Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia (the 2008 reboot) is a mediocre game masquerading as a great one.

Let's start with the production values, which are clearly excellent. The game looks amazing, with cel-shaded graphics for the characters and gorgeous locations that manage to pull off awe-inspiring feelings without excessively dreamlike architecture (like most recent Final Fantasies, for example). The voice acting is impeccable and there are no noticeable bugs.

For all that, though, the dev team seems to have missed some major lessons in video game making.

First an overview. As the Prince, you stumble across a beautiful yet sassy princess named Elika, fleeing from guards. You save her, but quickly get caught up in a mystical war as an ancient god named Ahriman threatens to burst forth from his prison. You and Elika need to team up to heal the various Fertile Grounds in the area to keep him trapped. You are opposed by Ahriman's Corrupted, four baddies who fight you several times each as you progress.

The story isn't much, and there are only three characters in the entire game (four, if you count Ahriman). The Prince and Elika have good chemistry and some great lines, but their banter is viewed the wrong way. In each area, you'll have one or two short conversations automatically, but all the others must be triggered by the L2 button. Doing this stops all the action and lets the two talk, and there are generally six or seven conversations per area. All they had to do was let the talk happen while moving, and not tie it to a particular place, and it would have been much more enjoyable. As it is, it slows down the action and doesn't really feel natural. Sure, we'd miss their expressions, but other than the very serious ones (maybe 10% of the conversations) it's not much to miss.

Next is the gameplay. I played a demo of the game first and loved the idea of it: the Prince is agile like a cat, and his clawed gauntlet lets him do moves like wall-runs, roof-runs, and double-jumps with Elika's help. This gave a great feeling of adventure for the first hour or two, but soon began to feel old when it quickly became evident that the game wasn't going to actually throw anything new my way.

The problem here is the level layout. Ubisoft decided to let you do most of the levels in any order you liked - which means that every single level could be the first one you do. There is no progression of difficulty and no new tricks to use (other than the "plates" which become usable as you progress, which do little more than let you spring to a new part of the level when you use them). Even the Corrupted lairs, which require at least four levels to reach, don't offer much except more plate usage.

The game is just plain easy. Part of this is the fact that you can't die. If you leap off a gap, Elika will save you and deposit you on the last solid ground you were on. If an enemy slashes you, she'll save you again, at the cost of the enemy gaining a chunk of health. There are obstacles like "corrupted air" or evil butterflies, neither of which seem to do much. But most of it is that the game refuses to teach you new skills or challenge you by using what you have in unusual ways.

Oddly enough, the exhilaration of the gameplay is destroyed by the quick realization that every level is nothing but a single pathway which sometimes branches to reach a different level. It's almost a rhythm game rather than a platformer: look at which obstacle is coming up, and press the right button to get past it. That is, if you can get past the sometimes frustrating play control, which insists on mapping half of your actions to the same button: while on a ledge, the same button can jump up to the next ledge, across to a wall-run, or off into thin air depending on which direction you've got pressed and where the camera is situated.

The combat looks promising but again leaves much to be desired. There are one or two fights per level, and a grand total of about six or seven combatants total. They will eventually use some special skills, like hiding your view with black ink or reversing your controls, but they are easily dealt with by holding the Block button and waiting until they're done.

Your own skills consist mostly of combos involving regular attacks, Elika's magic attacks, and throwing the enemy up in the air to continue the combo. Most people will find one or two combos which are long and easy to do, and use them throughout the game. Sometimes the enemy changes state, which requires a combo that starts with a particular button, but since the long combos all use all four buttons anyway, it just means starting the same combo halfway through. Most combat will be "wait for the enemy to attack, block to get them off-balance, combo them, rinse and repeat".

Most egregious, though, is the fact that you do not unlock new areas by beating existing ones, but by collecting "light seeds". These seeds only appear when you heal a Fertile Ground. This means that in every level, you must beat it, then backtrack to the previous level, then repeat for every road leading to a different level. Oh, and you also need to get back to the Fertile Ground, since light seeds have appeared on that path as well. It's needless repetition and adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game.

Prince of Persia has lots of potential, and beautiful aesthetics (I would seriously consider ordering and framing some of the bonus art unlocked after the game for my wall) but squanders most of it on repetitive and unchallenging gameplay. It's not torture to play by a long shot, but it is a disappointment.