Prince of Persia seemed, to me, to be two, two, two games mixed into one: is was indeed an Ico-like environment/exploration platformer (I’m over here. I need to get over there. How do I do it?) with beautiful lighting and interesting puzzles. It was, however, also a game where you had to kill zombies and they keep respawning and respawning and it goes on for 5 minutes and then 10 minutes and then forever until you want to kill yourself just to make the game stop.

I really enjoyed the former game and I really hated the latter game. The zombie game was so annoying and tedious that at some point I simple _stopped playing_, so although I’m sure Prince of Persia had lots of brilliance later on in it, I wouldn’t know, because I never got to see it, because I had more interesting things to do than kill 8943128502895029058209 zombies, like wax my car. If I discover there is a “play without zombies” cheat code for Prince of Persia, I’ll give it another shot.

“But Ico had enemies, too!” you say. Not really. Sure, Ico had the effeminate shadow creatures, but those weren’t serious threats in terms of being difficult to fight. Those were meant (and were effective at) forcing you to attack the puzzles with a _sense of urgency_, because if you leave the defenseless princess alone for too long, the boogeymen will get her. Apart from the climactic boss battle, Ico wasn’t about the combat at all (and even the boss battle was a puzzle in disguise).