Prince of Persia

aka: PoP 2008, Prince of Persia (2008), Prince of Persia: Prodigy
Moby ID: 38110
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Prince of Persia once again resets the timeline of the series and marks the start of a new trilogy with the Prince on the search for Farah, his donkey, which is loaded with treasures beyond imagining. But after a sandstorm he falls down into a canyon and meets Elika, a princess with magical powers. She's being hunted by the army of her father and has to make her way to the temple beneath the Tree of Life.

But they come too late. After a brief fight against her father, he breaks the seal and by doing so unlocks the prison chamber that was kept closed by the powers of the Tree of Life. The inhabitant of that prison? Ahriman - God of Darkness. Creator of the darkness of space and the first to unleash envy and hate. Back in the days he was not satisfied with keeping only one half of the universe and after a fierce battle against his brother Ormazd, God of Light, he almost won. In a last attempt Ormazd successfully lured Ahriman into the Tree of Life, condemning him to a thousand years of pain. But Ahriman was only waiting. Waiting and planning and now that he is free, he and his minions are beginning to claim back what they lost and the only two people on the world to stop them are the Prince and Elika.

The basic gameplay remains the same as in the previous trilogy with the Prince engaging in sword fighting, wall climbing, spike dodging, puzzle solving, and more, in his quest to save the world. But as opposed to the previous trilogy, the Prince neither can rewind time nor has to fight multiple enemies at a time. Instead he and Elika only face one, strong enemy every time and if the Prince is about to die because of a miscalculated jump or anything similar, she uses her powers and sets the Prince back to the beginning of the jumping puzzle. That is not the only thing she does. By command of the player, she also helps in fights, allows him to jump further distances by giving him a little push in the back in mid-air and shows which way to go next. Elika is also the key to bring the Tree of Life back to full strength. But to do so, she needs so-called "Seeds of Life" that are scattered all around the levels. If the player has collected enough of these, Elika will also become stronger.

Besides the enemies being stronger, more intelligent and having more special abilities, the fights play similar to the previous iterations of the series with the Prince slashing away at enemies with his sword or his gauntlet to produce powerful combos. The gauntlet also allows the Prince to slide down from solid rocks safely to the area below. The game features Quick Time Events when an enemy got a hold on the Prince and uses a cel-shaded and heavily stylized look for the characters.

Spellings

  • Принц Персии - Russian spelling
  • 新波斯王子 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

645 People (629 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

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Average score: 81% (based on 106 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 79 ratings with 4 reviews)

The New Adventures of Old Prince

The Good
Cartoonish but great visuals
Simple gameplay
Open-world setting
A great, lengthy story


The Bad
Lack of challenge
Some combat and camera issues


The Bottom Line
Jesus, we've really missed playing Prince of Persia. I bet many of you people have as well. This game is like a whole new chapter for the saga more than a return, and it packs lots of surprises. OK, the visuals are cartoonish, but they are simply great. The gameplay is simple, and it doesn't take much time to learn the basics. The story is packed with thrills and adventure, and you won't get bored, even for 1 single minute, as the story is pretty much long-term. The only things which put us off was the lack of challenge and the combat/camera issues. Sure, the game isn't that challenging, but it's extremely entertaining. This is a pretty memorable return to Prince of Persia.

PlayStation 3 · by Kaan Cakanisik (5) · 2010

The gameplay fades away parallel to the need of another Prince of Persia

The Good
I think I see a pattern on my reviews. I usually review games when I see them as a good example of some trend in the industry. The new Prince of Persia is a 2 for 1 bargain in this context, game franchising and casual level difficulty. But first things first, not everything is a bad move on the series.

There are at least two features of Prince of Persia 2008 (that's a funny name for a non-sport game, don't you think?) from which other developers could learn. The storytelling is one of them. The most interesting thing of it is that the player can make the protagonist talk whenever he/she wants. By pushing "t" while the characters stand still and there is no danger around, they will start talking. The concept is that the player, through the prince, asks Elika about what is going on, and Elika explains a bit of the background and current events on the place they are. Obviously, if the player asks forever, the situation will look stupid, but this will be the player's fault not the feature's.

In addition, the characters will realistically dialogue about the situation while playing without using cutscenes at all. If somebody has played Kane & Lynch he/she will know that this gives a whole lot of life to the game and makes the player more involve with the characters and their goals.

Prince of Persia is also very beautiful, the artistic direction is something they can be proud of, although, as I will explain, level design ruins the credibility of the world portrayed in the game. More on this later.

