Okay, maybe that's not exactly fair. The newest Prince of Persia (Xbox 360 version) is actually a pretty good game. Sadly its also a pretty huge departure from what myself and im sure many fans were probably expecting.

This isn't a review though it will cover a lot of the game. Ill probably wright a real review at some point, but meh.

The "Sands of Time" games were all pretty good. I don't personally think they really needed to go down the path of gore and violence, but I guess the games dev's thought they could appeal to more people that way. They were probably right.

So I was immediately excited about this new Prince of Persia game. Then the excitement turned into disappointment, and slowly boredom. This game is flat out, too simple. Too its credit, the story line is a huge part of this game, and its actually pretty good. It has to be, it's the only thing really interesting going on.

The "platforming" is actually more of a rhythm game, or quick time event. You do little more then point the Prince in the right direction then make sure to press the right buttons in the correct sequence. Though it doesn't really matter if you don't, because you cant die.

Your constant partner through out the entire game is a woman named Elika. She is the main driving force behind the story elements in the game. She's also inexplicably magical, can fly and otherwise won't ever, at any point in the game, let you die. Even at its most difficult, simple trial and error will see you through to the very end. Its not at all challenging.

If that weren't enough, in order to progress through the game you have to collect "Light Seeds" which are the source of Elika's strange powers. (Not exactly, but cant tell you too much more then that). You need to have a certain amount to unlock her powers. The only way to continue to make progress is to unlock these powers, because that's how you access new areas. So you will get to a point, at least a couple times in the game, where you have to stop everything and tediously collect these light seeds.

I can keep going here. Guess what else? The light seeds only appear in an area you've "cleansed". So you have to go through an area full of evil corrupted bad guys, defeat the boss, cleanse the area and then go back through the same place, again, in its cleansed form to collect seeds.

But they aren't done double dipping their game play yet. Not by a long shot. There are 4 totalarea's to traverse through before you gain access to the final boss. Each of the 4 areas has its own boss as well. You will have to defeat each area's boss a total of FIVE times. That wouldn't be so bad, if the sub-bosses in each area didnt mimick the main bosses abilities nearly exactly. The sub bosses are a lot easier to kill, but your still basically fighting the same exact thing countless times.

So we have overly simple and often times flat out easy gameplay, mixed with repetitive enemies and tedious light seed collecting. I finished this game in about 10 hours. This was spread out over almost a month. I just couldn't sit there for more then a few hours at a time. What kept me coming back though, was the story.

Elika and the Prince gradually get to know each other, and along the way you get to know them. They are great characters, with great voice acting. The history of the games world is fully fleshed out down to fine details. The characters have a lot going on and the dialog (outside of random situational observations) never repeats. They managed to capture the story elements really well.

Its really nice to see a story driven game but at the end of the day, its still a game. I need some meat and potatoes with my bread please.