Last Thursday I got my copy of Prince of Persia for the PS3 and so far I’m really enjoying it. They story isn’t bad at all, I love the characters and the whole jump’n run action is just pure entertainment. But: This is definitely the buggiest “big” game I’ve played in a very long time. Even the first 30 minutes had one really big issue that someone has to have noticed during QA …
Just a small list of all the bugs I’ve seen so far:
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Right when leaving the temple for the first time a sequence should be triggered when getting close to the exit again. Well, not for me at first. I basically jumped out of the level and died. After a couple of tries I went back to the start of the whole jump’n run part of that level and did it again. This time the event got triggered.
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The subtitle doesn’t always match what is being said on the voice-track.
For example in the German translation sometimes the Prince says “Wartet” while the subtitle says “Festhalten”. -
When doing those winch-puzzles where the Prince and Elika have to push them together, and esp. in the windmill-level, Elika often just beams to you instead of walking to the winch.
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During the same puzzles on one occasion Elika just stood at the winch and didn’t want to push anymore, although the switch wasn’t yet in the right position.
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In the Royal Gardens I also had the controls completely dying on me once when moving along those plants growing on the walls at the outer part of that stage. Just repeatedly hitting R2 (for sliding down) unstuck him again.
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There are also a couple of AI/collision-detection problems with Elika where you hang down a cliff and she just can’t decide if she should follow your lead or still wait up there. I noticed that particular problem once when she got completely stuck in mid-animation.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I really enjoy this game and esp. the Prince with his tongue-in-cheek humor. And none of these issues (except for the very first one) really disturbed the gameplay-experience. I just have to wonder, how most of these could have slipped through QA. Events getting reliably triggered would for me be pretty high on the list of things to test.
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