Also, a round of applause for Ubisoft for not putting any sort of DRM on this game (not even "DVD on drive" nonsense, 0_0). I would nearly ask you to blindly buy this game just because of this, considering the state of the art in the matter, but the game is actually a very bad one.

The Bad
(Note: I didn't finish the game out of boredom.)

Let's begin with a review of the history of this game series.

Prince of Persia, the first one, I mean, is a classic. And it is a classic basically because it was a great game. It was original, very enjoyable to play, and artistically admirable. After being released for all the systems possible and their dog, Prince of Persia 2 was released in order to capitalize on the first one's success. I haven't played it, but apparently it wasn't that good. Many years later, when 3D graphics were about to take us to paradise on Earth, some guys decided that Prince of Persia should also look nice just by giving it a new dimension and doing everything else wrong. And surprisingly, it failed.

Many years later, Ubisoft realized that a new Prince of Persia could be a good idea now that 3D graphics were mastered. I still consider despicable to keep on putting same names to games that have nothing to do with each other or separated in time by plenty of years, but Sands of Time was too good to criticize it for this. Still, it wouldn't have hurt to call it other way around and start a fresh new series.

So, where are we? After a trilogy on this new prince (you know, every new project starts as a trilogy nowadays, it's a word with high marketing appeal) Ubisoft has decided to do another Prince of Persia game. It has nothing to do with the Sands trilogy nor with the previous games, but, well, you know, it's about money. Ubisoft is not evil, everybody does it, isn't it? Let's put this straight: videogame industry is full of games based on or continuing a previous game that have been developed solely because that previous game was successful, "profitably" successful, that is. Not that series-starting games are developed for more artistic reasons most of the times, but there is a real plague of games with a number or a subtitle at the end of the name that clearly shout us "hey, you!, yes, the stupid one, you liked "Average Uninteresting Game 1"?, we have done a totally unmotivated second part, come and buy it before I get angry and break your legs you piece of..."

Ok, I calm down now, but never forget that it is the industry who tells you what you like and not vice versa.

And the new Prince of Persia is a rather insulting example of this. It has nothing to do with the previous games, but it is an obvious recycling of the last trilogy with some improved graphics thrown at it. Everything looks lacking motivation if compared with Sands of Time. But let's look at the facts.

The new Prince of Persia begins with the prince (who is not a prince apparently) crossing the desert and befriending an escaping girl. Soon it's discovered that she is a princess trying to prevent her father to free an evil god, which he eventually does. Now the prince and the princess have to fight this evil god, nobody knew about before, because, you know, ancient Persia was full of this kind of exotic crap, and everybody had their hairs and clothes waving in the wind.

The Sands of Time trilogy fan (tm) will soon start to feel uneasy as the prince and the following princess parkour around the "beautifully artistic everybody is talking about" scenarios. I said parkour? Well, it should be called something like "magic parkour" as the spectacularly realistic moves of the prince we all have enjoyed in the previous games are gone. Apart from the ability of Elika to just fly around at will, the prince shows some totally absurd movements this time around. For example, now you can walkrun without any momentum at all, just jumping at a wall. And the funniest part of it is that the prince will scratch the wall while doing it, which in real life would prevent you from running more than one step before falling down. Walking through the ceiling is also something that defies classical mechanics (those you learn at high school) and that the prince does without any effort. But the best part is the "Elika button" that serves as a double jump. Every time a normal jump turns out short, the screen goes white and you have to push this button in order for Elika to give you a push with her magical abilities.

The concept behind Elika is actually what differentiates the game from the rest of the series and is the one that ruins it. She accompanies you through the whole game. The temple has chosen her to save the world from Mr. Evil God n. 786 from Persian mythology and has, therefore, given her powers. Basically, she can fly and glows in white. If you remember Sands of Time series, it was a really difficult game, but the designers created the time manipulation dagger in order to give you the ability to rewind your false steps. But this had some limitations, it could only be done various times with the dagger full charged and only around 5 seconds back in time. The game was still challenging, and the feature very original and praised by everybody. In this new game, Elika replaces the dagger but, this time, there is no penalty at all. Every time you fall, Elika rescues you, every time you fall in the darkness (some black stuff that is everywhere) she saves you, every time an enemy is about to stab you, she saves you, etc. Oh!, and enemies cannot kill you at all, the prince feign hurt after the first hit, but that's about it.

This is absurd to the point that, later on, Elika suggests that using her powers tires her, but you can throw your prince into the void as many times as you want with Elika doing her thing all the time without any trace of tiredness. It would be a nice idea to have Elika get exhausted with time, giving a limit to her ability to save you.

