11/3/16 - Prince of Persia and Ludus

In "Prince of Persia The Sands of Time" I found the story nodes such as when you got to a certain point in the mission like a new room to be helpful but also broke the flow of the game. In particular I found that the forced camera angles in the rooms were very distracting and took me out of the experience because I felt as though I was fighting the game for merely being able to see.

 

This game is very ludic because I found myself playing "to win, to beat the game, and story is mostly a lure into the game world."* Every room presented a puzzle that I had to complete to progress the story without any choice over how my character felt about the situation or whether he wanted to do it any other way. This is a very guided path that goes well from node to node. Albeit, as mentioned before, the flow of the game is very interrupted by repeating animations of things like the character putting away his sword or drinking water. These animations don't really add to the character and only take control away from the player and time. Sure, there's the story of him doing these actions - but it is not worth the removal of control. 

Camera angles were also largely taken away from the players control when the camera locked on a wall. This is odd considering that originally the player is presented with control over the camera angles using the mouse. Giving someone something only to take it away soon after with no explanation is confusing at best.

Overall, I think the game gets in the way of itself too much in terms of mechanics. The story is there, and in saying that the story isn't great. The puzzles serve the purpose of conveying distance covered, but the fighting with enemies feels tedious. If more control was granted to the player this could be a more successful game. 

* From Narrative Games to Playable Stories: Toward a Poetics of Interactive Narrative by Marie-Laure Ryan