I played through two games in the last two weeks, Prince of Persia from last year, and Assassin's Creed.
Assassin's Creed was quite a bit of fun. A little same-y, but I enjoyed traversing the three cities so much I didn't really care. Any excuse to free run around and occasionally ambush a guard with the old knife in the neck. The overall presentation and premise really appealed to me, and the manner in which it explained away the necessary game mechanics was Sands of Time quality (No no no, that's not how it happened).
Prince of Persia I am somewhat conflicted about. The game is beautiful to look at. The illustrated style, the way the levels look before and after cleansing, and especially the character animations are all wonderful to look at. Speaking of character animations, the way the Prince and Elika interact with each other physically is incredible. It's hard to describe, but whenever you are traversing any part of the game, they're doing it together, and helping one another. If you are on a beam, and you need to get by her, you link hands and pivot to switch places. If you're below her after sliding down a wall, the Prince catches her, or he will pull her up to a ledge if she is below. It's all contextual, and it adds a sense of companionship between the characters that you rarely see.
The Prince is still as agile as ever, and the platforming is extremely fluid and satisfying, but it's a little easy. I'm not talking about Elika's rescue move either. That doesn't bother me any more than rewinding did in Sands of Time. When I fail, I know I've failed, I don't need to be eat a death too. The platforming itself just never really gets to the point where, when you finish a particular section, you can't believe you just did that, which is something I felt in Sands of Time (The last PoP I played, I should mention).
The combat is all duels, and I honestly liked it, but combat is never the point. I kind of wish they could find a way to eliminate it entirely from the series.
I don't know, I say I'm torn, but I can't really pin down why. I liked the game, I liked the characters, and I liked the story, but somehow I just don't feel really satisfied. It was a bit easy, yeah, but so beautiful, and I genuinely enjoyed the story, even with the Prince acting like a snarky, sarcastic action hero, it didn't read false to me. I guess I just wanted to love it as much as I loved Sands of Time, and I didn't. I will play the inevitable sequel, assuming they don't Warrior Within it, and I guess that's my verdict on it.
