Prince of Persia

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.