[REVIEW] Prince of Persia - XBOX 360 [SPOILERS]
Title - Prince of Persia
Overview - This is the Prince's first outing on the next gen platforms and one which I was looking forward to. The Sands of Time trilogy on the PS2 was an excellent set of games which had some truely innovative design features. Not without their flaws, they were still a joy to play, so this one had a tough act to follow.
Plot/Characters : The game revolves around 2 main characters, the Prince and Elika, a princess endowed with magic powers. The Prince, whilst at times charismatic seems a little pointless. In the Sands of Time there was a strong justification for his presence as the protagonist, the plot essentially revolved around his foolish actions and as the games move on we seen how he began to realise this and grow up. None of that here. Whilst his horse Farah gives a nod to the trilogy, this Prince is not the prince from said games. He appears to be a grave robber who gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for me this is a really weak and feeble premise for the title character.
An evil god of darkness has been unleashed and the princess, endowed with magical powers seems to be the only one capable of sending this asshole back from whence he came. Not ground breaking stuff here people. Whilst I never demand a truely original, ground breaking plot from a video game, especially a platformer, the Prince's previous incarnations indicate that the developers could have done better. In order to banish the god, the Prince and Elika must venture between 5 spots, most with sub areas, looking for corrupted spots and wielding her power to cleanse the zone, something taken from the pages of Okami.
On the subject of Okami, it stole one of the Prince of Persia's concepts in slowing time, an act which was both well excecuted and forgivable. In Okami, when you cleansed corruption, it was rather nice to watch and gave you a warm feeling inside. In Prince of Persia, I never had that feeling.
All in all, the story was never meant to be the driving force of a title such as this, but I mean come on, this was a weak effort. In an attempt at character development we are given the chance to talk with Elika when an icon appears at the bottom of the screen in which they will have a discussion of sorts. After a while this just gets painful and tiresome and it was poorly done.
Score - 5/10
Gameplay : I will split the gameplay into 2 sections and discuss them in turn, those being platforming and combat. They dropped the ball here big time. Sands of Time had a truely innovative feature with the sands of time abilities. And in compliance with good game design, you had to spend sand tanks to utilise these abilities. The major flaw of the trilogy was just how easy it was. For instance take God of War, if you went to jump to another platform, you had to time it. If you missed timed it, you fell. In Prince of Persia, if you go to jump, if the jump itself is possible you will make it 100% of the time. If you fail, it is because it is infact impossible, thus removing some of the challenge.
The developers knew that in this game they would need to continue in a simmilar vein, with something innovative to make it stand out from the crowd. They also had a hance to learn from past mistakes. The flaw illustrated with SoT continues with this title. In a pathetic attempt to make it more challenging, you have the ability to extend your jump distance using Elika, a mis timing could result in death (lol, I will explain later why lol is appropriate) and to be honest, it felt as if they couldn't be arsed, as if the developers rushed the decision in a hurry to get to the pub.
In SoT the sand powers allowed you to turn back time incase you messed up, it was an awesome feature. Obviously the developers couldn't simply copy this, it would just be old, they needed something new to make it stand out. So basically here if you mess up a jump and are going to die, Elika uses her powers to grab you and pull you to the safety of the platform your doomed acrobatic stunt orignated from. In simple terms, a poor rip off. To make it worse, there is no limit to the number of times this can occur, the whole concept of punish/reward seems alien to the developers. You cannot die. I'll say it again, you cannot die.
At first this is nice, keeps it nice and easy but after time you start to get tired of it and wish one of these times she would miss and the Prince would die. They not only repeated a nice concept, and made it worse, but because platforming is crucial to the game experience they totally ruined it. Now some of the platforming is nice and at times requires a very minute amount of skill to pull off, to constant safety net of Elika just robs the entire game of any sense of acheivement.
Score - 7/10
As for the combat, I won't say much about it. It is shit. The controls are too cumbersome and the duration between fights so long you forget what you are supposed to do. Again, you cannot die, totally robbing the experience of any sense of acheivement. You simply attack, block, enemy attacks you whilst you block, you attack and repeat. I will say one nice thing about it, before this Legecy of Kain Blood Omen 2 had the worst combat system I had ever played, which made me weep as I love the LoK series. Nice one PoP, you snatched that title right out of its hands. The freeflowing nature of SoT, whereby you need skill, can perform some nice combo's and generally feel like you are a badass has been removed, dragged down an alley and its battered corpse gang raped by AIDS infected tramps.
Score - 1/10
So the overall gameplay is substandard with the combat system beig the most dire pile of shite I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. All notion of risk, punishment and reward have been removed along with any sense of acheivement. If you cannot do well on this game there is something wrong with you. You are probably a spastic, and even having severe spasticness. This game has only 1 redeeming feature which I will discuss next, but the core of the game, it's gameplay is second rate at best and at worst, well let's just say you could have more fun at the wrong end of a horny Joseph Fritzl than with this crap. There are Klansmen who show less contempt towards black people than what the developers have shown towards gamers.
Overall gameplay score - 4/10
Audio Visual : Good. Cannot complain one bit. The voice acting on the characters, whilst not overly remarkable is excecuted well, voices fit the characters so no complaints. I enjoy the enchanting Arabic score, it is the kind of music that conjures images of fanastical eastern castles, flying carpets and goold wholesome adventure. The game looks fantastic also. The stunning backdrops the game is played against is the only redeeming feature of playing this game. At times you stop caring how mind numbingly easy the game is because you are too distracted with how awesome the thing looks. Performing some of the acrobatic moves might not feel too taxing, but when you look at it, it almost compensates for the lack of rigour required.
Score - 8/10
Overall : A great looking, nice sounding game is ruined by a weak story and characters and an even weaker, lazier gameplaying experience. Could have and should have done better.
Game score - 5.6/10
