Game Reviews
Review: Prince of Persia
By Eli Green February 3, 2009 - 18:30
Studios: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher(s): Ubisoft
Rating: T
Genre: Platformer
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC
Players: 1
An
all new Prince begins a brand new adventure, and with that a
franchise is reborn. This time, however, the Prince is nothing more
than your average grave robber who winds up in the wrong place, at
the wrong time, and ends up in the middle of a celestial war. The new
Prince, once again unnamed, stumbles upon a decaying city while
searching for his donkey, Farah (an homage to the Sands
of Time
trilogy),
in the middle of a sand storm. He soon meets Elika, the city's
Princess, and follows her to the shrine which holds Ahriman, the God
of Darkness. Unfortunately for them, instead of preventing Ahriman
from escaping, their entering the shrine only leads to the
destruction of the final bonds holding the dark god captive, and it
is now up to them to set things right.
Ubisoft
has, once again, reinvented this classic franchise with a brand new
look, feel and story. What was not so new this time, was the concept
behind this new game's story. Like the Sands
of Time
trilogy, Prince
of Persia
finds the new Prince unwittingly assisting in the unleashing of an
evil force, which threatens to destroy the world. It is then up to
him to reverse what he has done, or, in this case, what Elika's
father has done. Now he and Elika must find all of the Fertile
Grounds within the city (sort of like enchanted gardens) and restore
their power to bring back the light.
Healing the Fertile Grounds
What
was new with this game was the development team's approach to the
concept. While previously, the Prince had started, and was
essentially the cause of the events of the previous trilogy, the new
Prince has simply landed in the middle of the events of the celestial
war between Ormazd, the God of Light, and Ahriman, the God of
Darkness, and you end up learning all about the events of the
celestial war along with him, as you progress through the game. And
the further you venture on, the more you are immersed within a
wanderer's story of finding who he really is, and a Princess' battle
to save her land.
Gameplay
It
appears that Ubisoft is very close to having the concept of great
third-person platforming down pat. While could really see the
development advance within each installment of the Sands
of Time trilogy,
this new addition to the franchise shows that the team has managed to
improve on their platforming design while simplifying the control
system.
Movement
and camera controls are your standard left analogue and right
analogue stick mapping, the A button makes the Prince jump, the B
button makes the Prince interact with gripping rings, and that's
about it as far as the majority of your basic gameplay will go. The
two major differences now are that there is no wall run button, so
you have to be a bit more careful about where you're jumping from,
and the Prince now has a partner, Elika, who can help him jump over
longer distances (essentially a double jump). Speaking of simplicity
in design, there is only one button for controlling Elika's actions,
the Y button. With that one button, Elika can help you extend a jump,
or she can attack, use a Power Pad (more on that later), guide you to
a desired location or heal a Fertile Ground.
Elika, show me the way
The
majority of the gameplay in Prince
of Persia
is spent in platforming, exploring the city, trying to get from one
Fertile Ground to the next and heal each of them. Most of the Fertile
Grounds can only be accessed by using the different Power Pads
scattered within each section of the city, with the exception of the
four district gates. Once a section of the city is healed, you'll
have to collect Light Seeds in that section to increase Elika's
magical powers. Each new power gives Elika the ability to use one of
the four Power Pad types – The Step of Ormazd, The Breath of
Ormazd, The Wings of Ormazd and The Hand of Ormazd – each of which
lets the Prince and Elika access areas they wouldn't be able to
otherwise. For instance, The Breath of Ormazd lets the Prince do a
gravity defying run up or around walls, while The Wings of Ormazd
will send Elika flying on a specific course, with the Prince holding
for dear life to her shoulders.
I
thoroughly enjoyed the platforming in this game, with the exception
of a small issue. The platforming was brilliantly modeled to allow
you to get the Prince from one section of the city to another as
quickly as possible, excluding teleporting of course. Every single
jump, post, ring and landing was precisely placed for the Prince to
just keep moving, while the placement of the Light Seeds made for a
great challenge, requiring you to look around everywhere in each
section of the city for any path or Power Pad that could lead you to
a grouping of Seeds which were, seemingly, out of reach. And since
it's an open world, you can explore and play through the story in the
order you choose. I find it particularly cool that once you've healed
a section of the city, it is then safe to explore, and the only traps
you'll encounter are the pitfalls of a poorly timed or aimed jump.
This also changes the landscape in that section, from its corrupted
form to its healed form, so more areas in each section may be open to
explore.
Issues
began to arise though, when I tried to get the Prince to do a wall
run, but he ended up jumping up that section of wall instead. The
only thing below him would be a massive drop, and the only place for
him to jump to was nowhere. This problem left me conflicted about the
removal of the wall run button. While I enjoyed the ability to jump
at the wall and have the Prince just run all by himself, especially
with that short slow motion bit before the wall run starts, the
margin for error was a tad worrisome. Jumping from a specific point
would sometimes end in the wall run, while other times it would end
in the Prince climbing up the wall end then plummeting to his doom. I
did manage to figure out the best points to jump from, making this
problem minimal to non-existent, but it still happen from time to
time. The cool thing about falling in this game though, is that Elika
saves the Prince every time, and simply takes him back to the last
land area he was standing on. This means no loading points! No game
over! Just pick yourself back up and move on. This goes for combat
too, except that when Elika saves the Prince in combat, the enemy's
health will recover.
