YouGamers.com

Reviews

Prince of Persia

The Adventures of Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia has always been about acrobatic movement, sword fights and puzzles based on terrain and the same is still true with the latest incarnation - to a degree. While Sands of Time used to give you small glimpses of the future as hints on how to tackle the next area, Prince of Persia just tosses out the whole puzzle aspect and spells out the intended route with Elika's spell that clearly shows the path you should take to reach the destination you selected on the map. There are still a few real puzzles where you get to fiddle around with some mechanical contraptions to open up the route onwards, but they are very rare. Most of the time you just have to dash onwards where Elika points you to go, as if playing "on rails".

Got lost? Impossible - just follow the glowing thing.

One of the few puzzles left in the game.

The acrobatic aspect of the series is then turned all the way to eleven - with the usual acrobatic skills of the Prince, the new claw and with Elika and her ability to support a "double jump", the Prince can navigate through the seemingly impossible levels with ease and where Prince goes, Elika will always follow. The action flows effortlessly and the controls are very responsive. However, in some places the game almost turns into a Dragon's Lair-style pre-defined set of movement commands that have to be inputted in a non-stop sequence of wall runs, jumps, double jumps and power plate activations.

Allow me to demonstrate...

I know game physics commonly have little to do with reality, but wall run sequences like this go beyond mere artistic license and into the silly land. Granted, it looks impressive and the action flows beautifully. It's still silly. It's also good fun. I personally preferred the more realistic style of action as seen in Sands of Time trilogy, but ultimately if you can ignore the issue, the action of Prince of Persia is beautiful and great fun.

Combat? Yeah, there is some and it also flows well as a mixture of massive combination attacks and reactionary quick time events as Prince and Elika both assault the few massive creatures you come across. It's decisively a side-dish and the action is split about 90% acrobatics, 10% combat. In most areas there is only one actual battle - at the fertile ground with the corrupted guardian that Ahriman has placed to protect it.

Immortal Prince

In addition to the helping hand that allows you to double-jump, Elika can extend that hand to save you from anything. Effectively there is no way to kill the Prince - you always get saved by your resourceful sidekick. If you would have fallen to your death, she'll pull you up and deposit you at the last safe spot on your route - usually just a few steps back. In combat if you end up beaten to a point where you would be killed, Elika will cast a spell that pushes the enemy back and lets you and your enemy both recover. You get to fight on while your enemy gains some of his health back.

Don't worry, Elika will catch you. Every time.

Some leaps off Power Plates are just insane.

This little feature of the game has divided people - some complain how the game is too easy or stupid because you can't die, others praise it for taking the logical step to remove frustration from the game by streamlining the whole "you died, try again?" part to the extreme. I'm somewhat mixed on the issue. Why reinvent the wheel and do it badly? I mean back in Sands of Time they had already solved the problem. You had the Dagger of Time that allowed you to actually rewind time - failed jump could be rewinded back for an instant replay, bad hit from an enemy could be rewound back and blocked. This was a cool feature that worked great. The solution used in Prince of Persia feels weaker, because it removes some of that sense of danger from the game.

But what's so different between a sidekick that always saves your bacon and a dagger that lets you rewind back time? Well, for starters, the dagger had a limited number of charges for the ability. Over the course of game you could unlock additional "sand tanks" for more uses, but you always had to replenish those charges by killing off sand creatures and sucking up the Sand of Time that was locked inside breakable objects. If you ran out of charges, there would be no rewinding when you messed up the next time and you would die. Okay, the game wouldn't actually end - the narrator would break in and comment "No, that's not how the story goes...", restarting the game from the beginning of the current area, but you get the idea.

This created a sense of urgency towards the end of an area in Sands of Time and it was a good thing - you would have to make sure those jumps and blocks were executed properly or you would get to replay quite a bit. Would it be frustrating to do so? At times, but it added the required penalty (lost time) for failing at the game too badly. Small mistakes could be insta-rewound for almost no loss of time, but keep failing and you ultimately do have to pay for it. In comparison, Prince of Persia sets the penalty far too low. Sure, in long chains of jumps like the video above you get to replay it from the start if you fall - but the time lost is still insignificant and in most cases you lose almost no time as you get just yanked back a step. More streamlined, less frustrating? Yes. Too easy? Yes.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Game World, Visuals, PerformancePage 4: Summary, Scores

Related Stuff

Tags