I used to play video games when I was younger, but the last console I owned was a SNES. I'd play the odd game here and there since then (excluding MMORPGS), but generally found that most games for the PS2/XBOX and now the next-gen seem to fall into the category of "geared towards gamers that have been playing games for years".

Trying to get into games like God of War, Resistance, etc generally leaves me with a sense of just being over-whelmed and not wanting to play them. Now and then some games come along that capture my interest and hook me - ones that come to mind are : God of War, Katamari, Okami, Jade Empire, Fable, Final Fantasy 12, and a few others.

These are games that I generally found, struck a nice balance between difficulty / ease of getting into / penalty for failure (if applicable) / etc.

Now and then I'd be in the mood for a more challenging game, and would load one up. But, at the end of the day - what I'm usually looking for when I'm playing a game, is a brief moment of escapism, to run around pretty / neat / imaginative environments and losing myself in the game to ENJOY myself.

Yes, there needs to be some challenge so you have a sense of 'reward', but I don't think that challenge needs to come at the cost of frustrating the hell out of your players. Things that are frustrating for me are

• Load times
• Long distances between 'check points'
• Cut scenes after check points (especially if you cant skip them) and before difficult parts of the game where you are likley to die

An example of this is the Final Fantasy for PSP. I initially started the game on easy mode for a bit, and was finding it to be too easy. So, I quit and re-start in hard mode. And, for the most part - I was finding this to be a more enjoyable way of playing until I ran into the problem of hitting a 'hard' part that was not close to a check-point and had a load screen or two AND two cut scenes.

I'd die, then have to sit through that crap over and over again, and eventually made me switch back to easy mode. That is frustrating, not challenging - I'm fine with biting the bullet and dying in a game now and then, just don't make me want to throw my console across the room as I'm forced to sit through a cut scene for the 5th time.

What I'm enjoying about Prince of Persia - it's easy to get into, it has a fast pace to it, and its just a joy to run around, jump around, try new things without that constant fear of getting the loading screen yet one more time. I'm more inclined to jump around, try new things, explore the world and try different routes to do things.

When doing general running around - I know if I miss a jump from being lazy, it's not going to set me back that far. This is very handy when you're doing runs for light seeds and just 'pissing around' in the game - it's fun, its relaxing, its enjoyable. I know if I miss that jump it's not the end of the world.

Once you start leaping around the power-plates and getting into longer jumping-runs : I'll get onto my toes a bit more. It sucks when you see the end of a series of jumps in site and make a miss-press and get whipped back up to the start of it. But, this is simply just a check-point system without the "loading" screen, and I don't see anything wrong with that. It's challenging but not frustrating. What indicates to me that it's challenging? That I didn't get it right on my 1st try, and that it changed my mind-set from being relaxed/lazy to being more focused during that portion of the game. I don't need to get mad at my game to let me know it's challenging.

There are hard-core gamers who love the deeply involved/complex/challenging to the point of sometimes frustrating games - and there's lots of games to pick from for there, maybe PoP isn't for you. Then, there are the super-casual gamers, and hell - there's pretty much an entire console (Wii) dedicated to them. But then theres people like me that fall in between - and PoP (and some of the other games I listed above) seem to fill that niche rather well.

When I first started playing PoP I thought "wow, this makes the game way to easy" - but as you progress, this becomes a rather welcome feature. It's just the "you died, try again?" screen in a pretty animation without the need for a load time. Some of the jumps in the game become longer, and screwing up right near the end is frustrating enough without having to do the old "try again / quit / wait for load time". I think it's a rather elegant solution to the problem. I'd probably be pulling out my hair and tossing the game to the side if the game stayed as it was, except with a more traditional death penalty.