Having different difficulty levels would have been a very good idea actually, because the game really feels like playing itself some times. Let's look at the gameplay. Playing the game is like this. Push 'w' (forward button), when you see a gap, press jump button, when you face a wall, press jump button, when you see a wall worn away, push jump button, when you see a ring, push the claw button, when screen fades to white, push Elika button, when you see an Elika special power circle, push Elika button. What if you are in a combat? I never mastered the combos, so maybe I'm missing something, but combats are pretty much like this. Face an enemy, push attack, Elika and claw buttons in a random sequence and the prince will perform a combo, if the block button appears, push the block button, if any of the other buttons appear, push that button. By the way, there is only one weapon in the whole game and combats are only one-on-one. Somebody would call this a downgrade in the series, but not Ubisoft (or maybe they do and don't care). And remember, you are immortal, the prince can only die in a combat if you just close the game because you are saturated of boring, repetitive combat.

Summarizing, the game is a fucking quick time event theme park!! When I had to move these two guys through far distances it was exasperating, my brain didn't even have to think one bit, I felt like a bloody robot pushing buttons while watching the prince walkrunning for the 162th time in the last minute. And when Elika's special powers were unlocked (you know, Persian bullshit super exotic powers, everybody knows about), watching them jumping from one end of the scenario to the other was like hearing the game calling all of my physics teachers a bunch of losers.

I guess not all of you reading this are so concern with realistic parkour but, considering the level reached by the Sands of Time trilogy and that the parkour masterpiece called Assassin's Creed is also an Ubisoft production, this game looks like big joke on all of the work made in this feature until today.

Lastly, I would like to talk a little bit about the famous "beautiful" and "artistic" scenarios in PoO, I mean, PoP (2008). As I said before, it is quite a visual pleasure to play this game, at least at the beginning, but soon the player will also feel uneasy with this. The first thing you notice is that this "Ringland" the princess lives in, has a highly structured shape. The game starts by the temple in front of which lies a desert in a semicircular extension. Limiting this extension there is a small mountain chain at which 4 buildings stand out at equidistant points at the horizon. Each of them are the first sight we have of the four parts of the kingdom (guarded by 4 corrupted characters, OBVIOUSLY). Each of this parts are composed of a circle with four circular scenarios each at equidistant points. At the center of each scenario, a boss fight awaits. And then, a boss scenario (probably circular, never played that far) in each of this 4 parts of the kingdom. Maybe the Persians did like rings and the number 4 to build their Evil God prisons (ask an archaeologist) or maybe level designers of PoP08 are just a bunch of circle-obsessed freaks with only 4 fingers in each hand.

In addition, the player will also have the sensation, sooner or later, that the people living there would use this magical parkour as their everyday mean of moving, as everything is designed to this end. Why are the walls full of rings?, why all the poles?, etc. The silliest detail many players will eventually suffer are the scratches in the walls that are used to visually tell the player to run through them (push jump button quick time event, that is). Every time, and with every time I mean every fucking time, the prince has to run through a wall, this wall will look like dozens of people run through it every day. This really is a good example on how soon did level designers drop realism in this game.

It is also very curious how all of the scenarios in Prince of Persia are embedded high above in circular cliffs. If I get it right, people were supposed to be living here, why would they ever build their houses over 100 meters above the ground? Every scenario is hanging absurdly high on these cliffs. Sands of Time trilogy never needed these tricks in level design, they could at least learn from the series the game supposedly comes from.

The Bottom Line
The only positive thing about this game is its beauty. Both sound and graphics looks like a peaceful painting (a sonorous painting, I guess) to relax into. But the gameplay has suffered a dead wound with respect to Sands of Time trilogy, with the obvious and despicable goal to please the most casual gamers. The saddest thing is that an option to level difficulty is a very easy to implement tool, to please both hardcore and casual gamers, but developers keep doing it wrong most of the times, if they even implement it.

In addition, realism has been totally discarded in this new PoP game. Many people may not care, but those of us who care, and, specially considering this was always an important feature of the series, do have a real hard time playing this. It defies logic even at most basic mechanical level. And the story also doesn't save the game at all. In fact, it looks like a really poor attempt to have a reason to do a new Prince of Persia game.

Windows · by MichaelPalin (1414) · 2009

Some impressive tricks and handsome looks can't save this banal Prince.

The Good
Back in 1989 I discovered a little gem by the name of Prince of Persia and it quickly became one of my all time favourite platformers. It had a sequel too, that was awesome as well. However the series seemed dead after a terrible attempt to update the game in 3D. I was skeptical when Ubisoft made the decision to try another 3D Prince of Persia game, but what a pleasant surprise, Sands of Time was a great game, and so was its first and second sequels, even if the jump to a violent brooding anti-hero was a stark and disappointing contrast to the charm of the first title.

