Prince of Persia's a strange beast. On one hand, I'm cursing the game for its unsatisfying combat yet can't help but take a moment to witness the transformation of a once drab and decrepit land into a see of color. It's a beautiful game, there's no denying that, but it appears much more care was given to the characters and world than to the actual gameplay. One fact needs to be clarified. You can die in this game, but rather than an arbitrary game over and a slap to the face in the form of a manual restart, we are subject to a three second cinema that may have been meant to smooth the play session but instead resulted in angered and jaded gamers and some interesting podcast fodder. I enjoyed my stay but regardless of the news of recent DLC, I did not hesitate in slipping the disc back in it's Gamefly sleeve. They claimed single enemy encounters would encourage strategy over button mashing, I can say that I never had any sort of tactic going into these fights other than mash x and a with the occasional y when i wanted to keep my eyes open. I believe that's called "button mashing." Traversing the various wooden beams and golden rings had a certain lifelessness to it when coming to the game after a playthrough of Mirror's Edge. Instead of yelling at the screen due to missed jumps, I found myself yelling at the screen due to missed plates. Running on the walls against gravity with the help of vomit green plates was fun for the first 5 seconds. Then they introduced failure to the mechanic and explitives flew.

After making it halfway through a Fallout 3 spoiler podcast and hearing of alien weapons, prototype power armor, and side-side quests I loaded up a save earlier than the abysmal disaster they dared to call an ending and remembered why I loved the game so much. I fear the arbitrary level cap has taken some enjoyment out of my return visit though. Taking down a Super Mutant and picking locks just isn't the same without that satisfying "ching" to reinforce the fact that I'm making progress in some way, shape, or form.

Watching the Street Fighter IV Japanese Intro somehow got me even more pumped for the game than I thought possible. It wa hard getting through the obnoxious J-Pop blaring over an otherwise cool scene of familiar faces duking it out but once that warm and fuzzy theme kicked in, flashbacks of hours spent in friends houses trying to pull off hadouken's trumped my sparse wallet and bank account. Nostalgia is always worth it.