This place just opened in my neighbourhood. Great coffee, sandwiches, soups and salads. Really needed a healthy deli in Nicosia. They do delivery too. http:/getfresh.com.cy

I recently purchase, played & rather hastily finished the new Prince of Persia. Its name without sub-title or sequel number immediately insinuates "reboot", a Batman Begins to its Batman & Robin. Ubisoft is quite explicitly telling us that this isn't Prince of Persia 4, this is a brand new take on the venture. A distilling of its essence into something so approachable that none could refuse it, so infused with 'casuality' that anyone could pick it up and feel empowered. Oh, Nintendo, what have you done?

Unless you've managed to completely ignore the reviews, PR initiatives and pretty chunky marketing campaign: death is out. The prince is essentially accompanied by a moving spawn point of a sidekick which makes impossible to "die". If you fall she catches you, if you get snatched by evil goo she, well, catches you -- always pulling you back to the last stable platform. This is meant to sustain flow, this is meant not waste any of the glorious frames of cell-shaded wall-running animation. It's still dying & respawning, it's just a bit quicker.

While most of us saw through this slightly inept attempt at making the game innovative, its real problem only hit me a few weeks later. The new Prince of Persia had felt like a disappointment and I needed to detox myself with a bit of Sands of Time or the original 2D version to reconnect with what had made the game so endearing. I opted for the Live Arcade remix of the original, a cheap yet highly accomplished reimagining of Jordan Mechner's ground-breaking game. Using assets from Sands of Time and sticking to the screen-by-screen approach made it the perfect match to satiate my nostalgia. Most importantly, it made me understand what PoP Reboot got so wrong: it got rid of death.

Ironically, for the a series that is now infamous for removing death from its gameplay, the prince started out as someone you killed over and over. Impaled, stabbed, crushed, cut in half, you name it. Death is such an integral part of the Prince of Persia series, it fuels its combat and acrobatics. Without it, timing the perfect jump feels like an empty achievement, defeating an enemy the result of persistence versus skill. Removing death certainly removes any sense of vertigo that defined Sands of Time, hanging of a temple wall knowing that a magical hand will catch you when you fall dampens the experience somewhat.

Sands of Time understood its heritage and was actually the true trendsetter by mixing in the storytelling and time manipulation to remove the frustration of the prince's consisten brutal demise. The game works because you're afraid of messing up, slipping, falling, getting stabbed, cut in half, impaled. The game works because jumping from a ledge to a crumbling column feels dangerous. It works because it balances out its risks & rewards perfectly. That's true empowerement. Removing death from Prince of Persia is like removing scares from horror movies, stink from stinky cheese, bite from sharp English mustard. Unpleasant? Certainly, but in the right context they are a vital part of a whole.

Prince of Persia didn't need a reboot. The excellent structure, mechanics and story of Sands of Time were never fully exploited and every sequel since has proven to be a step backwards. In a Benjamin Buttonesque fashion the franchise has receided to a juvenile, even toddler state with its bright colours, simple characters, Fisher-Price button bashing and no element of failer, or death, in sight. Bugger that.

(download)

Click here to download:

The_Death_of_Prince_of_Persia.zip (167 KB)

In Athens for a presentation and managed to acquire an MSI Wind netbook for the day. Battery life is average and keyboard takes a bit of getting used to but I'm enjoying the experience overall. Performance is more than adequate for browsing and officy-type stuff and at under 400 Euros it's cheap enough to be a second computer (although with an external screen and mouse/keyboard hooked up it could very well be a primary one).

Most of the trees in the centre of Nicosia seem to marked with an X which obviously means they've been selected to be cut down.
 
Nicosia isn't the greenest city in the world so why are the authorities so quick to cut down the few trees we do have left? Crazy.

Nice to see those things are reliable. This is the ATM next to my flat. Last week it was crawling (it took 30 seconds to acknowledge a key press). Today, I see the XP bootscreen and I understand why.
 
Wouldn't you want a more reliable, lighter OS running something as critical as an ATM?