So, despite the lack of originality in the name, I was looking forward to Ubisoft's next entry into the venerable series.

When starting the game up, one of the first things you will notice are the graphics and the art design. This game is downright GORGEOUS, and its visuals are very fresh. We live in a time where graphics are often gray and attempting to be "realistic," and this is one of the most violent eras in video gaming so most gamers are used to putting up with shattering bones and spilling blood, and I'm fine with gore, in fact I think it can be therapeutic and entertaining, but when you are so used to brutality and straight faced sci-fi or black fantasies, its fresh to step into something a little more appealing, and that is something that the new PoP does with grace.

The art design is dream like and looks as if it were laid down by a brush rather than a computer rendering station, and you will see bright, appealing colours that gives the game a magical and enchanting look. You won't see any oozing horrors or disemboweled corpses and as I said, its fresh to take a break and look at a game that is beautiful in a literal sense. I am embarrassed to admit this because I usually only find myself attracted to real women but Elika is quite easily the first female in a video game that I found beauty in when it comes to her visual design; I also like bare feet. Sorry if that's TMI..

The games setting, in case you didn't guess by the title, is ancient Persia. The plot is relatively simple. A princess named Elika was killed, and her father begged an evil Djinn (The proper spelling of "Genie" for those who do not know.) known as Ahriman to save her life. Ahriman grants this wish, and brings Elika back, but the price is if she is to remain alive the Sultan must free Ahriman. This turns out to be a bad idea (Surprise surprise) and Elika, who has the powers of the god of life Ormazd (Who is the one that imprisoned Ahriman) tries to stop her father but arrives a little too late. As the nameless Prince, you are wandering the desert looking for your Donkey, Farah (Oh ho, I see what you did there. >__>) and discover Elika when she is being chased by her fathers guards.

Elika in tow, you must save the world from Ahriman's darkness by spreading life across the land with Elika's powers. The story has problems, but the world is beautiful and there are nice undertones of mythology that give the game a unique, dream like feeling. Bringing a land back to life is an awesome sight thanks to the art, and at the same time seeing shadows crawl against the walls and grab at you is eerie and yet a wonderful effect. The game has a very dream like appearance and feeling, which makes the game a little more inviting.

There are a few good puzzles.

The controls are superb. Just about anyone can jump in and learn how to run across walls and swing from ledge to ledge in seconds with ease, thanks to Ubisoft's perfection of platforming controls using the Scimitar engine. With just the press of one or two buttons, you can perform exciting acrobatic tricks and leaps of faith and it all feels natural and is great to look at thanks to terrific animation. There are times where you forget there is a controller between you and the game and platforming can be very satisfying on occasion thanks to the intuitive controls.

The Bad
The game, sadly enough, has too many problems to make it worth your time. Firstly, the Prince needs to be hurled into the sun. I had a long ponder thinking who would be a more annoying flatmate, Naruto or the Prince and I think I'd rather put up with Naruto. At least Naruto has a purpose because if someone is coming to kill you Naruto would at least be able to pull a stupid magic power out of his ass and save you. The prince is not only annoying, he has no purpose in this game whatsoever.

I'm serious, The Prince is completely useless and has nothing to do with the task at hand. He contributes nothing. Sure he can run across walls, but Elika shows that she can run across walls too and arguably at faster speeds, and she also shows powers of levitation and the ability to reach higher places. The prince doesn't do anything to save the land from Ahriman, Elika does all the saving of the world by healing the land, in fact Elika saves the princes sorry ass and save for one obligatory kidnapping scene the prince never does anything to aid Elika, he may fight bad guys and he has that claw and sword, but Elika usually finishes off the bad guys with magic and her magic does more damage than the princes weapons. So why do we need The Prince? Elika is a better character, and she is the only one contributing to saving the world! The game should've been called "Princess of Persia" and been about Elika.

That, and he spouts annoying anachronisms consisting of one liners and pop culture references. There's a scene where he starts showing off like the pompous, cocky prick that he is and shouts "Thank you, thank you for coming to tonight's performance of the classic play, "DEATH OF A CONCUBINE." See, it's funny because this game is set in ancient Persia and Death of a Salesman wasn't written until the 20th century. Oh wait, that's not funny. A note to Ubisoft: Shrek was a funny movie. I'm glad you thought so too, but this is Prince of Persia, not Shrek so leave out the anachronistic pop culture gags, mmkay?

