MODERN GAMING
Prince of Persia
Developer:  Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher:  Ubisoft
Year:  2008
Genre:  Adventure
System:  Xbox 360, PS3

Out of all the games of the 16-bit era to have a stellar revival, Prince of Persia was never really on anyone's lips, but here we are with a full four games where he started optimistic, then emo, then semi-emo and now past optimistic into cocky.  Does our prince have mood swings from too much wall-running?  Perhaps the sprain on his legs has finally caught up with him?  Well only one way to find out.

Story - Starting out with less filling than the previous games, the prince is now in the desert, wandering as something of a mercenary now trapped in a sandstorm trying to find his donkey Farah.  Yes folks the epicness is already evident when the prince is trying to find a donkey.
Oh but it has to be something less unique when a mysterious princess called Elika (and really the Prince should know better than to hang around mysterious princesses by now) who is trying to prevent her father opening the ancient seal of an evil dark god called Ahriman within a temple inside a gigantic life-giving tree.
With the evil spreading the land, Elika and the Prince must set out into the world to heal the various parts of the land and defeat their evil guardians, a story less personal and interesting as the previous games but on the upside the Prince is no longer emo even if his tailor is possibly Wakka from Final Fantasy X.  It's not entirely sure if the Prince of this game is even THE Prince of the last games, so let's assume he's not because unless he's had a deal with Mephisto, we're not gonna have someone go from moody dark to upright cocky outside of comic books.


Graphics - Possibly the best aspect of this game are the graphics.  While most games of today prefer to enjoy the tasteful prison soup variety of colours in greyish-green, brownish-grey and grey-ish grey with the tiniest tint of vanilla, this game has the full range of colours, though due to the evil sucking the land dry of goodness you'll mostly see black, white and blue.  But hey that's a damn sight more colourful than most games of today!
There is a feeling of cel-shading from this game even though it may not be evident or I might be unused to such vivid colours on a modern game, but the scenery is certainl gorgeous, especially around the "hub" of the world which is Ahriman's prison, the tree of life itself with high branching gorgeous green, and mountains far across one way with a beautiful clear sky.
Seriously, you'll enjoy being back at the hub just to enjoy the vividity of it.  The lights are streaming and natural-feeling, the stone-work is gorgeous down to the engravings and cracks within them, you've all seen it before but now it looks sharper without that honey-glazed tint that the Next Gen graphics seem to be building up to and only deliver slight eye wincing.


Gameplay - The controls are pretty much the same as any Prince of Persia for the most part.  You have your classic jumping across chasms, running across walls, running up walls, running along cracks in walls, swinging from walls, as well as a few extra ways like scaling ceilings, climbing vines, the whole game does twice the athletic work of Lara Croft, which is good, because you have your own Lara Croft with you in the form of Elika who also helps you on your adventure, mainly with her magic in helping you double jump across chasms.  See when you've put yourself into a fatal situation while exploring, the screen will go grey and if you just couldn't reach halfway to another platform, bingo, magic kick in the back to propel you across, and she does aid you in a few daring acrobatic tricks which make for some rather cool looking cooperative tricks.
Elika also acts as a handy anti-death maneuver by just MAGICALLY saving you from certain death to revert you to the last safe standing place you were at, and no loading times for whenever that happens, which is pretty cool.

Also, unlike the linearity of the previous Prince of Persia games, you have more freedom to choose your path.  You must reach the various healing grounds to prevent Ahriman's evil conquest of darkness, and you can do them in usually any order you want, by selecting the healing ground you want to reach in the world, and then Elika will shoot out a friendly fireball to show you the way, which at least gives you something.
Then there is the battle.  The battles remain largely unchanged from the previous with three kinds of attacks.  Your sword, your gauntlet and acrobatic attacks, all of which can create various combos.  However Elika can also give you support with magic attacks to integrate into the combos, as well as having to block attacks and counterattack.  All in all, nothing is changed, except the weird exclusion of a health meter for the Prince, but health for enemies.
If you get hit enough times by the enemy, you go into a mini cutscene where if you hit the right button, you dodge the attack and keep on fighting.  If you don't hit the right button, then Elika dodges the attack for you and you keep on fighting, so really don't be scared to go charging in, because this game is neer going to make you lose.


