The number one thing you heard from reviewers on the Prince of Persia, once they'd put their eyes back in their sockets, was that the new death mechanic worked great, elimating the tedium of save and loading but made the game too easy.

I remarked as such as my girlfriend slided her new collector's edition copy of PoP into our 360. Big mistake.

My girlfriend did not "die" very much, rarely requiring Elika's guiding hand. But she often did struggle with the game. The games flowing controls often wrestle command of the Prince right away from her. Jumping doesn't even seem to be 360 degrees, with the game often forcing the Prince to jump at guided angles. Often our free spirit of exploration in these beautiful areas was locked down into set routes in a handful of directions. The game is really just a track to run over and over again. That seems pretty backwards compared to the range of movement the Prince is capable of.

My girlfriend took this the wrong way, deciding she kept going the "wrong" way whenever her jump was forced 30 degrees from where she wanted to go , and coupled with my earlier comment about the game's "ease", she was very disheartened.

Gaming is traditionally a series of linear routes, but after being exposed to Fallout 3, Fable 2, GTA IV, and other "free roaming" games, the deceptively open environments of PoP were really jarring.

Hmm i always thought that this game was gonna turn out bad after PoP 2&3.
I thought that bringing the franchise back was a big mistake and i just hope that this doesn't happen to assassins creed 2.

Back on topic I hate games that look like you can free-roam but they keep stuffing you into the small corridors of linearity.

Here, here. If anything I felt the Sands of Time Trilogy could have done with less linearity added to it, not more, the only real detours in it being the Health Bonus fountains which were never too far off the beaten track. Multiple routes would be sweet. When first starting out I would jump off ladders and ledges into blind corners, initially thinking it was the kind of game where secrets abounded in every nook and cranny. Sadly not.

Of course we know why- the environments were all well detailed in both look and function and anything that requires the level designers to brainstorm and create even more of this excellence is not something they'd go for unless forced to.

It's not that the new PoP game in particularly linear, not really. You can tackle the areas in any order you like. Each area is pretty much a couple of tracks though, run identically everytime, with little room for experimentation.

And even that wouldn't be a negative point, I like Megaman games and other linear path "classics". It's just that the focus on extrordinary movement, combined with a gorgeous world, seems to encourage exploration. The game itself though, doesn't allow for that.

Crunchy pretty much hit it spot on, at least in my opinion. The game is anything but linear, but the individual stages are very much so. You have a series of paths, and you follow them. Sure, collecting light seeds lets you see more of these paths, but it's still just a set of paths that the prince traverses, with the only real difference being the backgrounds (which are, admittedly, stunning and gorgeous).

They should have let their series stay dead and buried, where fans would pay their respects every so often, but nope, they had to dig up that poor defiled series, and make a sequel.

SHBird:
Crunchy pretty much hit it spot on, at least in my opinion. The game is anything but linear, but the individual stages are very much so. You have a series of paths, and you follow them. Sure, collecting light seeds lets you see more of these paths, but it's still just a set of paths that the prince traverses, with the only real difference being the backgrounds (which are, admittedly, stunning and gorgeous).

Yeah, you've got it. The devs actually said this a lot, that it wasn't open-world, but more like a network, with several nodes, and several paths from each node to other nodes. It's only "open" in the sense that you get to choose which node you'll go to next.

Just wondering, but is it any good? I'm thinking of making this my last game of the year, and I just wanted to know how this stacks up against the other three. Is it as good as two thrones or sands of time? If so, I'm sold. I dont really care about the linearity. I wondered how they could pull it off in pop though, and I guess I was right and they couldnt.

For all my complaints about it teasing me, and frustrating my girlfriend, I think it's a really great game.

The combat kinda bugs me, it's not very intuitive and requires you to memorize long, killer instinct button sequences, and uses random Quick Time Events. It's lucky you can't actually die because otherwise the game would be frustrating as all hell. I find it hard to believe that the team which came up with the brilliant combat system of Assassin's Creed made this game.

But it's still way better than Warrior Within. So there.

jamesc:
Just wondering, but is it any good? I'm thinking of making this my last game of the year, and I just wanted to know how this stacks up against the other three. Is it as good as two thrones or sands of time? If so, I'm sold. I dont really care about the linearity. I wondered how they could pull it off in pop though, and I guess I was right and they couldnt.

It gets the doctorpus seal of aproval. Personally I thought the no-death mechanic worked well when you went into clepto-light seed hunting mode, it takes all the frustration out of trial and error. That being said it shouldn't have been present before you'd healed the land in question. That would have made for a more challlenging game in my opinion.

Crunchy English:
The number one thing you heard from reviewers on the Prince of Persia, once they'd put their eyes back in their sockets, was that the new death mechanic worked great, elimating the tedium of save and loading but made the game too easy.

I remarked as such as my girlfriend slided her new collector's edition copy of PoP into our 360. Big mistake.

My girlfriend did not "die" very much, rarely requiring Elika's guiding hand. But she often did struggle with the game. The games flowing controls often wrestle command of the Prince right away from her. Jumping doesn't even seem to be 360 degrees, with the game often forcing the Prince to jump at guided angles. Often our free spirit of exploration in these beautiful areas was locked down into set routes in a handful of directions. The game is really just a track to run over and over again. That seems pretty backwards compared to the range of movement the Prince is capable of.

My girlfriend took this the wrong way, deciding she kept going the "wrong" way whenever her jump was forced 30 degrees from where she wanted to go , and coupled with my earlier comment about the game's "ease", she was very disheartened.

Gaming is traditionally a series of linear routes, but after being exposed to Fallout 3, Fable 2, GTA IV, and other "free roaming" games, the deceptively open environments of PoP were really jarring.

Oh, man. don't be down on the Persia, i'm pretty sure my wife just got this for a christmas present. No, she says she hasn't (just asked) - but someone has...

jamesc:
Just wondering, but is it any good? I'm thinking of making this my last game of the year, and I just wanted to know how this stacks up against the other three. Is it as good as two thrones or sands of time? If so, I'm sold. I dont really care about the linearity. I wondered how they could pull it off in pop though, and I guess I was right and they couldnt.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.79759

I really don't mind linearality in games at all. Open Games are fine, but I find my faviouitre games are anything but linear, so its never really bothered me. Sands of Time still captivates me years after its release (i play it at least once a year) and its as linear as hell.

I really can't wait to play this game. Christmas can't get here fast enough.

I liked the game and it's definitely worth a playthrough. But yeah, at some times it felt like I wasn't even the one controlling the character.
Personally I felt the impossibility of dieing as a whole to detract from the experience by making it silly easy if you will. Why bother jumping right or even looking where you're going if all the punishment you get for being a dumbass is being reset a tiny few steps? I just ran, jumped, grabbed at random since it didn't matter what you did anyway.

I liked the layout of the levels and your choice in which order you wanted to go through it all. With games like these 'open' isn't much of a factor to me. It's about getting through a path hindered with obstacles, sure 10 different ways would be nice, but just the one suffices for me.