Prince of Persia (Xbox 360)

There are a few things that I generally dislike in video games. (I know, only a few?) Prince of Persia aptly summarizes three of them:

1. Trial-and-error gameplay. There are few things more frustrating to me than having to repeat sections of a game over and over because there is only one solution, which must be perfectly executed. This is the basis for Prince of Persia's gameplay, in which you have to parkour yourself around a bunch of identical ruined vaguely-Middle Eastern vistas assisted by your magical princess friend Elika. Now, in the Sands of Time trilogy, you could rewind when you made a mistake back so you could retry from where you screwed up. Not so here. Instead, Elika rescues you, but you have to start back at the last bit of solid ground, so in extended sequences, one screwup will cause you to repeat it over and over.

2. Blocking-based combat. I don't enjoy combat that involves you standing there holding the block button until the enemy combatant finishes his attack, at which point you attempt to whittle down their health by a few bars, then start over. It's long, frustrating, and generally not fun. Compounding this is the many enemies who can enter a state where they are only affected by a certain type of attack (grab or magic, depending; neither are as useful as the sword).

3. Idiotic writing. In this game, the main character is not a prince. He's just some kind of thief who cracks wise constantly like a brain-dead action movie star, and shocker of shockers, his companion is an icy high-born princess. Can they put aside their differences to save the world, and maybe even fall in love? Original plot, huh?

Well, the game's not unplayable; there are parts that are fun to play, but like Mirror's Edge that amounts to only a fraction of the total time. Most of the time will be spent swearing at the non-Prince to do what you tell him to, or at the ridiculously-cumbersome and aggravating boss battles.

2 out of 5