So, apparently I don’t have a good understanding of the word “tomorrow”. I started writing about Prince of Persia monday. I also started catching up on 30 Rock, and that was very much conflicting with me wanting to write a blog post. Then the season 5 premiere of LOST happened, so that threw me off again.
Anyway, back to comparing Prince of Persia to Sands of Time. So far, the tally looks like Sands of Time – 1, Prince of Persia – 1, on the basis of platforming (the meat) and graphical presentation (the potatoes) respectively. This lecture is on the combat (the side dish) and the narrative (the gravy). Now that I’ve managed to make myself hungry, let’s have a drink of PoP. (I acknowledge the fact that that pun was horrible.) As before, SoT is obviously Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and PoP refers to the new one without a subtitle.
I can’t help but feel that in both games, the combat is one of those things that was shoehorned in because someone at a dev meeting said “BUT YOU CAN’T JUST HAVE THE PRINCE RUNNING AROUND DOING A LOT OF PLATFORMING! THERE NEEDS TO BE COMBAT!”. In the cases of both games, I disagree. In SoT, the Prince had a goal that was not directly combative: retrieve the hourglass. In PoP, the Prince aids Elika in healing the land, which for all intent and purpose, does not sound combative. However, as most platformers these days exist with enemies as a function of the level design as obstacles, or to break the flow of platforming by showcasing another way in which the Prince is acrobatic. My complaint against the combat in PoP is the same complaint I levied against the platforming: it is down to such a simplistic level that it is essentially an elevated quick time event. What makes the combat worse is that there are actual button-mashy or timed press quick time activities that actually occur. While this makes combat simpler and allows you to view the acrobatic combat stylings of the fresh Prince and Elika, you again do not get as engaged. This unfortunately also makes it aggravating though, as you’re often required to do things at such precise times it simply becomes a game of trial and error. This gets even worse near the end of the game, when the enemies are much faster and you cannot get a hit in without leading with a parry attack, which requires an extremely precise timed press. SoT allows much more room for skill and flair in its combat, and provides the Prince with a bevy of abilities that actually make fighting scores of monsters easier and less frustrating than the two-on-one battles of PoP. You may have to use more button combinations in SoT, but it creates a much more fun combat style.
The thing that really kept me going with PoP however was the story. I always wanted to know more of what was going on. Even when I got all the achievements for talking to Elika, I continued to do so because the interaction between her and the Prince was easily the most engaging part of the game. The Giant Bombcast from last week or so mentioned their favorite parts of dialogue, and one they mentioned was the game of I Spy that the Prince starts, much to Elika’s chagrin. The way the characters played off each other was very well done, even if the Prince had that tendency to come off as an arrogant ass, but even when he did, Elika called him out on it. Since the dialogue was all optional, I knew I could skip it, but I did not want to, as this world and these characters were something I gained a legitimate interest in. Unlike SoT, in which the narrative is far less engaging, and exists mostly just to explain why you are in a certain section of the palace at that time. I do not care about the relationship between the Prince and Farah as much as I do the Prince and Elika. In fact, the thing that I am most interested in about the Prince is the fact that he arbitrarily rips pieces of his clothing off at seemingly random times, or when he talks to himself occasionally and subsequently calls himself out on it. In the terms of narrative drive, I give the award to the newer PoP.
Here’s the part where I should draw my conclusions, but by now the tally is obviously split, and there’s no other factor to really establish a clear winner, and I think that is the point I’ve been trying to reach all along. These are both great games, but for different reasons. Sands of Time is a really great platformer with a well done combat system, where as Prince of Persia is an amazing looking game with a fantastic story that also happens to be a platformer. The critics simply just shit on the new Prince of Persia because it is not exactly like the old one. Sure I have complaints with it, but at the end of the day it is just as engaging as the old one, albeit for different reasons.
