Run, jump, die, repeat. Run, jump, die, repeat. The Prince of Persia franchise is Ubisoft’s most known gaming series. The Sands of Time trilogy introduced some very fun game mechanics: some neat acrobatics actions, hard puzzles, a good fighting system and, of course, its most well-known mechanic, the time control. Ubisoft probably could have done the same thing for the next game, and it would have done well; however, they chose to do something different, and rebooted the franchise for this generation.
Simply titled “Prince of Persia” this game starts with a new prince and a new storyline, which has nothing to do with the last trilogy (though there are some easter eggs for those hardcore fans). Going back to the teen rating, this game went under a makeover. The cell-shaded graphics are quite stunning; the level of detail alone in the graphics helps demonstrate just how far cell-shading has come. I suggest that if you do play this game, that you don’t press any buttons for a while, allowing the game to show you the environments from several angles. The game’s open-environments are quite different from the previous games: very large in size. It takes a while to get to every point but once you’ve healed a point, you can fast travel through you map. I’ve never used it however: I enjoyed running and jumping to every point far too much; it made the game more enjoyable exploring each part, even if it was the same thing over and over again. This game itself is the most non-linear game of the franchise, even though it still is rather linear: choosing in which order to free the various Fertile Grounds (the places which have been corrupted) allows you to move forward in the story somewhat freely.
This game starts off with the Prince getting lost in the desert, and somehow happens to find the hidden city of Ahura. You meet up with Princess Elika who is trying to stop her father from getting to the temple of the Tree of Life. Unfortunately when you get to the Tree of the Life, her father releases the dark God of Ahriman; this causes the land to die and become corrupted, which releases all of the minions of Ahriman. However Ahriman isn’t quite released from the tree just yet. Your task is to get to everyone of the Fertile Grounds that are corrupted and heal them. This will then allow you to power the temple, stopping Ahriman from escaping. To sum things up, you go to each part of the city; going through each obstacle, beating the bosses who defend the Fertile Grounds, and then heal the land making it all pretty with colors and plants.
This game does not have the time control as it did with last games, which is really what made the Prince of Persia games; however, this game does not suffer from loosing that. Elika is pretty much your personal guardian angel. She saves you no matter what, if you’re falling, she saves you, if you’re about to get your head chopped off, she saves you, even when she’s trapped, she somehow saves you, so you don’t even have to pause the game anymore: you won’t die. This makes the game extremely easy; however it’s a nice feature. Think about it, when you make a mistake by jumping off a wall too late, you don’t have to go through any menus, you only have to go through a 2 second animation and you’re brought back to your last stable ground. In battles, when she does save you, your enemy will gain some of his life back, making it still a bit of a challenge to beat them. Elika isn’t just a person that saves you through, with her magic she is quite powerful, she follows you wherever you go (and never gets in the way), helping you through your obstacles with her double jump ability. In addition she can also use her magic to guide you ro where you have to go next by sending a beam of light ahead of you, making it quite impossible of getting lost, which is my favourite feature. I hated getting stuck in the previous games. The relationship between the Prince and Elika makes them a good team and they have some interesting dialog; if you want to get to know them better however, you never find out that much about the Prince, the dialog usually focuses on and around Elika. All of this makes you care about Elika making her more than just a game mechanic.
Both of the characters are in the best shape in the world, making them able to pull off some nice acrobatics. Like the previous games there is some wall running, jumping on poles and climbing on cliffs, but they added some more to this installment. There are the interesting roof-run, which allows you to run across the ceiling and there are grip-falls, which let you to slide down any wall by using your gauntlet. Surprisingly the camera works well; once in a while it does go crazy for a second, but it pretty stable for the most part. It should also be mentioned that the controls are very tight, allowing for moving and tricking to be done very naturally, which is of great importance since you will find yourself doing these throughout the entire game.
Light seeds are just like the flags in Assassin’s Creed, but they are needed in the storyline. There are a 1001 of these seeds but you only need 540 to beat the game. You can only collect this seeds once you’ve healed the land. Once you get enough of these, Elika can gain a power of Ormazd (the God of Light) which allows you to activate these power plates. There are four power plates: red, yellow, green and blue. Each allows you to gain access to a lock area. These power plates are mostly just roller coaster affects when you activate them; you do a magical action that transport you to the next place; the green one however, does allow you for some control over your movement, which, needless to say, is my favourite of all four.
The fighting system has changed vastly from the last Prince of Persia, but change isn’t always good. Not to say that it is bad, but it just doesn’t deliver what I was hoping for. Unlike the game Assassin’s Creed, allowing you to fight multiple enemies at once, you can only fight one enemy at a time, which I like the concept of; however, I thought the enemies were going to be epic battles, but unfortunately, they only look epic and don’t actually feel that way. Once you get into a fight, you change into battle mode; there is the Sword, Gauntlet, Acrobatic and Elika button from which you can choose from; each of which performs a different action. The camera will focus onto the enemy’ in these instances, your sole responsibility is to defeat your opponent. You can pull off some nice combos, especially with Elika, but battles are rather short, especially with the minions; I usually just push them off a cliff. The worst thing about them are the quick time events. There are so many in a battle that they quickly become annoying, especially during boss battles. They do try to spice things up by having the bosses change forms. While in their various forms, only specific attacks will work on them, and these specific types of attacks are the only way to return them to their normal state. Even though this sounds like a good idea in theory, it also quickly becomes a chose because the bosses tend to switch states rather repeatedly. The bosses themselves are generally very repetitive. Thankfully, if you can manage to reach the minion before he spawns, you can kill him with one hit, making it less frustrating to deal with.
Overall this is a great installment in the Prince of Persia franchise. It’s a great adventure game (I would much rather play a game like this then Devil May Cry - though both the main characters use the same voice actor). This game is rather short though; I beat it under 12 hours, although I haven’t found all seeds, and because it only has one difficulty setting, it doesn’t have much replay value. Unless you are a hardcore Prince of Persia fan, I wouldn’t recommend buying this game; I’d suggest you pick it up as a renter instead.
