The Prince is revamped and returns for more acrobatic action, but does he compare to his royal lineage?

Have you ever wondered if an interactive movie experience would be possible to accomplish; more than just a “choose your own adventure” interaction that you may remember from Goosebumps when you were a kid? Well, with Prince of Persia, an answer to this question may not be far down the road.

As you first pop in the game, you’re greeted with a wonderfully and beautifully designed opening, introducing you to both the Prince and he’s new lovely leading lady, Elika. She proves to be a very unique companion, providing similar help to the Prince as Farah from the other Prince games, but to a much more, dare I say it, EXTREME (sorry, I couldn’t resist) level. She simply proves to your “guardian angel.” Missed that jump and you’re plummeting to your death? No you’re not, because Elika magically pulls you to safety. An enemy is about to deliver the final blow? Nope. Elika steps in and again saves your life, and this continues throughout the entire game. Why is this a bad thing, you ask? The game has omitted a sense of dying and has replaced it with your companion. Although Ubisoft Montreal attempted to recreate The Sands of Time’s time control feature, the absence of a “death screen” takes away from the overall experience of the game. It removes any strategic thought needed for jumps or combat, allowing the player to do whatever he or she may want without any real consequences, barring a 30 second backtrack.

However, because there is no death screen and, thus, no gameover, the game has a fantastic flow to it. Jumping from wall to pole, back to wall and into combat is amazingly fluid and swift, and provides a slightly mesmerizing show of visuals and acrobatics. Combat functions at the same fluid pace; allowing for multiple different combos with both sword and the Prince’s new medieval looking gauntlet, as well as Elika herself. Yet, combat is where this feeling that the game is on the fringes of an interactive movie. Button prompts are frequent, even stalling the game quickly to tell you to block an attack or to release you from an enemies grasp. This is a similar tactic we’ve seen in other games, yet here, the combat is not nearly as deep. At certain points, it feels like you’re watching cutscenes that require some button pushes and sometimes occur a little too frequently. However, Ubisoft saves the game with the almost perfect flow that is achieved. This fluid motion is greatly enhanced by the superior camera work. There are no hang-ups, glitches, or bad camera angles, just smooth plaforming and fighting. One interesting feature to take note of is the fact that Prince of Persia is nonlinear. There is one overarching goal to accomplish, but how you go about it is all up to you, further illustrating the impressive fluidity of the game, for wherever you travel, it stays continuously smooth.

With this open world, the Prince and Elika must collect Light Seeds in order to progress to a new area. This feature in games has become more and more common as time has progressed. The present era of games within certain genres, such as Prince of Persia, are including collection “quests” in order to progress. This is understandable, but many of these “quests” usually require a lot of backtracking, and seem to only serve as a means to lengthen the game. This is really the only major problem the game presents, but even this doesn’t hinder the gaming experience too much.

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