The design is all over the place. The game is a sandbox. Let that statement sink in for a moment and you will realize how stupid an idea it is to make a platforming game a sandbox game. I'm sure someone will argue that the far superior Assassin's Creed games pulled this off, but while Assassin's Creed does have plenty of platforming sections and the ability to freerun across roofs and climb towers, it is not a platformer so much as it is an action/adventure game. Prince of Persia is a straight up platformer, based entirely on the concept of platforming and performing acrobatics.

Applying a sandbox world to a game like this is a terrible idea for numerous reasons. One of the most obvious reasons is the fact that, as fun as the platforming can be at times, you will run into constant repetition. If the game had a linear path progression, each new area would have new platforms and tricks to perform to keep the flow going. Backtracking through all the same platforms gets tiresome and feels like a chore, and it doesn't help that an unintuitive map leads to confusion so you will often go through an entire section trying to get to your next point and find out that path isn't valid or its not unlocked so you will have to go back and start over to find a different path. I'm reminded of the fact that one could reverse death in Sands of Time, and maybe they should've allowed players to do that so they wouldn't have the constant tedium of backtracking through massive areas and would be able to rewind to the start of an area.

The game also forces you to back track and beat the world into repetition because of items you must collect. It is normal for a sandbox to have items scattered around that you can search for and collect and it adds an exploration element but it is all left to the players leisure. But in this game, you must collect every single one to progress. GTA III didn't force players to collect a specific number of hidden packages before they could start the next mission. It is tedious wanting to go to a new area, but finding you can't because you don't have enough stinking orbs and you have to run all the way back and try to get the orbs hiding at the top of a floating tree halfway into space, and it doesn't help that when you get enough orbs to complete a section, the game takes away your orbs and you have to start recollecting and the orbs don't regenerate.

The sandbox design also means that the levels are all over the place, and is about as easy to navigate as the Bermuda triangle. If each area were progressed in a linear manner this wouldn't be a problem, but as it is you can hardly find your way around even when Elika shines a light to your map marker because you can't memorize what platforming section leads to what and will often end up in the wrong area, and this is especially complicated when you haven't collected enough orbs to unlock a section and accidentally wander into a section that you aren't allowed in.

The game is too easy. You could beat the game playing with your feet and never die or feel the sting of an enemies blade a single goddamn time. Every time you fall, Elika picks you back up and she does the same if you run into one of Ahriman's shadows that try and gobble you up, and every time an enemy gets too close for comfort Elika just blasts them away from you with magic. In The Sands of Time, it was a nice feature to be able to rewind and fix your screw ups but it was balanced because you had limited sand and your character could still potentially die.

As frustrating as death can be, Prince of Persia is all about trial and error as well as learning from mistakes. The first two games were practically games of memory, you had to memorize what floor had spikes and what ledges led to a platform or a pit. What makes the original, and even Sands of Time, PoP games so exciting is the fact that you know death is clinging on your back so hard you could sue him for sexual harassment, and when you managed to skip over a yawning chasm of doom and give Death a big middle finger you would get a rush of adrenaline and a sigh of relief. Death is quite possibly the most important aspect of Prince of Persia, and removing it means you will never have that excitement of defying death which makes the game dull and takes out any enjoyment the platforming can bring all too quickly. The banality of this game is disappointing, only an hour or two in you'll have seen all there is and the platforming will become dull and predictable, and you'll soon become bored of seeing Elika save the Prince from death and won't even care about trying not to fall to your non-existent doom because you know Elika will just push you back up onto the platform you were trying to reach.

The Bottom Line
This new Prince has a few impressive tricks up his sleeve, and he certainly looks handsome and appealing, but when he opens his mouth and tries to invite you into his home you'll realize you've seen it all before and his tricks get stale and his annoying sense of humour reveal a poor personality. It's disappointing seeing what glimpses of goodness are in this game, you certainly wish you could see more of his lovely wife and less of him and that his family architect had paid more attention to the fine details of his home but sadly it just isn't there and the spark only lasts so long.

Well, I'm running out of metaphors to beat to death, but all you need to know is that Prince of Persia is a disappointment. Platforming is fun for awhile and it looks good, so it might make a decent rental but it simply has no staying power and so many bad design choices ruin what could've been a wonderful title.

Xbox 360 · by Kaddy B. (777) · 2010

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2008 – #5 Xbox 360 Game of the Year
    • 2008 – #7 PS3 Game of the Year
    • 2008 – Special Achievement in Art Direction Award

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sicarius.

OnLive added by firefang9212. Macintosh added by Zeppin.

Additional contributors: MichaelPalin, Zeppin, Klaster_1, —-, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third.

Game added December 13, 2008. Last modified March 24, 2024.