As I\’ve mentioned in the past, one of the games on my backlog is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the 2003 reimagining of Jordan Mechner\’s classic platformer. At the time, my completion rate was 65%; since then, I\’ve reached 81% completion, and the game hasn\’t lost its lustre yet…except for one problem which you might have been able to infer from my previous post – that the camera is incredibly dodgy.
Most of the time, when you\’re running on walls, making death-defying leaps and swinging on poles, it works perfectly, and maintains the perfect angle for you to see what you\’re getting yourself into. However, during combat, it takes an incredibly inconvenient angle, moving around jerkily, pivoting 180 degrees for no reason and generally behaving like a douche. This is a problem not only because camera orientation determines your control mapping, but also because it changes your field of view, meaning that I can\’t see the huge guy with the scimitar just so slightly off screen who\’s about to leap over and tear me a new one.
Exacerbating the problem in this particular case is the fact that you need to protect someone while on this elevator, someone whom the camera excels at keeping out of my field of vision. I don\’t know what the general consensus on escort or protection missions in most games is, but based on my experience here and in Resident Evil 4, I would say that they need to take a flying leap off a bridge. The so-called \”artificial intelligence\” is terrible at keeping itself out of trouble, and in the case of Prince of Persia, said character\’s inability to keep herself alive forces me to remain nearby, in a walled-off area of the elevator, eminently suitable for all the enemies to gang up and introduce me to their little friends, simultaneously.
The combat itself is functional, if rather bland, but the camera has proved to be the source of much of my frustration so far. I\’m hoping it doesn\’t end up putting me off completing the game altogether.