Save me Elika

Prince of Persia is too easy. I’ve heard this statement made many times on various podcasts and forums but I strongly disagree with this common view. Prince of Persia was made with accessibility in mind and the experience is much better because of it.

One of the complaints I always hear is "You Can't Die". You can die; you just aren’t seeing a death animation and a game over screen. Getting saved by Elika is just another form of the game over screen without reloading and replaying large sections over and over and making the game way more frustrating than it has to be. It also allows the player to experiment and attempt crazy jumps and things that you would be apprehensive about trying if there was a serious threat of death. However, I do agree that there could be some kind of death penalty for failing in combat though but the regenerative health for bosses is a good enough disadvantage for the player. Without a serious punishment for dying there isn’t a sense of danger or urgency while fighting. The less serious penalty for failing in combat is just a longer battle, which can end up being annoying when a battle goes on way longer than you have the patience for. The main draw for me was the exploration and the story (yes, i really enjoyed the POP story) and if this was a way for less skilled gamers to get the chance to experience all that and still have a good time, so be it.

The Bourne Conspiracy

The main gameplay of The Bourne Conspiracy can be split into two different mechanics, there’s the hand to hand combat which plays out like a basic 2D fighter and the 3rd person shooting. There’s also a driving section that goes on for way too long and isn’t very fun. Overall The Bourne Conspiracy isn’t a bad game though, while nothing about it stands out as revolutionary it does what it does competently.

There were a few design choices that tainted the overall experience for me though. The fact that you have to manually pull out your gun to shoot enemies is odd when games like Uncharted seamlessly move from combat to flatforming without a need to manually initiate combat. After playing the Wanted demo I can appreciate how important it is to be able to easily move between cover points and helped me realise that the cover system in The Bourne Conspiracy isn’t very good. Moving into cover can be too finicky and I often found myself left in the line of fire trying to get into cover. Some kind of quick move from one cover point to another like in Wanted would have been helpful rather than leaving cover to slowly lumber/ uncontrollably sprint to another cover point. The shooting doesn’t do anything special but it works well. The game relies heavily on QTE’s in cutscenes and during fights but I didn’t really have a problem with it but that could be because I don’t have a problem with QTE’s in general.

I found the hand to hand combat sections the most interesting and some of the most memorable moments came from the epic boss battle fights. The combat looks good with cool enviromental takedowns but gets repetitive because you don’t unlock any extra combos over the course of the game. You could argue that it makes sense because the game takes place over different time periods so you wouldn’t become progressively stronger but it would be nice if combat was more rewarding and got progressively more interesting. The fighting is fun but the lack of moves and variety makes it get old quickly.

Overall I would say that The Bourne Conspiracy is worth a rental at least, it won’t do anything that will blow your socks off but the production values are high and it’s a fun experience that’s worth playing.