A prince amongst platformers (pic: Ubisoft)
A reader is frustrated that while the Assassin’s Creed franchise prospers the earlier Prince Of Persia is still a dead franchise.
In my experience, Assassin’s Creed tends to be a question of you like it or you loathe it. I know a bunch of people that have played almost every one and really get into finding all those secrets on the map and getting the most out of the games and their different settings. Me though, I can’t stand them. Maybe loathe isn’t quite the word but they don’t interest me at all.
To me all the Assassin’s Creed games are depressingly bland, with boring combat that never changes, platforming that’s almost disappeared from the most recent games (I did play a bit of Valhalla, because Vikings are cool), and stories that seem to spend hours and hours going nowhere in particular with personality-free characters.
I find the whole series to be the worst example of the ‘Ubisoft formula’, not so much in the way that it uses open world gameplay to keep you addicted but just how everything is so vanilla and inoffensive. Nothing is very difficult, there are no puzzles or anything to stretch your mind, and neither the combat nor anything else requires any real skill to play. Which is no doubt the secret of its success.
I’m not hear to rag on a game that other people enjoy though. It doesn’t matter to me at all if they make a thousand more Assassin’s Creed games from now to doomsday. I just wish they’d make at least a couple more Prince Of Persia games.
The sad thing is that many younger games will probably have no idea what Prince Of Persia is, or just assume it’s some kind of tie-in to that movie they made a while back. The series as a whole goes all the way back to 1989, when it was a pretty groundbreaking 2D platformer, and then it got rebooted in 2003 with The Sands Of Time, which to this day I consider to be one of the best 3D platformers of all time.
This was seven years after Super Mario 64, so the concept of a 3D platformer was already starting to fade away, but The Sands Of time was not a kids’ game and had a proper story with likeable characters (we’ll get onto the sequels in a second) and some really interesting and complex level design that was more like a gymnastics puzzle than a Mario clone.
I was always under the impression it did well but the two immediate sequels for some reason turned the Prince into a grimdark try-hard and the series immediately started to go downhill and never recovered, despite a half-hearted attempt at a reboot and a film tie-in.
The year before that reboot Ubisoft released the Assassin’s Creed game, which everyone agreed was a pretty poor game and far too similar to Prince Of Persia in terms of gameplay and setting to seem worthwhile. Somehow it was a hit anyway and when the sequel was even more popular Prince Of Persia’s fate was sealed and we’ve barely heard of it ever again.
A remake is supposed to be happening, but it’s been delayed so many times I’m assuming it’s eventually going to get cancelled. Especially as the last time they showed it, it somehow managed to look worse than the original.
I hope it does happen though because it being a success is the only hope for a brand new game. Something with proper gameplay and challenge that can expose Assassin’s Creed for the bland pretender it’s always been.
Unfortunately, I fear platform games as difficult and complex as The Sands Of Time are no longer profitable or popular, but in a world where Elden Ring can become a mega hit I’m hopeful I can be proven wrong. If one of the two franchises has to die so the other can live it should be Prince Of Persia that goes on, not Assassin’s Creed.
By reader Goof
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A reader is frustrated that while the Assassin’s Creed franchise prospers the earlier Prince Of Persia is still a dead franchise.