Why Prince? Why?

Prince of Persia arrived in my mailbox just yesterday, and I'm already sending it back.

Congratulations Ubisoft! You've successfully made a swish with the paper ball that is Prince of Persia into your proverbial trashcan (with optional basketball hoop).

Here are the things I'm going to troll on...

+ The Prince is utterly caucasian. You'd think if this as, you know, Persia, or vaguely middle east, someone would at least have an accent. The titular Prince spouts painful sarcasm (or wit, what have you), sports a questionable tan, has blue eyes, and sounds like he stepped out of a Southern Californian private school. Is this Prince of Persia or Los Angeles?

+ The levels are very similar in gameplay. In the original trilogy, you'd maybe get a spiffy new sword, or traps would get more elaborate and monsters would even appear as well. Here, I'm wall running my brains out. I'm wall running, pole jumping, and vine climbing until the cows come home. There aren't any neat booby traps or even cool mistake rewinding time controls. I'm doing the same thing over and over again, that is, wall running, jumping, and if I fall, I just start over at the beginning of the acrobatic puzzle, cause my partner just teleports in and might as well say, "Dying isn't cool? LOL! Lemme help you out!"

+ Remember the acrobatic, fighting machine that was the Prince in the trilogy? Well say hello to the new, slow paced, en garde Prince! Seriously, I'll beat the shit out of who suggested the change in combat, because it's just an arena mash fest. Mash X, sometimes Y, and if you're luckly, you'll skip the fight entirely by getting a ring out. But forget about rolling out of the way and gracefully flipping from one enemy to another. You're fighting one on one whether you fucking like it or not.

+ Lastly, as I mentioned before, the levels are very samey. Here's what you're gonna do for a routine hour of gameplay. Brisk jog to the level proper, run on some walls and jump off some obstacles, kill a bad guy or two, "heal" the land, collect shit, rinse, repeat. It's almost as if the time control mechanic wasn't thrown out and I'm reliving the same gameplay over and over a la Groundhog Day. Well Bill Murray had it easy cause he eventually got out of that time warp. I'm stuck in this cycle until I beat the game...

or turn off my Xbox.