Music/Sound - Nothing remarkable can be said for the atmospheric music, Elika's meh voice acting and the Prince's new voice as he has suddenly morphed into Brendan Fraser (possibly) so instead of the smooth ethnic ruggedness of the Prince of before, we have a cocky Blitzball reject who feels compelled to make a joke about EVERYTHING.  I mean really even Brendan Fraser occasionally stopped to marvel the beauty of whatever was around him be it a woman or an ancient ruin or an ancient ruined woman.  But enough about Heather Mills.
At least he has a talk button which you never want to use except for like one achievement, but then again Elika DOES have useful strategies against the bosses who cannot be hacked away at constantly and require a few special tricks.


It's hard to say whether this will be good or bad.  Some fans of the series may just want more of the same and well it IS more of the same but not as deep.  So in other words it's Diet Persia.  On the other hand, not everyone likes Diet Pep-I mean Persia, rather wanting the story and moodiness, so if you did like that as well as the gameplay, then you're gonna be annoyed.
If you don't give a shit but just like being an acrobat middle-eastern anti-tomb raider, then go buy it because that's what it is.  Prince of Persia without the plot or really Prince at all since there's no bothering about his heritage.

Fun and Innovation - 3
Replayability - 2
Gameplay - 3
Presentation - 3

An Alternate Opinion:

I'm finding the new Prince of Persia can be an excellent game, but you have to go in with the right expectations.  First, my perspective: I played only the first title of the recent trilogy, Sands of Time, and enjoyed it but apparently not enough to make me an ongoing fan and pick up the sequels.  The 2008 game caught my eye with its unusual trailer at E3, and when it was released last week I happened to be looking for a visually appealing game to play in the bedroom where my PS3 now resides, and at about halfway through, I don't think I made a mistake.

Back to managing expectations, this game is one of the most stylish and visually enticing games I've played in recent memory, but the gameplay has also been simplified from that of Assassin's Creed and the previous titles before that.  Combat is only seen at a one-versus-one level and is very much secondary to the running, jumping, climbing and sliding that perhaps typifies the series.  In that, it feels like a spiritual successor to Assassin's Creed in a solitary atmosphere reminiscent of Ico.  Each of the four face buttons (X, Circle, Triangle and Square on the PS3) is mapped to a certain type of function, be it jumping, grabbing, or using the powers of your pretty-but-never-annoying sidekick, Elika, and regardless of the task at hand, you know the way through any set of obstacles involves hitting the right button to activate the right function.  One review likened it to Simon Says and I think that's by far the best way to describe it.  If the visual scale doesn't appeal to you or you are looking for a serious challenge, it will get boring quickly.  The "no death" thing worried me at first, but it simply replaces you at your last point of solid ground rather than making you retread huge sections just to try the jump another way.  In that sense, I recognize the inherent turn-off that will be to some gamers, but I for my part am a convert and find the general lack of frustration to be refreshing.

The "macro" part of the game -- world layout and level options -- takes a page straight from Shadow of the Colossus.  After the introductory stage, you can set out for any of four main worlds from a central hub, each containing six sub-areas and each dominated by a different, ever-present boss character.  The drama and challenge heightens as you progress deeper into a level, giving the final push to an area's boss a building climax with, to me at least, an enjoyable payoff.  Some people have complained about the mandatory backtracking to collect Light Seeds once you have beaten an area (Enough Light Seeds = new powers for Elika = access to new areas of the world).  If your only goal is to push from room to room in a game until the credits roll, this isn't the game for you in the first place.  It's a beautiful game, something of a relaxing game even, with a little challenge here, some tricky areas to jump or to grab a Light Seed, but it's a game for the kind of person for whom swinging through the verdant green of a newly rescued landscape is a reward rather than a chore.  I'm not sure if I'm really doing much to convey whether this is your kind of game or not...  For me, there's something freeing about flying through the sky, scaling impossibly sheer walls, all with no more risk than "If I fall, I'll just have to try it again."  I might wish there was more to do in the game than soaring and climbing and the occasional lone monster to fight, but what it does have it does very well.

I can agree that the game is visually awesome, that's the one thing I love about the game a LOT, and the hub area was nice to not make the game feel as restricted especially with such graphical scope but....it all feels so shallow, the story feels like a throwaway and with nothing to do with the Prince, there's no motivation onwards through it.