Prince of Persia 3 Comments by Tom Bramwell

"we're also stroking our chins with interest at the possibilities for a Prince who can now wall-run"

He could wall run in Sands of Time!

But the game looks 'back to form' visually anyhow. Think it;ll be a winner.

What about the music?

I agree totally with the reservations of this preview.I have just picked up "Sands of Time" for 10 euros out of the bargain bin and am loving it,and not just because of the obviously inovative game mechanics but because it has a nostalgic feel to it. I played PoP as a kid and loved it and thats the "good vibe" I get with this game (that and a positively potrayed arabic lead character,at last)Warrior Within lasted 5 minutes as a demo on my P.C. terrible example of design ruining an otherwise slick profesional game.Hopefully Ubi ends this series quickly and we get a next gen PoP RPG/platform crossover or some cool handheld/Cell spin offs....send the Prince back to Montreal!

but he can "now wall-run, stick his dagger in to hang on"

a sequel that will give the gamers who helped make Warrior Within a bigger seller than The Sands of Time what they want

oh god, didnt realise that. so the "prince who smoulders with generic rage" idea worked for them, by way of WW getting more sales than the first one?

/ sighs

No pizza yet? :-)

I've already given up on this one. I suspect it'll take a very large surprise to convince me into purchasing.

Same here, Blerk. It's not that I didn't enjoy WW, but I don't need another one of the kind. The core gameplay was intact, the rest was forgettable, literally. I don't remember any levels from WW (except the ship), while PoP:SoT is burned into my memory in its entirety.

I hope the Voice Actor is more like the one from the first game. The VO for the 'dark prince' was crap...and so was the music...and so were the graphics....and so was everything else about it.
I don't think POP3 will be as good as Sands of Time...Shame really.

"but he can "now wall-run, stick his dagger in to hang on""

No, that isn't what they meant, or they wouldn't have seperated them with a comma and would have said "and".

Combat has been near perfected now in god of war - they should avoid focussing on that, and stick to what the PoP series is most famous for - platforms (the only bit god of war couldn't quite get right....)

a very worried meh. (is that a contradiction?)

I loved the first, tolerated the second. I liked that the second had more and better fights, but hated the overall design of 'run through the same section for the third time', and that the Prince had quite lost what personality he had in the first one.

*sigh*

This just isn't going to be as good as the first one. Might have known that WW would have sold better than SoT did though... what with the fucking moronic general public and all that. :-(

Thumbs down for this one.

POP was and should be all about the platform - problemsolving stuff. the combat was secondary. it seems that this is not the case again. to me SOT was near perfection for what it set out to do. Turned on WW and turned it off again after an hour never to be played again....lost amoungst the dusty shelves of my vault.

"No, that isn't what they meant, or they wouldn't have seperated them with a comma and would have said "and"."

Yes. If they were listing the abilities then the correct separator would be a semi-colon, rather than a comma.

great preview apart from some negative parts which I found a bit unfair. from what I sa w from the game so far, nothing resembles the angry theme from Warrior Within so I ma keeping my hopes UP in particular that the music we've listened to so far is nothing like har rock guitar

Warrior Within was the best game to come in its genre for years, second only to... Sands of Time! Listen, guys: imagine if WW had come first. I think we all would have had most of the same sense of wonder and delight since the graphics, animations, backgrounds, etc. remained intact from SoT (if a little bit darker). The combat system in WW was spectacular, suffering only because all of us did not want our Prince to be a heartless murderer. (Which, by the way, he has always been!). Point is, WW only suffered because it followed SoT.

SoT is a classic and no matter how hard you try, you cannot re-create a classic. That's that. You might as well do something new which Ubisoft are doing here.

It is no use comparing this to SoT: the Prince has lost his innocence for good. That said, the screenshots look pleasingly golden and glowing, so all is not lost, apparently. I ask all the whiners here to look me in the face and answer: will you not buy this? Will you not enjoy this? Because as a person who has played all the original POPs, and then SoT and WW, I cannot imagine NOT going out and buying it.

It could be a bit of a Back to the Future.

The original was a big hit. The follow-up was a lot flashier but a bit pants. While the third split opinion right down the middle.

Personally I'm not expecting much from this triquel. I'll pick it up for a tenner in the sales.

does anyone have any Ninja Gaiden 2 news ? probably the wrong thread for this question , but the games are reasonably comparitable....sort of

"the Prince was able to silently expose himself to land the killer blow"

snigger!

"Yes. If they were listing the abilities then the correct separator would be a semi-colon, rather than a comma. "

Teeth, sometimes not sure if EG recognises the role of syntax outside code. So I wouldn't start deriving meanings on the basis of punctuation alone...

/remembers why they moved him out of editoral. puts pedant hat back in box for a rainier day

c'mon where are the bitch-babes?

"a gladiator with no lower jaw, about ten times the size of the Prince, who apparently had to be clambered up to be dispatched."

That sounds vaguely familiar, I wonder where I've heard it before...

Talha: I don't think so, because whilst Warrior Within comes accross as a bit generic and annoying in its story/characters, Sands of Time just has some fantastic characters and writing, i.e. a prince who really acts like a prince (posh, arrogant and stuck up), and the dialogue between hm and Farah (who is, remember, officially his enemy) is fantastic from start to finish. It feels like the Prince of Persia, rather than the Prince of MTV.
So if Warrior Within had come out and not Sands of Time, it would have undoubtedly lost marks for its presentation. If anything, I reckon Sands of time helped it in that it made people give it a more forgiving first impression - 'oh well, its still prince of persia' rather than 'oh dear, not another angry sweary american'

ARGH why is this always referred to as POP3 when its really

/counts on fingers

POP6!!?!?!?!?!

O-Fox: I agree with you. I never meant that WW was in anyway better then SoT, and I can fully identify with the wondrous feeling induced by SoT. What I meant was that had SoT not come out earlier, WW would have looked better than it actually is - of course it wouldn;t have scored as high, but in some respects it is a great game in its own right. Well, if you take out the swears, the hedious vamps, and put in some semblance of story and dialogue....

You hit the nail on the head when you said that the "huge unhurried puzzles" were the highlight of the first game. Here's hoping for more ico than final fight in episode 3.

good point sephy about the numbers

I do welcome more combats than the first had. Puzzles, such as they are, you can only do once with any interest. After that, they become exercises in boredom. But fights/stealth-kills...those offer different options and hence interest on replays.

The problem with WW was not lack of puzzles, nor an excess of combat. In my opinion they were quite well balanced: my heart stopped every time I encountered the red-clad prostitute... sorry, lady while tightrope walking on a beam. It was the TONE of the game that was the problem.

TheJuriel: Maybe combat means replay value for you, but for many of us platforming offers just as much replay value, and it is especially satisfaying if done with perfect animation and gorgeous visuals like the POP series.