Prince of Persia is the forth title in the series to appear on consoles, and the first to show up on the Xbox360 and Playstation3. It comes five years after the critically acclaimed Sands of Time (2003), which raised the standard for 3d platforming, artistic visuals, and telling an engaging story. Five years later, the new Prince of Persia has taken some of these qualities and developed them, some for the better, and some for the worse.
Visually, as I mentioned before, the game is jaw dropping. The player spends the game traveling to areas that have been "corrupted" by an evil god and purifying them with dramatic, Okami-style cutscenes. Both the clean and corrupted states for each area are meticulously well-designed - take a look at a few screenshots and you'll see what I mean. Massive balloons support rickety, twisted wooden structures, ancient ruins crumble, tall towers rise up out of a sea of clouds, gargantuan trees sprawl over long-abandoned temples. In this sense, the new PoP has truly succeeded in creating a living, breathing world of fantasy. Simply looking out over the world is a pleasure.
Unfortunately, not all components of the game are as qualified as the visuals. One gets the impression that the PoP team set out to take the series to the next level with some new features, but in achieving this, lost some of what makes the game engaging.
Platforming is an example of where they nearly succeeded, though. Other titles in the platforming genre can be pretty challenging - require the player to master a series of button presses, shoulder button taps, control waggles. In what I assume was an attempt to make the game more accessible to the average consumer, PoP was designed to use just two buttons: A and B. The challenge comes from timing their use appropriately - run on a wall, tap A to jump before you hit a crevice, tap B to swing on a ring to continue the move, tap B again to swing up a wall, tap A to jump and grab a ledge, tap B, tap A, tap A again...
You get the picture. Ultimately the entire process reminds me a little of a Sonic the Hedgehog game. You know where you're going, and since the designers practically painted a dotted yellow line on the environments you wont really be enjoying the process of figuring out how you'll reach your destination. Instead, the pleasure you get is from watching your character running and performing crazy acrobatics. It's pretty impressive to watch the Prince to slide down a wall, flip to run upside-down under a ledge, flip up on the other side and back flip onto a narrow beam. For me though, the process quickly became old because the my role during all of it was sitting back, placing controller down in front of me and tapping B...B...B...A with my index figer. If you're new to platforming, you'll get a great kick out seeing what the Prince can do. If you aren't, you'll get bored. Fast.
The other notably for Prince of Persia is the open world, "chose your own story" aspect of the game. Here you can absolutely see the designers thoughts in action. PoP operates off a hub world system in which players are given the option to progress through the gam e in any order they chose, so long as they've unlocked the spell necessary to reach it. This means that its possible to fight the game's first four bosses in any order. Its an interesting idea but one that causes more problems that it solves.
I'm thinking particularly plot, especially character development. If you're like me, and th e story of a game is paramount, you might be disappointed by how PoP's story progresses. Here for example is the general format for dialog in the game.
Prince: Question?
His Companion, Elika: Wise and thoughtful exposition.
Prince: Snarky response!
(optional second half of dialogue)
Elika: Patient/Incredulous and/or Flirtatious retort.
Prince: Snarky response!
I get the feeling the hub-roaming format just isn't right for the PoP franchise. Because players can complete the story arcs in whatever order they wish, the best the writers can do in terms of progression is come up with mini plots for each of Hub areas. At the end of these mini-plot sections, however, nothing important really changes because nothing can change. All the sequences have to start with the Prince and Elika as the same people or else glaring plot holes arise. As a result Prince doesn't get smarter, more sensitive, more restrained, more in love, more anything, and Elika doesn't resolve her own inner conflicts. It's 10 hours of witty banter without a real, cohesive story, and it oftentimes contradicts itself.
And the ending. Oh, the ending is abysmal.
That being said, the writing occasionally pulls itself out of its rut and surprises you with some very witty interactions. There's a point when the Prince gets bored and he challenges Elika to a word game that actually made me chuckle... and that's rare. In the end I like to think of the Prince of Persia writers as a bunch of talented people who did the best they could with a bad story idea handed down from above.
In conclusion, Prince of Persia delivers varying levels of satisfaction depending on what the player hopes to get out of it. If you seek stunning visuals and a fantasy setting, look no further. If you like platforming or would like to try it for the first time, you may find some satisfaction. If you love story, this game is not for you, though you might get a kick out of some of the dialog.
My advice? Rent it. PoP is a short experience - I beat it in under 10 hours - and I was left with little desire to replay it. But that 10 hours passed enjoyably enough, especially since a single playthrough earned me about 600 achievement points. I'd absolutely consider that worth 10 bucks at Blockbuster, but I warn you: pay any more and you'll come to know the true meaning of buyer's remorse.
