Review – Prince of Persia (XBox 360/PS3)
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
Prince of Persia is back with a brand new adventure. Does the new Prince run along walls and leap chasms with ease? Or does he fall flat on his face?
Reboots are all the rage these days, and Prince of Persia is no exception. Instead of trying to continue the Sands of Time trilogy, Ubisoft decided to create a brand new adventure starring a completely different title character. The result is a game that is sort of a semi-related cousin to the previous titles.
The new Prince, who is really just a glorified thief instead of actual royalty, finds himself lost in a desert searching for his gold-laden donkey. He soon runs into a princess named Elika and becomes entangled in her plight. Long ago the god of light, Ormazd, was forced to trap the god of darkness, Ahriman, and his corrupting influence inside a sacred tree. Thousands of years later, Ormazd is long gone, and Ahriman is trying to escape from his prison.
Freddy ain't got nothing on me!
The Prince follows Elika to the temple in the middle of the desert that houses the sacred tree. However, when they get there, Elika’s father chops the glowing tree in half with his sword, releasing Ahriman’s corruption and darkness upon the land. The dark god is still trapped inside the tree, but his prison is weakening. Elika and the Prince set out to cleanse the land of corruption in order to keep that catastrophe from happening.
To pull off this monumental task, the Prince and Elika must find several “fertile grounds” and purge the corruption from each area by unleashing Elika’s magic. Once all of the fertile grounds have been cleansed of evil, their combined power will allow the pair to go back to the temple and reseal Ahriman inside his prison.
Prince of Persia’s story is fairly simple but well-told. There are several cutscenes during the game that explain what is going on, but the tale especially comes to life if you take advantage of the “on demand” dialogue system. At any point during the game, you can hit a button to talk to Elika. She will describe the history of the land, convey points of interest from the area you are in, or reveal information on your enemies. Sometimes the dialogue has nothing to do with what you are doing, and the Prince and Elika will get into a sparring match. It is all completely optional, but it goes a long way towards developing the two characters and their relationship.
Standing in the Prince’s way are four of Ahriman’s henchmen, each with certain strengths and weaknesses that you need to exploit in order to defeat them. Rather than throwing you into battles with multiple enemies at a time, Prince of Persia focuses on head to head duels. You are able to trigger several different attacks with simple button presses, combining them into impressive combos that cause more damage than a single attack. You can use the Prince’s sword, gauntlet, and Elika’s magical powers to attack your foes as well as taking advantage of your acrobatics to lengthen combos. You will have several encounters with each of the henchmen throughout the game.
Cool kids use an underhanded grip.
Making your way to all the fertile grounds requires some fancy moves on the Prince’s part. Running and jumping through the environment has always been the strength of the Prince of Persia games, and this one is no different. You are able to run along and up walls, climb cliffs using special rings mounted to the wall, jump between giant columns, and use your gauntlet to slowly slide down vertical surfaces. Elika can even help you to leap across longer distances by giving you a magical boost, effectively giving you a double jump.
Elika will rescue you any time you are about to fall to your death by pulling you back to the last stable surface you were on. This is a clever way to handle a checkpoint system, and it effectively keeps you in the action and prevents things from getting too frustrating. Moving through an area can become very rhythmic once you get used to how the Prince moves and start to recognize the visual clues in the environment that tell you where to go. You will have the most success when pressing the right button at the right time.
Each time you cleanse one of the fertile grounds, glowing orbs called “light seeds” are scattered throughout the area. Collecting these seeds causes Elika’s power to grow, eventually unlocking four different special powers. These powers help you reach previously unreachable places in specific areas. Each power is tied to a specially-colored plate. Triggering Elika’s magic on one of these plates will allow you to soar through the air or run long distances up walls. You can unlock these powers in any order that you choose, somewhat giving you the ability to pick your path through the game.
After you unlock the last of Elika’s powers, you will find that there are still a few hundred light seeds left lying around. Collecting these can be a lot of fun, especially because doing so takes you to many different nooks and crannies that you might not have bothered to find otherwise. Collecting every single orb isn’t necessary, but it is great to have if you like to compulsively collect things in video games.
I'll take the Express to the ground floor please.
Prince of Persia has a slick art style that the developer describes as illustrative cel-shading. I would describe it as more of a living watercolor painting. Regardless of what you call it, the art style is beautiful and unique. There are many places in the game where I paused for several moments to admire the scenery. Everything looks very good in its corrupted state. However, after an area has been cleansed, the colors become really vibrant and the world seems to pop off the screen. I found many of these places to be rather breathtaking.
The Prince’s new adventure is a worthy one. Unfortunately it comes to an end far too quickly. Prince of Persia isn’t very long, even if you take the time to track down every single light seed before finishing the game. It can be a good thing to leave your audience wanting more, but not when it detracts from the experience at hand. When the journey was over, it felt like it had only just begun.
