We Support an R18+ game Classification

Did we mention the game is utterly, utterly beautiful?

Looking back on 2008 I seem to have played a lot of games with companions. Almost every big release featured at least one helper that followed your character around, the dogs in Fable 2 and Fallout 3, your squad in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 or the heroic companions of Rise of the Argonauts. But they all pale in comparison to the partner system in the new Prince of Persia from Ubisoft. In addition to controlling the fleet footed Prince you are followed every where by Elika, a very easy on the eye magical princess. It’s actually more like a seamless control of two characters rather than a primary character and a backup, the relationship between the pair is symbiotic.

Prince of Persia is a bit of a departure from the original series of games and actually heralds back to the original 2D Prince of Persia on the PC and Amiga in its design and fight system. The main character, who is not actually identified as a Prince, or even from Persia, is a thief and a rogue who stumbles into Elika while lost in a sand storm searching for his donkey (who, in a humorous nod to fans of series, is named Farah). It needs to be said straight out that Prince of Persia would have been a lot more successful if it had been called something else. Other than the platforming dynamic of running, leaping and grabbing it bares no connection to the previous Ubisoft 'Sands of Time' games. There are no sands of time, no time powers, no evil vizier, zip, nada, nothing. One would imagine after the huge hit of Assassin’s Creed Ubisoft would be more willing to take a risk with a new IP. But instead they’ve decided to weather the wrath of the Prince of Persia fan base by rebooting the franchise.

The Hunter, just one of five boss characters you must defeat

The plot is pure story book fantasy, straight out of The Arabian Nights. Elika is a young princess, acolyte of the god of light, who is racing to stop her father from freeing Ahriman, the god of darkness and all his nasty inky minions. Ahriman is trapped in a temple that is embedded in a massive tree in the middle of the desert, which makes for a pretty stunning setting. After bumping into the wandering thief the duo are unsuccessful in stopping Elika’s father, the king, from destroying the tree of life that imprisons Ahriman and he escapes.

From here the game begins proper and the four realms of the world are open to be explored. The Prince and Elika must visit several areas called fertile grounds and defeat the corruption there, personified by four boss characters, and activate runes to transfer life energy back to the temple to reactivate Ahriman’s prison. As each fertile ground is resurrected by Elika, causing an amazing visual transformation to the landscape, seeds of life become available to gather from the local area. Once you have gathered enough of these orbs you can use them to activate a new power for Elika at the temple which is used to reach previously inaccessible areas. While your basic goals for the game are a tad repetitive they are broken up by the differing threats of the four boss enemies and the different challenges each area represents.

Elika, easily the best imaginary girlfriend you ever had

A quick jaunt on Google reveals one of the games main inspirations was the ancient religious movement of Zoroastrianism, which unfortunately is not the worship of Zorro. It was the predominant religion in ancient Persia and actually still exists today with a few thousand practitioners in India and parts of the Middle East. Zoroastrianism predates and most likely influenced Christianity, Judaism and Islam with its focus on a single creator god. It also has a large focus on the struggle between light and darkness, justice and chaos, which are played up in the game with the god Ahriman of darkness in eternal struggle with the creator god Ormazd. Both names originating in Zoroastrian tradition.

The main controls are simply a jump button and a button for using Elika’s powers. In combat this means using her magical abilities on enemies, out of combat its most often used to give the Prince a magical boost to his jumps. In combat the action switches to a side on view and the two remaining buttons are used to grab enemies for a throw and slash with your sword. The four buttons, slice, jump, grab and Elika, can be mixed together into dozens of combinations and some are far more effective than others against certain enemies. Opponents can also take on an aspect that can only be damaged by a certain attack and its important to watch for these signs. Combat is always one on one (or two counting Elika) similar to the combat encounters of the original Prince of Persia game with a heavy focus on blocks and countering. If you’re quick against some of the minor enemies you can actually strike and destroy them before they ‘form’ saving you a battle.

