Hey just wanted to start this off by saying how genuinely sorry I am that this review took all most 3 months to get together, from playing the game to actually putting words on screen really did take this long; but there will be tons more reviews incoming and none of the new ones will take this long to write, promise.
Prince of Persia circa 2008 really should have bothered to include a subtitle. Just something like, "A New Beginning" or something because the game is VERY different form any of the other Prince of Persia's that have come before it and really should have been made to stand out, by that fact.
This new Prince, is really different in just about every way except the very core mechanics. Action/Platformer. Yes that it's little box, whether you like it or not. The game centers around the Prince and a woman named Elika who you learn is a Princess. They have to stop this corruption from spreading across their world and heal the land where it has all ready corrupted. The Prince is reluctant and the Princess is a bit naive and headstrong about her, "duty." Maybe a little cliche but it grows on you. Kind of like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, without Short Round.
Through the course of the game the story is revealed to you both through conversations you have with Elika in game and through cutscenes. The point of the new Prince of Persia seems to be to get the player to react when your partner, the A.I controlled Elika gets in trouble or something bad happens to her.
The developers want you to care about her. And if you play to the end of the game, you WILL care about her. Unless your a real heartless jerk(ba&^#@!). Elika is great in the game, she never gets in your way and she is NOTHING but helpful. Her design in every way was probably as perfect as you can get in an interactive experience.
The game looks and sounds amazing with so much detail and really wonderful touches to all of the graphics and art design in general. The game makes good use of all most every palette ranging from the darkness of corruption to the stark daylight of the cleansed areas. The score for the game is excellent both in the areas of mood music for both cleansed and uncleansed areas and also for large areas where things are more or less quiet with only the music filling in a little in back ground.
The voice acting for Elika was wonderful and believable, the Prince could have used some work but he manages to throw in something reasonably human from time to time if you go through the conversation situation controls all the time. Which you can by hitting the bumper button when the little icon appears. It does slow the game down a little but in the end it's worth it. You also get an achievement for it as a bonus. But the core of the game remains somewhat the same; you jump, you swing, you fight. It's good old Prince of Persia. Except you can never die!
That's right this game is a no fail. Elika allows you to do this by allowing you to be reset back at the last ledge or area you were in before you fell. Also she does this in combat, if you are about to die; she "saves" you. Which basically just means you are healed a little and removed from the lethal strike situation. It could be argued that this freed the player to explore and try things that they would not normally have; but it also made the game a little too easy in some places. This could have been a good feature to have under the Easiest option of difficulty. If there was a choice of difficulty that is.
Yes, in Prince of Persia there is ONLY the default difficulty setting. There is absolutely no changing it. You can also save anywhere, however the game has an internal checkpoint system, so you may just have to start back a little if you save between checkpoints. There is no progression for the Prince in this game. His sword doesn't get upgraded, you don't learn new combos to use in battle. The way you begin the game is the way you end it. Elika does get new powers to unlock areas and to help you reach places you couldn't before but that is the extent of her upgrades.
The game has a tendency to try and anticipate your actions while platforming and perform said actions for you. This would be fine, if it didn't usually cause you to actually screw up. Either because you double perform the action because the game tries to anticipate what your going to do or because you think the game is going to do something it isn't going to do. This is more than a little annoying but as a player you do get used to it after a while. I can't help but wonder if this was added to help causal players and maybe the best thing would have been to have both the no fail and this feature on for a low difficulty setting and all of turned off for a higher difficulty setting.
The level design is good, but there were quite a few times I was using the light guide(hitting the Y or triangle buttons allows you to get a light trailed ahead of you to see the proper path) more than I would have liked or felt natural. Many times, I was saying,
"They can't actually want me to do that? Do they?"
Sometimes they actually did, or times was very totally wrong about my choice of direction. But the idea of allowing this guide was wonderfully and it has been used in a lot of other recent games. I think it's a great tool for open world games, so you don't get so lost that you don't want to play anymore. I should also mention here that if you tried to take a jump that was too far for you to jump the screen loses color for a minute to indicate to you that you should hit the Y or triangle button for a double jump.
The combat in Prince of Persia boils down to fighting a few bosses; over and over until you wear them down and finally defeat them. This really grew old quickly as the game often prompted you do quick time actions that DID lead to interesting animations. But I think it would have been more fun to just fight the boss straight up and maybe only use these actions for the FINAL killing move. Not to simply wear the boss's health down. Elika, all ways helpful, would also help you here, by attacking enemies while juggled or even just a straight magical attack to nullify an enemies defense. This kind of co-op play is wonderful but it shouldn't have been used to replace complicated fighting but to augment them.
The game had a tendency to be too concerned with tapping this button or that button to try and get the player to "feel" something. But all it made me feel was annoyed every time the quick time event showed up or when I had to hit the same button over and over; again. The first time but have been good, but after the tenth or twentieth, I was bored with the mechanic.
This was especially true in some combat situations where you wanted to perform a combo but the A.I would keep blocking you. So you kept performing the same actions over and over and eventually you would hit the right timing. Then you would need to do a quick time event to finish the boss off. It wasn't your choice, that's how you HAD to do it. I'm not a big fan of this sort of thing unless it is the final boss, then that's all right.
If you want a challenge try getting the Collect all the Light Seeds Achievement. Once you've cleansed an area there will be all these balls of light that help Elika open up new powers to reach new areas. You don't need all the Light Seeds to do this, but you can get the achievement if you can get to the Seeds. Most of the Seeds are easy to get but there are a few that I STILL am not sure how to get to.
While working through the game and to some extent the review itself. The downloadable content: Epilogue came out for Prince of Persia. This allows you to continue the game after the last scene. It's a great piece of content that I won't REVIEW here. But I will simply say that if you really loved Prince of Persia then it is worth the price of admission to see how it all ends.
In this Prince of Persia story is king. Which is why I didn't include really any of it in my review. The gameplay elements in the game are pretty good but they all serve the story being told by the developers. Perhaps this, and the unique and interesting art style are really what make the player keep playing Prince of Persia. I certainly felt compelled to play to the end even when the puzzles were repetitive or there was some area that just didn't seem accessible to me even after checking the light guide. Some will also bring up that the game is too short. Even with the DLC the game won't take you more than 20 hours to complete. To me, this was a good length and didn't need to be any longer. Just like a novel, whatever number of pages it takes to tell the story; no more.
Prince of Persia won't be breaking any new ground in game design or innovation in Action games. On a purely mechanical level the game is a fail. It might not even be qualified as a game on some people's scales, more of a series of quick time events strung together. But it certainly brings it's own brand of unique art style and reward system to the table. Maybe this isn't a meal I would eat everyday, but every once in a while it could be a tasty treat. I certainly can't wait to see what they do with Prince of Persia 2 or whatever they end up calling it.
(Review scores are gone, sorry kids...READ THE WHOLE REVIEW)
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