Final Grade: B+
Gallery of Images
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- Cool kids use an underhanded grip.
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- Freddy ain’t got nothing on me!
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- I’ll take the Express to the ground floor please.
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Book of the Month
Y The Last Man Vol. 5In this final Deluxe Edition hardcover collecting Y #49-60, Yorick and Agent 355 prepare for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with his lost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wiped out half of humanity is revealed. Then, Yorick Brown's long journey through an Earth populated only by women comes to its dramatic, unexpected conclusion.
Thanks for the help, I loved the previous entries in the Sands of Time Trilogy and was wondering if this is a buy or rental. It sounds so amazing but the shortness makes me think rental. Thanks!
The complaint I keep hearing is that the game is far too easy. I know that Elika is apparently where the problem lies, in that she saves you anytime you fall or get killed. However, my opinion has always been that the difference between you getting saved and re-loading a save was minimal at best. Especially since I heard that when she saves you, she more often than not throws you back to the start of the area you had the misstep on. However, I’m not sure how well that system works, and what the deal is with her saving you in a boss fight.
Opinions on that subject? Definitely need a review score system :)
Any suggestions for a good scoring system that doesn’t use numbers or letter?
Partially eaten ginger bread cookies? Mewing kittens? I dunno :)
The problem I’m having is anything I come up with is either too arbitrary to actually mean anything (Prince of Persia gets a “fluffy” rating), it relates back to numbers in some way (recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists!), or it is too boring (buy it/rent it/skip it).
Boring might ensure that the system is there for people that care about a scale (Me!), but not so important that people skip the rest of the article. I can’t remember if it was 1up of Gamespot, but a lot of people were happy when they went with a gradeschool rating scale. A+ to A-, then all the way down to F-. That way people can’t “easily” equate the score to a number system, it’s broad enough that you don’t have to really discriminate between games in the same level, and yet, it’s still a scale powerful enough to see where you stand on the issue.
Something to consider, anyway.
I also had a thought. The word cakewalk went through my head, and that got me thinking about food (plus your cookie comment probably had something to do with it). Maybe I should come up with some sort of food-related descriptor as a rating. I wouldn’t keep the same ones on a scale, but the descriptors would clue people in on the experience of a game. The only bad thing is it might get difficult coming up with good food titles.
Anyway, some examples:
Prince of Persia = Fancy Cupcake
GTA or Fallout 3 = Thanksgiving Dinner
Crackdown = Drive-Thru Burger & Fries
Sneak King – Rotten Egg
I also like 1Up’s use of letter grades rather than a number scale. Maybe I should keep it simple and go with that.
Elika saves you whenever you are about to die, no matter when that is. If you are about to die during one of the battles, she will save you, but the enemy will regain a large amount of health every time she does so. It didn’t really bother me at all, but I can see how it would annoy some people.
Ah ha. I had taken it that she comes in to fight the boss while you regain yourself. Yeah, that’s not so bad.
Mind you, the same complaints annoyed me whenever people played Bioshock. That was also not “Far too easy”, IMO.
That was a really well thought-out review. I loved the SoT trilogy. “far too easy” = fun + rental (for me.)
Generally “far too easy” for everyone else ranks at “just about right” for me. Which is why I asked for clarification.
I think most of the “far too easy” comments stem from how the platforming works and because there is no actual “game over” screen. For some people, it seems like they think a game is more difficult if you have to reload after going to a game over screen, something that I don’t think really adds up. Sands of Time had a game over screen, but all it did was send you back to the last checkpoint. This game really does the same thing, it just doesn’t call attention to itself.
When you jump towards a wall, you will stick to it and the Prince will automatically run along it as afar as he can. You can’t adjust his steering or anything. It’s all determined on what place you hit the wall at. This game is also different from something like Assassin’s Creed in that there are specific paths through the environment that you go through rather than being able to climb on just about everything in sight. To get to that platform you see in the distance, there is usually only one path to get there, maybe two.
I found Prince of Persia to be about average difficulty. It wasn’t punishing difficulty, but it wasn’t a cakewalk either. Sometimes it’s fun to just run through an environment without having to worry about death all the time.
I suck at video games, so the Prince of Persia triogy has kind of been a blessing for me… If I had my brother’s 360 at college I would play it. I would definately reccomend the original though.
Sands of Time: Awesome… Amazing… Bliss…
Warrior Within: Badass… But… Not as… Good… Go back to linear…
The Two Thrones:Love… Giddiness… Linear… :)
I am interested in this game. It looks great and won’t take too long to play. I am guessing this would make a pretty good rental.
on a related note: as Dave Barry would say, ‘gold-laden donkey’ would be a great name for a band.
Let’s put it this way, there is an achievement for beating the game in under 12 hours. I was able to beat it much quicker than that.