The breakout feature of Prince of Persia, one that has caused quite a stir in the gaming media, is the fact that you cannot technically die. No matter what happens to the Prince, a misjudged leap, a tougher than expected enemy, Elika is always there to pull your fat out of the fire. It doesn’t even require a button press, just a short two second animation of Elika magically catching the Prince as he plummets and depositing him on the most recently occupied piece of flat ground. It’s even possible to put the controller down during a battle with one of the corrupted minions and just watch as Elika repeatedly saves your character.

The bigger they are the harder they... well in this case the harder they hit!

Some would say this is an embarrassment that removes all challenge of the game, from an outsiders perspective it certainly sounds that way, but an hour with the game makes the developers intent very clear. That this feature is just pre-empting the inevitable save, die and load process of any game. I have to say I definitely approve of this design move by Ubisoft and see it as the most innovate addition to any game in 2008. The process of rescue by Elika rather than constantly reloading checkpoints does an awful lot to avoid breaking the flow of play and makes Prince of Persia feel a lot more like an interactive fantasy adventure than just another game. As for removing challenge, that’s a fallacy, the challenge is still there. The challenge of puzzling out a route to get to the tower, getting past an obstacle, reaching a seemingly impossible to reach orb, these real and tangible game challenges are very much intact. Just the process of quick saving and quick loading before every leap of faith has become automatic. The difference is that rather than plummeting to your death and then reloading you are instead given another opportunity after only a few seconds with no break in gameplay. Likewise in combat if Elika has to save you from death the enemy gets all his health back, as he would if you had to restart. It’s just a different, and personally far more agreeable, mask on a familiar game mechanic.

The game borrows liberally from the PS2 hits ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, both developed by the same Japanese developer Team ICO. The basic look and feel; an ethereal, dream like open world that is accessible in stages, is the most obvious comparison, but plenty of features of the gameplay, such as a constant companion (in ICO a Princess, in Shadow a horse) or returning to a central point after defeating an enemy as you do in Colossus. Again similar to Colossus is the focus on exploring and actually reaching the enemy to be defeated. The game is mostly platforming and puzzles with a reasonable smattering of action to keep things interesting. There are a lot less enemies to be dealt with and a far smaller emphasis on action than in previous Prince of Persia games.

Sure they have a pool, but the disabled access is rubbish

Graphically Prince of Persia is pretty astonishing. It uses an upgraded version of the scimitar engine that did such a capable job of animating the free running antics of Altair in Assassin’s Creed. But rather than the grimy realistic colours and textures of medieval Jerusalem, Prince of Persia uses a water colour like render scheme that looks sublime in motion and fits in incredibly well with the ancient Persian theme of the game. To play the game is smooth as silk. The music is operatic and epic, as you would expect from a Prince of Persia game, but the voice acting is, in parts, distractingly Americanised. It’s not a big issue, in fact most people probably won’t even take any notice of it; but it is a little distracting to hear two characters from an ancient Asian culture occasionally speak like they’re on an episode of Friends. Obviously its ridiculous to assume they speak with a particular accent given these are fictional characters in a fantasy world; but the previous prince’s dialogue seemed a better fit to the settings than this one does. It's interesting to note that Ubisfot deliberately sought out the voice actor who protrayed Nathan Drake from PS3 hit Uncharted and modeled much of the Prince's snarky attitude on the Drake character.

It’s not reasonable or rational to compare this against any of the three previous instalments of Prince of Persia. It’s neither better nor worse, just different; removed from the original universe and given a new style and feel. The change is going to annoy some people, there’s no doubt about that and it breaks some preciously held game conventions. But I implore the nay sayers to look past the fact that there is no death animation in the game and see that any fears they have of removing the challenge are groundless. Prince of Persia is a magical adventure with gameplay that flows better than most titles I have played specifically because of the break from convention. On top of that downloadable content has all ready been promised to expand the gameplay and add new chapters to the story. I can’t recommend Prince of Persia enough over the usual spate of generic shooters and sequels that drop every holiday season. If you like innovation with your gaming, you will love Prince of Persia.