I really liked Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. When it came out, I paid full price for a copy on the x-box, and did not regret the purchase. I remember thinking at the time: Hey, this is like Tomb Raider, if Tomb Raider was fun. Then the sequel came out, and for some reason they had replaced a soundtrack that made sense with a soundtrack made up of Godsmack. I was not pleased. I didn’t purchase it until it dropped to $20, and I never played it all the way through.
I couldn’t understand why they had to make the Prince… hardcore. My eleven-year-old nephew disagreed with me at the time. “It’s better now,” he told me, “he’s not all gay like before.”
I said, “No, he wasn’t gay, he was just acting like a prince! That’s how princes act!”
“No, I don’t mean gay like gay, I mean gay like lame.”
“I told you not to use that word that way.”
“You’re not my real dad.” And my nephew won another argument.
I was excited when I heard that they were rebooting the franchise. No more heavy metal prince. I hoped it would be like The Sands of Time, you know, Tomb Raider gameplay, but fun. Then the reviews came out, and the complaints stacked up against it. Everyone said it was too easy. Too repetitive. Too… cel-shaded. So I threw it towards the bottom of my Gamefly queue and figured I probably would never get to it.
Last week Gamefly sent me a copy of Prince of Persia: No Subtitle, and let me tell you, all of those reviews? They were wrong.
Adam Dorsey
Curtis Retherford
