Today's review is for the 2008 iteration for Prince of Persia. If you haven't played the game series, you should. My first encounter with Prince of Persia was in 6th grade when a kid I knew gave me a copy of the Mac version on a floppy disk. Little bastard though he was being clever when he hid it inside of a myriad of directories figuring that I'd never find it. Clearly he didn't know about "search". At the time the game was an amazing 2d platformer. It would have been 10x's as amazing if I had the manual so I could pass the checkpoints that said "what is the second letter of the fifth paragraph of the 18th page?".
My wife picked up this game just before I went on a six month no game buying fast late last year. It wasn't a game I had intended to play, but I love my wife with everything I have and when I got it as a Christmas present I had determined to play through the game even if it was utter crap.
Let's set one thing straight. I hate meaningless repetition. I hate saying the same thing twice. I hate doing the same thing twice. There are remarkably few things in the world that are enjoyable to do exactly the same more than once.
For instance. I loath meetings. Meetings are the world's larges time syncs where nothing happens. For other instance. I hate 90% of church music. I love the church as a body of people, but I can't stand most of their music. I say 90% of the songs because that's how many songs have one chorus and maybe two verses to them, repeated five to fifty times to pretend to be a "song". It's not.
Well, the old, young Prince has been in polygons since Sands of Time. But now he's cell-shaded. At first I was very put off (as I always am by cell shading), but I got over it and realized it was really a great style. You start the game looking for your donkey but instead find a princess named Elika who is running like hell from some bad guys. She needs your help and convinces you that you have to help her. And you're stuck with her for the rest of the game. Which isn't all that bad.
Visually the game is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever laid my eyes on. The environments are grimy, lush, living, dead, friendly, and dangerous at the same time. At times you can see for miles, and it's wonderful. But then it hits you. What the heck kind of place is this?! You see, there are bottomless pits everywhere. EVERYWHERE. So many that there are stints of wall running, ceiling crawling, and vine climbing that can seem like they take hours. Entire hallways are devoid of anywhere proper to put your feet. There are towers that are so high there is no possible way by even our current standards anyone could build these with the materials these guys used, and no stairs.
Gameplay is about as stupid simple as it gets. When it came to getting around in Sands of Time you had to push buttons corresponding with your desired actions, in this version your buttons are basically: jump, continue free running, stop free running, get directions, and talk to Elika. So doing stuff is stupid simple and the only reason you screw up is because you weren't paying attention. There are times when you need to plan ahead and get your timing right, but they're rarely a big deal. And even if you fall, Elika has the power to infinitely pull you from out of the pits (yes, pull, not reverse time). Yup, you can't die. At all. Ever. Even if you want to. This is where that repetition comes into play. Each area has its own unique flaws and so you end up climbing over the same wall, jumping to the same pillar, crawling on the same ceiling, crawling up another wall, in the same way until you get to your goal. Very repetitive.
Combat is a funny beast in this game. You've got three types of attacks and they can all be chained together to do various amounts of damage. Now the buttons are dodge/agility, sword, claw, and Elika. Yup. And combined with the directions you press on the stick, well, it doesn't really matter. Basically each enemy will eventually have different forms that will make you have to change which strike starts your combo. So you might have to grab them with the claw before you pound them into oblivion. After the first few battles, the fights become mundane at best, and become progressively more difficult as the enemies uniformly power up.
There are remarkably few enemies in this game. There are four bosses that you have to fight five times each. Another dude you cross swords with a few times (I did enjoy my fights with him, he's a bad ass), and the main bad guy. Beyond this, there are fights at predetermined areas with exactly the same enemy. Here's how you will know the difference. If you're fighting a normal enemy and pin them against a wall or edge of a platform, you kill them instantly. Bosses, however, when pinned, will stop your combo dead, and either fall off the platform and jump back on, or if pinned at a wall they'll do a move that locks your weapons for a moment.
But wait. I said you couldn't die! That's right, no matter what you do you'll live through it! If you're pinned and the enemy just gets the advantage a little Elika will then turn back time a hair and you'll be on your feet. The enemy will get a portion of its life back, and the fight continues. Forever. So while the fights can be infuriatingly difficult, you cannot lose them. Which I find even more painful.
What I'm saying here is that Ubisoft figured the game would last longer with more difficult fights, and since you can't die, they can make them even harder! So you might give up whilst battling a boss for half an hour and shut off the system.
Right after your first boss fight you'll start collecting light seeds, which are used to unlock one of the four "powers" in the game. And by four powers I mean two powers. Let me explain. Two of the powers offer unique modes of transportation gameplay and have the ability to get you to places you would otherwise be incapable of accessing. While running around you see glowing circles all over the place and wonder "How the hell do I get over there?". Well, it's by accessing one in a complex maze of these powers. They're all on the walls, and you run up the walls, hit the seal(s) and start on your magical journey.
The first that I chose happened to be a mode where you could run on a predetermined surface (wall, ceiling, whatever) and you moved left or right to avoid obstacles. The second I chose was the flight. When you used that one Elika would grab your hand and you'd have to 'guide' her on a rails system with analogue stick. Flying over, under, and around walls. 90% of the time these flight paths were like taking a taxi in a foreign country. You knew damn well that you were only going two miles but the driver figures he'd drive 20 to get you there for the extra money. Well, you step on these circles and activate them (with the continue free running button), and while you know you're only going up 30-40 feet, it takes about 2 miles of flying around the same damned terrain to get there!
The other two "powers" are identical to each other. They are flying from the seal to some other spot. No interaction required save for when it drops you off early and you have to Elika-jump to the next spot.
I know that's a lot to take in, but this game is pretty crazy. So let me try to fill in some gaps. Elika is some sort of princess/priestess with some very, very, very odd powers. She drives me crazy. She has the ability to teleport pretty much anywhere, yet when you're climbing around on vines she has to ride on your back. When you fall into a pit, she will teleport down there, and pull you out. When you're in the middle of a jump, you can hit the Elika button and she'll appear in the middle of the air and give pull you into another full-length jump. So half the time she's teleporting and the other half of the time she's doing all the same physical labor you do. Heck, even when she's knocked out and you're fighting she wakes up just in time to see your head about to get severed, screams "NO" and turns back time.
Even with all that repetition, I still enjoyed parts Prince of Persia. Maybe it was just the amazing environments that they created. The city in the sky is pretty darn amazing. And I loved running around there. There was one boss fight that I found particularly fun (it wasn't the end boss). I doubt that I'll ever play through the game again, and I'm certianly not interested in going through all of that to get the achievement for being saved by Elika fewer than x times or collecting all the light seeds. Overall I feel like Ubisoft captured the idea of Prince of Persia, but didn't do enough with it. In fact, I think they did less with it than they have before.
Note: I will not spoil the ending but I will say that it is possibly my favorite ending of any game ever. Definitely top 5. The ending made me glad that I played through the game. It didn't make up for how often I got bored with it, but I sure as heck felt some satisfaction.
