Canadian developer in good game shocker (my POP review)

[SaitoH]

- Thread title shamelessly stolen from Sara <3 -

Ubi Soft's Montreal branch is on fire. No, really! Splinter Cell, Rainbow six 3 and now Prince of Persia. Quite a quality lineup if you ask me and I look forward to future projects such as Pandora Tomorrow (Splinter Cell sequel).

What makes a good game? It's a hard question to answer. For me it's a game that manages to offer an enviroment with a sense of story and history, compelling characters, good challenge and most importantly is fun. Fun means offering a challenge with a minimum of frustration and that's very difficult to do.

I played Prince of Persia way back on the Super Nintendo and Genesis. If there ever was a game that offered a challenge with TONS of frustration, it was Prince of Persia, so it's transition to a circa 2003 game is made even more remarkable.

Dissection of a game aka how to do things right:

Starting a game should never involve sitting for a half hour doing nothing. You want get playing right away after all. Upon pressing start you move your character and after a short intro video setting the scene you're off and running ... and jumping ... and well, you get the idea. I think what impressed me immediately was how effortlessly I was playing. Onscreen hints tell you what buttons to press and guide you along in the early stages. When you do a new move it's given the dramatic touch, via slow motion.

The Prince narrates the story as you control him, enriching the character without having the gameplay stop. Farah's introduction and subsequent addition to the game, gives POP a bit of ICO influence and the banter between the main characters was priceless. You really care about them and their relationship.

The games subtitle is "The Sands of Time" and it's no secret that time plays an important factor in POP. With dagger in hand you are able to reverse time. Jump the wrong way, press the wrong button by mistake and die, simply reverse time. That single gameplay mechanic is a stroke of genius. It was used in Blinx, but this is the first time it's been used in a good game (lol).

Graphics and audio are superb. Without getting into the technical side, let me just say the enviroment is solid and the game moves very smooth. Almost no slowdown (ok, just a couple of times), no polygon seaming or tearing and no camera clipping through the walls. Speaking of cameras, POPs camera is almost flawless. You have manual control, but the automatic camera works very well. Not perfectly, but with very little frustration. Music and soundeffects are also well done with good use of 5.1 (on the xbox).

It took me about 11 hours to complete the game and I loved every moment. Rarely do I get to play an action/platformer that really grabs me. Prince of Persia proudly sits beside games like ICO and Ratchet and Clank. At this moment it's my choice for game of the year.

/end gushy review

^w^

[BWS-1]

ditto

I mean ... wow, I was about to make a topic about that since I just got the game for Xmas but, hey, it's a good thing I searched to see if there wasn't a POP thread made already. I haven't finished the game tho, I just arrived at the first lunar cycle puzzle generator thingy.

*proudly waves Montreal's flag