Prince of Persia

Having never played a Prince of Persia game, I felt it was finally time I gave the games a try and find out what the hype was about. I can safely say I regret never playing the games and I now feel I denied myself a lot of fun. Personal reflection aside, time to examine the newest installment.

Overview

At the start of the game, the Prince is found fighting a sand storm calling out for his donkey. As soon as the sand storm clears, the Prince soon finds a female named Elika, who is being chased by some guards with spears.

Shortly after following Elika, the Prince soon finds himself helping her fight an achient God Ahriman: a evil good imprisons thousands of years ago that has been released and is bent on enshrouding the world in darkness.

To defeat the God, Arhiman, the Prince must aide Elika in travelling to four corrupted lands and restoring Fertile Grounds, which in turn remove the evil corrupting it and allowing Elika to gain now powers along the way.

Gameplay

The majority of the game play is acrobatic platforming. Taking control of the Prince, the player will spend most of his or her time having the Prince run, jump, run along walls and other physical surfaces in an almost Parkour style. The Prince also has a gauntlet that lets him cling to a wall and slowly descend no matter the height.

Even though there are four areas to travel to, the underlying designs of the levels are all the same. They all have the Fertile Grounds at their centre and the Prince has to navigate along the outer walls and eventually find the path that leads to the centre. Furthermore, the player is able to visit each of the four areas as he or she pleases.

To combat the similarity of all four levels, challenges introduced in a complete area appear are present when the player visits the remaining areas. While the transplant of challenges can make the areas more challenging, their impact is minimal at best.

As well as travelling with the Prince, Elika is a handy ally. Whenever the Prince mis-judges a jump or falls off a wall, Elika grabs hold of him and places the Prince back on the last solid ledge he was standing on.

This no-death feature immediately gives on the impression that the game has no challenge. This could not be further from the truth as there are instances in the game where the Prince has to travel a fair distance, almost half the length of an area, and if he falls off, he will be transported back to the ledge where he started.

The frustration only gets worse when the Prince is engaged in combat. Every once in a while, the Prince will either encounter an enemy or a boss and a fight sequence ensures.

Combat, in a word, is frustrating and jarring. During combat, the Prince stops running altogether and only paces back and forth depending on which direction the player indicates with the analogue stick. This change of pace tears the flow of the game and almost makes the game feel it has changed game play modes.

The main frustration of combat is the player has no target control. Once a battle starts, the Prince is automatically locked on his adversary. This prevents the player from quickly moving to a strategic location. Even though the player is able dodge and counter attacks, this is of little comfort.

During combat, Elika is able to help by saving the Prince by pulling him out of harm’s way if the enemy gets the better of him and is even able to perform acrobatic attacks of her own. Unfortunately, when Elika saves the Prince, the enemy gets an almost full health back and unless the Prince is dangerously close the enemy, Elika will not perform her acrobatic attacks.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics of Prince of Persia are very colourful, a change just as welcome as it was with Mirror’s Edge. In today’s gaming, high definition tends to mean that all graphics are, at best, grey- or brown-scale. Prince of Persia defies this rule by having colourful and almost anime-style visual.

This is not always the case though. When the Prince and Elika first visit a corrupted area, everything is in either blue- or green-scale. Added with enemies being black, traversing the levels can be difficult as obstacles are difficult to see even when viewing the game on the highest contrast and in a dark room.

Dark colouring aside, when a lead is restored to its full colour, it sometimes pays to sit back and drink in the scenery.

When it comes to sound, Prince of Persia puts it to very good use. While an area is corrupted, all sounds take on a greasy and or oily nature. The sounds in such areas feel as though they have been completely industrialised and nothing nature remains.

When an area is cleared of the corruption, all sounds are replaced with their organic counter parts. One can hear the water, the fresh breeze and even the ambient cry of birds.

Character Development

While the Prince has Elika as an ally, the development of the two feels as though it was placed there as an afterthought. Even though there are cut scenes where the Prince and Elika interact, any additional development between the two is only presented manually. To learn more, the player has to routinely stop moving and press one of the buttons to make the Prince and Elika interact.

While it does flesh out their development, the fundamental flaw with this approach is that players may complete the game without talking to Elika once. This can result in the player missing on vast amounts of the story, such as Elika’s background.

Overall

While Prince of Persia was off to a good start, the frustrating battles and manual character development tend to drag it down a bit. The two together tend to cause the flow of the game to stutter and clash with the fluid motion of the parkour style acrobatics.

Regardless, Prince of Persia is a nice change to gaming. Unlike other high definition games, this game is colourful, and instead of spending a majority blowing enemies to bits, the player is challenged mentally. After a long and frustrating battle, it was rewarding to look about and take in the atmosphere.