The
game's combat controls are simple as well, though they can get more
complicated as you try to string attacks together into long combos.
The A button performs acrobatic attacks, or dodges and rolls while
holding the left analogue stick, the X button performs sword attacks,
the B controls grab and throw attacks, the Y button, as mentioned
above, controls Elika's attacks, and the Right Trigger or Right
Bumper make the Prince block or counter attacks. While the combat
controls themselves are simple, taking on an enemy in combat gets a
little more complicated. While you're on the offensive, you do your
best to either knock Ahriman's soldiers off of the platform you're
fighting on, use the environment against them or just kill them. You
may not be on the offensive for long though, as enemies can counter
your attacks, which you have to either quickly block or counter with
another attack. Countering is made somewhat difficult, because the
game goes into slow motion in preparation for your counter attack, so
even after you press the button, you might have to do it again to
make sure it accepted the press, so timing attacks, especially longer
combos, can be a bit difficult.
Blowing the Hunter away
Things
can get more challenging if you get knocked down or if you are
fighting with one of Ahriman's four Corrupted (the game's four
sub-bosses). If you get knocked down, the enemy you're fighting will
come in for a kill strike. You only have a second to press the button
that appears on the screen in order to save yourself. Otherwise,
Elika will have to save you and the enemy's health will recover.
While in a fight with one of the four Corrupted, they may attack you
with a power attack, which only gives you the same option to counter
as when you're knocked down. Instead of trying to counter or block,
you have to press the button that appears on the screen, and this
will save you or counter their attack. And as I've noted before,
I'm not such a big fan of the duels only approach that the team took
with this game. While I think it's a cool addition, I still don't
think they should have taken out multi-enemy combat.
Finally,
while you could go on and play the game as if there's nothing to do
but run around healing corrupted lands, you could take your time and
further immerse yourself within the story's background. Within the
game's map section, each section of the city has its own background,
which Elika will tell you, upon request. You can also take the time
to chat with Elika at any point in the game, whether it's just to get
advice on where to go next, or to find out more about her, her
people, or even to just play a friendly game of I Spy.
Environment
and Graphics
A
fully immersing world, highly stylized design and precise attention
to detail make the environment and graphics in Prince
of Persia top
notch. The astounding thing about the design of this game is that it
makes you feel like you just entered a full blown world. It's huge,
it's beautiful, at least the healed sections, and it sucks you in.
Each of the city's four districts has its own feel and style, and you
can even see from one district from the edge of another district. The
only issue with all of this, slight as it may be, is that, aside from
the Royal Palace, there aren't really any areas of the city that make
it look like there were people living there. There are gardens and
markets and areas of industry, but nothing that looked particularly
house like. It appears that with all the amazing city design, the
development team forgot one of the main aspects of a city – people.
Vines with a view
The
other amazing thing about the “level” design in the game is that
with the creation of this open world came a seamless style. You can
actually explore the entire world without every noticing any real
loading, except for the beginning of the game, loading a saved game
or when teleporting from one point to another. Otherwise, you're just
exploring and fully immersed. Not only that, but there is basically
no visual interface to the game. Apart from the Light Seed counter,
which pops up when you collect them, and the button symbols for
during combat or when you need to know what specific button to press,
you'll be free to explore with an absolutely clear view of everything
around you.
Wall crawling, ring flipping fun. Just don't look down
The
artistic design in Prince
of Persia is
a mix of cel-shading with full three dimensional design I've never
seen before, and I love it. After seeing the original Ubidays
trailer
for the game I was a bit skeptical that this kind of art style was
the right way to go with the franchise, but it flows so well. Now
that I've seen it, I can tell that it is actually the perfect design
style to create the atmosphere for this type of game. It's as if the
art team took the idea of sand blowing in a storm and turned it into
their artistic style. And this style translated directly to the
character designs. From the models to their clothing, everything is a
flowing, desert inspired design, and it's enjoyable to see.
Sound
Flawless.
Yes, I said it. The sound design was flawless. Music, effects, voice;
it was all perfect! The music accompanied the atmosphere of this game
to a tea. Keeping with the traditions of the Sands
of Time trilogy,
the music for Prince
of Persia had
an Arabic-orchestral mix, except they went back to a more classic
style, took out the rock elements that were introduced in Prince
of Persia: Warrior Within,
and returned the music to its core points. What threw me though, in a
pleasant way, was the light, almost Lord
of the Rings shire
style music for the healed sections of the city. I wasn't expecting
it, but when I heard it, I loved it.
Battling the Warrior King
What
can I say about the sound effects that you probably haven't heard
before? Probably not all that much. I liked them. That's all you
really need to know. The voice acting is much more ear catching
anyway. There was so much voice acting in this game, thanks in part
to all of the conversations, that I am grateful the voice actors were
as good as they were. There weren't any annoying or out of place
voices, just characters with attitude, personality and, at times,
tear jerking emotion.
Conclusion
Prince
of Persia is
one of those games that reminds me why I love platforming games.
While it's not perfect, it has enjoyable gameplay, an involving
storyline, an immersive world, a symphony for the ears and an
impressive style all its own. You could speed your way through or
delve in as deep as you please. Whichever you prefer, Prince
of Persia is
a game you've got to pick up and play.