Everyone has their dirty little secret. Mine is that I didn't play the Sands of Time trilogy. In gaming circles, that's blasphemous. At the same time, it put me in good stead going into this game; With no preconceived ideas of what the franchise "should" be like, I wasn't going to be swayed by the menacing face of change. And you know what? This game is pretty damn good.
The Prince of Persia franchise rose to fame during the last console generation, where its unique take on the platforming genre and interesting time-control mechanics were met with rounds of applause from critics and fans alike. With that story all wrapped up by the end of the trilogy, it was time for a reboot and a fresh direction for the first next-gen installment. Prince of Persia, for the 360 and PS3, is a clean start for the franchise that lays the foundations for future greatness, but falls short of legendary status itself.
The game begins with the luckless Prince - a different Prince to the one from the previous trilogy (and who isn't actually a prince) - caught in a sandstorm in the middle of the desert. He's lost his donkey, Farah, and the king's ransome in stolen gold she was carrying on her back. More to the point, he's hopelessly lost. So when he comes across a beautiful princess named Elika - or rather, when a beautiful princess named Elika falls on top of him - it's little wonder he follows along. Unknowingly, the Prince walks right into the middle of a war between Elika's people, the Ahura, and the all-powerful God of Darkness, Ahriman. Now unwittingly involved, the Prince joins forces with Elika in order to free the four lands of Persia from the hands of Ahriman's corrupted soldiers - and so he can walk away from this alive.
PoP is beautiful. The world has a calming, watercolor look to it that is hard to describe but absolutely beautiful in motion. The draw distance is amazing, with hills stretching on for miles in all directions. The character models are spot-on and the animation quality is amazing; Aside from the Prince's head scarf, nothing ever clips, and there are no "jagged" gaps between different frames of animation. The entire game just flows, and half the fun of this experience comes from watching the world unfold around you.
The gameplay is a refreshing change of pace for the genre. Doing well is as much about letting the Prince glide gracefully around the world as it is about making precision movements. What's even more amazing is how simple it all is. Jump toward a wall at an angle and the Prince will run across it for as far as his momentum will carry him. Jump directly at a wall and the Prince will climb it. Climb to the top of a pole and press A to make the Prince scamper along the ceiling. While performing any of these motions, you can press A again to jump away from the surface, or B to interact with objects on the wall - such as metal rings - which you can use to regain lost momentum and continue your gravity-defying run. There's no button mashing required here; Time your inputs properly and the Prince can traverse entire chasms without ever having to stop.
There are two sides to the level design. On one hand, it's amazing to watch. Running across a wall, jumping out across a chasm, climbing a wall on the other side, jumping towards a pole and then swinging to the next solid platform sounds thrilling as I type it and is the sort of thing you'll see every ten seconds in PoP. The downside is that, in order to make everything flow so well, the level design is incredibly simple. It all looks great, but actually performing these acrobatic stunts requires hardly any button inputs at all. In some cases, you might not even need to touch the control stick after your initial leap, as the levels themselves are designed to push Prince towards his next stunt.
As you progress through the game, you will collect orbs called Light Seeds which - when you have enough - can be used to activate new Power Plates. The Plates give Elika and the Prince new powers for travelling about the world. The Red and Blue plates are essentially the same, bouncing the duo to far-away platforms. The Yellow Plate gives Elika the gift of flight, and the Green Plate gives the Prince the ability to run up walls. Each area in the game requires a different Power Plate, so the order in which you choose to activate the Plates also determines which lands you can access.
Elika is useful for other things, too. If the Prince isn't going to make a jump, tap Y and Elika will hurl him the extra distance. Fall off a ledge? Don't worry, Elika will reach out and grab you, pulling you to safety. Die in battle? Elika will revive you and let you continue the fight (although the enemy will almost completely heal whatever damage they'd sustained). The fact you can't actually die is a great idea: It cuts out any unecessary "Game Over: Would you like to restart?" screens (of course I want to restart) and does away with the need to replay huge sections of the level every time you fail. Not dying doesn't make the game easier, it makes it more fun.
As you progress through the game, you'll meet up with the four Corrupted warriors of Ahriman: The Hunter, the Concubine, the Warrior and the Alchemist. Each of the Corrupted rules over a different land, and you'll face each of them several times as you purge the world of darkness. Eventually, each one of them will release a different "trap" into the world, which will impede your progress whenever you travel through un-healed lands. For example, the Hunter releases black blobs of dark matter that travel up and down the many cliff faces in the game, forcing you to time each jump carefully. The Concubine releases a swarm of black bees that chase you whenever you're not on solid ground. Furthermore, these traps stack, so the further into the game you get - and the more Corrupted you subsequently piss off - the more traps you'll have to deal with. By the end of the game, you'll be skillfully avoiding all four traps at the same time. As you can imagine, things get rather hectic.
Like the rest of the game, the combat in Prince of Persia focuses on flow. X is for sword attacks, A is for acrobatic attacks, B is for grabs/throws and Y is for magic attacks, courtesy of Elika. To fight most effectively, you need to pause between each button press, watch the Prince execute his move, and then take in any visual clues that will help you string the combo along. Say you pressed X - for a standard sword attack - and then followed it up with a B-button grab. The grab will launch the enemy into the air, at which point the action will go into slow-motion. Here, you can either press A to leap into the air yourself, or you can press Y to throw Elika at the enemy and use her magic instead. Or, you could use a magic attack, and then jump into the air and knock the enemy back to the ground with a sword attack (X). Combo trees literally fold out in front of you as you play, and it makes the combat satisfying even if you're generally not very good at beat-em-ups. As far as looking cool and controlling intuitievly goes, the combat in PoP is unmatched.
Despite my glowing praise so far, Prince of Persia isn't perfect. That doesn't mean it isn't worth a purchase - because it most certainly is - but it does mean that certain aspects of the experience are too disappointing to ignore.
For starters, there's one glaringly obvious problem: There's virtually no combat. In healing each land, you'll fight one of the Corrupted about six times, but other than that, you'll face maybe five regular enemies. Five. There's just not enough to stuff to hit. When the combat system is this good, they really could have done with throwing in a few more opportunities for battle.
Another more pressing concern is the game's difficulty. Or rather, the lack thereof. Prince of Persia is criminally easy, and it isn't because you "can't die". It's because I didn't even know what it looked like to have Elika save you mid-battle until the very last area of the game. It's because traversing the game world is a largely automatic process. It's because the traps released by the Corrupted overlap each other in such a way that, provided you time your initial leap well and don't break the Prince's flow, none of them will touch you. Nothing in this game is challenging. And once you realize that you're not being seriously threatened by anything - not even the immortal servants of a dark God - a lot of the atmosphere is lost.
That isn't to say the game completely falls flat. The many dialogs between the Prince and Elika are genuienly entertaining, and there are more than a few quote-worthy lines thrown about. During one exchange, they discuss dreams, and the Prince warns Elika that "If you dream too much, that's all you'll ever do." Another conversation has the Prince berating Elika for always staring at his ass, to which Elika sarcastically replies "I thought you lost your ass?" It's amazing that a game with only two main characters can keep their conversations fresh and interesting for the entire experience.
In the end, the lack of combat-oriented action and overall difficulty shouldn't turn anyone away from the game. Prince of Persia is as much about enjoying the ride as it about reaching the destination, and when the ride is this good you can hardly blame it. The game flirts constantly with perfection but ultimately does little more than tease; The best game of this generation is hiding in this package and I can only hope the inevitable sequel brings it out. In the meantime, you'd have to be batshit insane not to check this out.
A must-buy.
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