Prince of Persia (2008) – Rebooting Is (Sometimes) A Wonderful Thing

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a happy surprise back when it came out.  It pulled off a quite original style of platforming flavored vigorously with parkour, created a battle system that, while repetitive, gelled nicely with the rest of the gameplay, and created a main character that was funny, affable, and original.  It even had a novel time-rewinding mechanic to boot!  As many of you may know, the next couple of games in the series weren’t BAD, per se, but they ran aground of trying to somehow capture lightning in a bottle, and never really lived up to the original.

Thankfully, in a nice display of restraint, Ubisoft decided not to extend their trilogy like *ahem* some other companies and actually seriously reboot the franchise.  While the main parkour platforming is still there, large chunks of the rest of the game have been changed around in an effort to start as fresh as possible.  Some of the ideas work brilliantly, and some… not so much.

This time around, the main character’s noble heritage is hardly ever touched upon, and almost treated as if it were to be some plot twist later in the series.  You accidentally join a magical girl named Elika, who is trying to stop the takeover of the world by the evil dark demon Ahramin, who… well, let’s face it, the plot won’t win any awards for originality.  It takes a backseat most of the time to the banter between your two main characters, and that’s where the first stumbling block is hit.

Ubisoft apparently haven’t learned yet that the part of the Prince that everyone liked was how he was a nice guy with a bit of an edge.  They’ve translated that to this Prince as “Mysterious asshole who avoids talking about himself and somehow manages to say the jerkiest thing possible in a given situation.”  He kind of lightens up as the game progresses (but I’ll get to progression in a second), but overall he never managed to become a relatable character.  I just wanted him to shut up most of the time.  Elika suffers from a bad case of triple personalities herself.  When she’s in her softer moods, the character works and creates some genuinely interesting moments between the two.  She flows into bitch or waif mode all too often, though, and it becomes sort of Banter Gambling as to how much you’ll like a given exchange, which is a shame.

Graphically and technically speaking, Prince of Persia is one of the best I’ve seen.  It uses cel-shaded art in a very subtle way that evokes the storybook feel that the first game nailed so well, and contains TONS of spectacular views over large amounts of ruins, caves, fields, what have you.  Ubisoft have a winner on their hands with that Assassin’s Creed engine, let me tell you.  It also manages to have quite literally ZERO load screens unless you go into or out of a major cutscene (which happens 5 or 6 times total) or you teleport from one place to another.  It took me 45 minutes to see my first load screen, and it was jarring but impressed me immensely.

The biggest gameplay feature that was put forward for this game was that Elika’s magical powers save you from dying.  Somehow, this caused a HUGE stink amongst gamers who immediately decried the game as too easy.  I’ll tell you right now that this isn’t what makes the game easy.  Her “undo death” power differs from the series’ “rewind death” power only in that you have less control over where you start.  Most of the time you’d probably try to rewind to solid ground to retry a given set of jumps again anyway, and that’s where Elika drops you off.  It’s a neat way of getting around having an annoying checkpoint system or something, and it’s done unobtrusively enough that it lets you keep your platforming flow, as it were.  I personally love this feature.

Speaking of flow, the best way to describe gameplay as a whole is “Slow, easy, but smooth.”  The platforming mechanics have been given a major polish since I last played with them (which, granted, was a long time ago), and making long chains of jumps was less a matter of proper timing and more of calming down, taking it easy, and just paying attention to my surroundings.  The level design is fantastic, with some of Elika’s powers taking you around positively ENORMOUS areas at ludicrous speed (or you can go to plaid, take your pick).  The visual cues given to you for various jump types are subtle yet usually quite easy to spot, and the parts where you’re running away from something while platforming are awesome.

It’s not all hunky-dory, though. Occasionally, but not often enough to get frustrating, “The Programmers Only Coded This Jump” syndrome kicks in and you fall from what looks like a valid jump.  Also, to be quite honest, the controls are a bit TOO forgiving.  I found towards the end of the game that during entire 10 or 20 jump sequences that I didn’t need to touch the control stick at all.  Maybe I’m misremembering the older games, but weren’t you at least SOMEWHAT in charge of making it to the end aside from button pressing before?  Either way these gripes aren’t nearly enough to spoil the gameplay, and some may even like the lack of manic controller usage.

The flow of gameplay through the levels, however, is the exact opposite of manic.  This game decides to let you roam freely, in a vein similar to Assassin’s Creed, and suffers for it throughout the game.  Elika needs these things called Light Seeds to activate more of her powers, in turn letting you access more areas than the 4 you start out with.  Finding those typically isn’t that hard, but because the game doesn’t tell you which of her four powers to activate, it leaves a whopping 16 of 24 levels feeling next to identical difficulty-wise.  There are, essentially, 4 easy levels, 16 medium levels, 4 boss levels (which run about medium to medium-hard), and then one final almost-hard level right at the end.

Combine this difficulty plateau with a repetitive level structure (quite literally, with the exception of… three, maybe four puzzles, each area consists of platform, boss fight, and maybe more platforming after part of the boss fight, followed by Light Seed collection) and you get a game that ends up being a trudge to get through.  I guess you could argue that as you speed up you’re getting “more in the flow”, but in all honesty the lack of variety both in your missions and in Elika’s powers (three of which were variations on “fly from point A to point B with little or no control on your part”) got annoying about halfway through and stayed that way throughout.

Another repetitive aspect was the combat.  Gone is the acrobatic and thrilling style exhibited by the old Prince, and in its place comes a much more cinematic style of combat that brings to mind the one-on-one battles from the original game.  Combat is slower-paced and much more focused on effective blocking and timing than anything else.  The moves that you and Elika perform during these sequences are really cool-looking, well-animated, and numerous, but the enemies you face all feel next to identical.  Considering you fight each boss a whopping SIX TIMES and even they are hardly different from one another, it’s almost like the combat was put together half-finished.  They got the part of looking good and controlling decently down, but forgot to code more than one enemy.

The game ends with a blatant (and aggravating) setup for a sequel, and also ends rather quickly.  Once you get into the swing of things entire levels can be completed in 10 or 15 minutes flat, and I’m reasonably sure I picked up the “Beat the game in less than 12 hours” achievement with at least an hour and a half to spare.  Speaking of, if you like achievements like I do, you’ll be glad to hear that in my playthrough I got 660 achievement points.  A few of the achievements are actually well-hidden and not given away in their descriptions.  Two of them I found completely accidentally, and I was tickled that I got them.  Most of them you get just from completing the game normally, with extra rewards for a fast playthrough (easy to get) and for dying less than 100 times (not so much).

What works in Prince of Persia works really well.  The core gameplay has been left well enough alone, and the ancillary features that defined the original trilogy have been reworked in a clear attempt to both appeal to fans of the original while defining the direction this trilogy will go in.  Some of what they did, like having Elika be an in-game embodiment of traditional gameplay tropes like double-jumping and saving, are quite interesting and I hope to see what they do next.  Unfortunately, the free-roaming aspect and combat are two sizable anchors keeping this game from being as good as it could’ve been.  Graphically, technically, aurally, and… platformingly(?) Prince of Persia is right on the mark.  Holding this back from a straight purchase recommendation are the short length (10 hours, and that’s if you take your sweet time about it) and the repetitiveness of two thirds of the game.  This game is definitely worth a look, though.