By Jason Nimer
If you stop to think about it, the Prince of Persia has been around for a lot
longer than a good number of today's popular gaming franchises. I, like so many
others, came across the Prince years ago on my very first computer, a Compaq
P.O.S.. I spent more than a few afternoons swearing at the hero, mostly for my
inability to time his jumps and sword attacks in his timeless and wildly
difficult first adventure. After that, I didn't see the Prince again until a few
years ago, when I played (and replayed… and replayed…) The Sands of Time on PS2.
The game was great, but its two sequels, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones,
strayed from Sands greatness by introducing a new "dark" prince who "smoldered
with generic rage (a phrase famously dreamed up by the people at Penny Arcade)."
To make matters worse, the sequels came complete with a nu-metal soundtrack and
samples from one of the worst bands of the past 15 years, Godsmack. After those
two ridiculous disappointments, I all but swore I'd never play another Prince
game.
Now that the hero has moved up to the PS3/360 era, I decided to give him one
last chance. After finishing his new adventure, simply titled "Prince of
Persia," I'm honestly glad I did. The new prince has his share of imperfections
and annoying tendencies, but overall, this is the best we've gotten from him
since his first adventure in the Xbox/GCN/PS2 days. It's not a game I can
recommend to everyone, but if you're willing to give things a chance and
appreciate the adventure for what it is, you'll be more than satisfied.
Prince of Persia isn't a sequel in the strictest sense; it introduces a
completely redesigned main character with a different attitude, different
abilities and a much different goal. This time, the prince is teamed with a
mysterious, magical partner named Elika. Your goal is fairly simple on the
surface - you must work with Elika to explore a massive, multifaceted world in
order to restore peace and light to the land in the face of a terrible, unseen
enemy. Good guy, bad guy, princess… that's all three checked off on the video
game cliché list, but thankfully, the thin story only serves as a springboard
for the interesting, albeit very easy gameplay. The story does get a bit more
compelling as the game goes on, but there is a good chance you won't really care
about the prince or Elika until the game's very last segments. And you might not
even care then (I didn't).
Since the gameplay is really the star of Prince of Persia, I'll try to cover
everything else first. If you've seen even just a short ad on TV for the game,
you no doubt noticed the game's striking and unusual appearance. The backgrounds
and environments are all somewhat realistic-looking, but the prince and Elika
are presented in almost a cel-shaded manner. As weird as it sounds, it
completely works. The prince and Elika stick out like sore thumbs against the
less vivid backgrounds, kind of like how Roger, Jessica and the other cartoons
stood out from the human backgrounds in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The game's
bosses also employ the cel-shaded style, but being that they are covered in
black Corruption (the goo that threatens the land), they end up looking like
Venom should have in Spider Man 3. There are better looking games out there, but
few come close to Prince of Persia's sense of style.
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