How come games aren't colourful anymore? Well, unless you define brown, grey and black as 'colourful', with maybe a bit of dark red if the developers are feeling adventurous. Which they never are anymore. Colour, it seems, is a thing of the past as far as gaming is concerned.

The new Prince of Persia game is a fine example. Out just in time to confront the mindless droves of consumers who don't know any better and need to get their Christmas shopping, the dark, threatening warrior prince with his blood stained machetes are just the kind of thing you want popping up in your child's stocking this December. Christmas cheer? The season of goodwill, you say? You couldn't tell with the kind of games being released around this period. Christmas is a time generally associated with bright, cheerful colours and childish innocence � funny, that, when you think about the kind of games children across the country will be playing at the end of December.

Games like the new Prince of Persia are dark � and I do mean literally 'dark'. All you see are the browns and greys and reds. Nothing striking, nothing bright, nothing cheerful - just dark colours everywhere. How fun. Is this what the gamers around the world really want? Do we all want to spend our Christmas time playing a game where we run around some of the blackest, dullest corners to fight enemies that are even less exciting? Nothing in the new Prince of Persia is colourful � all you see is grey.

However, there's more than one shade of grey when it comes to the world of videogames. Not only are the environments in the new Prince of Persia grey (as well as games like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, Ghost Recon 2, Black Monday, NFSU2...), but the storylines are, too. Whatever happened to happy endings, eh? Last time we saw our fair prince, he seemed in good spirits (considering he'd just screwed around with time, killed his father, abandoned the love of his life who didn't even know who he was�you get the picture) and we last saw him in the gloriously vibrant and colourful palace of the Sands of Time. Soothing, calm dark blues, dazzling shades of gold, yellows, reds, greens � the game had them all, and was all the better for it. The mood was a happy one, and the colours reflected that.

But now the designers, writers and artists at Ubi Soft have all become depressed. Instead of exploring the wonderful, magical palace with our friendly, charming Prince, we have a gung-ho super-deadly action stuntman of doom running around decapitating enemies and running along (grey) walls. Now there is less emphasis on exploration, more on the grim nature of death, and all of that horrible stuff. The storyline isn't exactly joyful, either. Our Prince is running around killing loads of lesser warriors with swords and acrobatics and building his fighting skills while running from a seemingly immortal incarnation of Fate who's looking to kill the bugger for messing up the natural flow of time. A little bit of Final Destination, a little bit of the Matrix, and a whole lot of dismal crap. Why can't storylines be a little less�gloomy? Ok, I'm not saying storylines should go all Disney on us, but come on � we're playing games for enjoyment, so stop trying to make us feel so bloody miserable. If there were only a couple of games like this, that would be alright � but there are loads of them, they're everywhere, spreading like some kind of wretched virus infecting every potentially decent game.

And on that note we come to the third shade of grey � the ideas themselves are as grey as they come. Killing, running, jumping, and more killing � we've seen it all before. Thankfully in Prince of Persia, at least, this is all done with a suitable degree of skill, flair and even a touch of originality � it's a well made game, no denying that � but we're seeing too many of these kind of games, the games where you have to run around a dark palace/spaceport/cavern and kill loads of zombies/aliens/monsters.

Videogame monsters don't scare anymore, because we've killed hundreds of them before on another game, another system. It's ironic that a giant monster that towers fifty foot above your hero while wielding a huge axe doesn't worry the player, because he has the same weakness as all the others you've defeated before. Ideas are just being regurgitated in games nowadays, originality is scarce. Originality in execution of ideas is commonplace � but people are confusing that with originality of ideas themselves. Games just don't innovate anymore � we'll have to wait for the next generation of systems before we see in colour again. In the meantime, we'll have to stick to playing the bland, monochrome games that have become a staple in our lives. They're dull, unexciting, repetitive, but they're still entertaining. For now.

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