert us that we've killed them all.

While we're on the subject of trying to be cinematic, let's talk about the pre-rendered cut-scenes. They're boring. The story would be better told through playing the game. The game's story isn't too bad, it serves its purpose, but it's not complicated enough to require cut-scenes explaining the story. They seem to be there purely to make the game seem polished and cinematic, but it feels very artificial. It's a recurring theme to most of this game's problems.

Sometimes you move in slow motion for no apparent reason. I jumped off a wall and did a somersault to grab the ledge on the other side. The somersault was in slow motion. Why? No, I didn't use the time dagger. I didn't even have it at the time. I guess it was supposed to look cool. And I guess it sort of did. It reminded me of something from The Matrix. The problem is, I'm not trying to watch The Matrix. I'm trying to play a video game. It's distracting. It no longer feels like I am the Prince doing that move, it feels like I'm watching the Prince do that move. I don't really mind if a game feels like you're watching it rather than playing, that can be fun. But it should be consistent in its choice.

Oh, I guess I should explain the time dagger. You can rewind time. So if you fall to your death, you can rewind to before you fell. There's a limit to how many times you can do this before you run out of sand or something. But your sand meter gets restored often enough that it's rarely a problem. There are some other special moves, but I don't feel the need to describe them in detail. Overall, it's a pretty good gimmick. My major complaint with it is that rewinding time is not a pleasant experience. There's an annoying screeching wind sound every time you do it. Usually I stop rewinding too soon and just fall or die again, having to use more of my sand meter to rewind again. I guess you could say that's my problem and not the game's, but it's more the desire to stop that annoying sound.

Ah, the sound. It's a mixed bag. Everything sounds kind of muffled, like it has been compressed heavily. You turn the volume up, but it doesn't really help you understand the voices better. I can't tell if it's bad voice acting or the compression, most characters sound like they're mumbling. The music and sound effects also suffer from compression. It is nowhere near crisp and clear. But aside from the compression problems, the Prince's voice is annoying. He talks too much. And I am again confused about whether I'm supposed to feel like I am the Prince or I am watching the Prince. This game does not lend itself well to the cinematic feeling.

Most of the things I've talked about so far have been about the sucky cinematic aspects. Well, the non-cinematic things sometimes suck too. Most of the game is what I would call an obstacle course. There are ledges, walls, spiky things. You're trying to get from point A to point B. The only way you can die is to fall or run into the spiky things too many times. You don't even have to fall very far to die. On the subject of spiky things, they are pointless and stupid. The game is not more fun because of them. It seems like something they put in there to make the game feel longer, to stop you from just running through an area in 30 seconds. But to me, that's the potentially fun thing about the game: acrobatic precision and quickness. It would be almost like Super Mario Bros.

Combat can be fun, despite the camera problems mentioned earlier. It's fun to jump over a guy and stab him in the back. It's fun to freeze him in mid-air and slice him in half. There's enough variety in the combat to keep it interesting. At least in theory it would stay interesting. The camera problems were too much for me, even the best combat wouldn't keep me playing.

This could have been a great game if it had given up its cinematic aspirations. As it is, it's not great, not even good. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some things in the game, so it's not bad either. The lost potential is the most upsetting thing about the game. If I was the designer of this game, I would make it purely about acrobatic stunts and occasional combat. I wouldn't try to be cinematic. And the people would rejoice.

SCORE: 5/10

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