Leveling Down

Prince of Persia looks phenomenal, but where’s the gameplay?

Surprisingly, Prince of Persia is one of the worst games I’ve played that I can remember. Usually when I buy games, it’s under the impression that it will at least be decent, and get maybe a B or so in my book. But Prince of Persia just doesn’t cut it. Here’s a game that has great presentation, but gameplay that is the perhaps the worst I’ve played in a long time. The ironic thing is that this is the first time in a while where I’m not complaining about a game for being too short. In fact, with Prince of Persia, I just wanted to be done with it because of how bored I got. Read on for my reasons why.

Good
- alluring cel-shaded graphics look
- oodles of dialogue
- pleasant level design

Bad
- lack of gameplay
- lack of an interesting story
- frustrating collectathon gameplay

Intro
Prince of Persia comes to us courtesy of Ubisoft Montreal, the same studio that games us the Rainbow Six: Vegas games, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja and its sequel The Broken Bond, Assassin’s Creed, and Far Cry 2. In short, a pretty good portfolio for this specific studio. To be fair, the studio also released Lost: Via Domus and TMNT, but for the most part they’ve been pretty on task. Seems like this studio really likes collectathons in their games though, if you think about everything you had to collect in the two Naruto games, Assassin’s Creed, and Far Cry 2. What’s the matter with you, Ubisoft Montreal? You think people enjoy it or something?!

Anyway, the original Prince of Persia was released in 1989 on the PC by Broderbund. It was a very popular game that has had several reboots while still preserving the fact that the setting is ancient Persia and the Prince is acrobatic. When Ubisoft acquired the Prince of Persia license in 2003, it ended up releasing the trilogy consisting of The Sands of Time, The Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones all a year apart on last generation’s consoles. While I never played them, they got pretty good reviews and the series has its fans.

What I don’t understand is why Ubisoft Montreal would reboot the series again, removing all of the deeper combat mechanics of the previous trilogy and making this new series into simply a “monkey-bar” swinging game. Maybe I do understand it – they wanted the series to be more accessible to everyone. However, it looks like the 2.2 million copies already sold since release wasn’t as high as their expectations (what were they smoking?), even after giving it a $20 temporary price cut for several weeks right after its release back in December. It’s somewhat interesting too because when Assassin’s Creed came out, it divided the gaming world as well as some felt it was far too repetitive and others thought it was great – of course, it didn’t really matter though since the game went on to sell millions too. I tend to be more along the camp of those who enjoyed Assassin’s Creed, but I can’t say the same for Prince of Persia.

Before a level is healed, you will find Corrupted sometimes blocking your path.

Storyline and Premise
You start the game as the unnamed Prince (although he certainly doesn’t seem like one) looking for his donkey when an attractive woman named Elika appears, chased by armed pursuers. Helping Elika escape from the guards, the Prince and Elika head towards a giant tree and discover that Elika’s father was commanding the guards. Elika’s father then proceeds to free the dark god Ahriman within the giant tree, infecting the entire world with Ahriman’s Corruption. The Prince and Elika then proceed to all of the levels in the world to restore each of them.

Now here’s the premise of the game in a nutshell: there are twenty levels broken up across four different worlds. All twenty levels are Corrupted and it’s up to you to get to the center of that level, defeat the boss, and cleanse the level. When a level is Corrupted, there may be dark “Corrupted blobs” moving around on walls that you have to dodge or Corrupted enemies that will spawn when you land on platforms. Cleansing the level clears the entire level of the Corruption, and restores the level to full color instead of the evil gray/black it was. Once a level is freed from the Corruption, about 45 Light Orbs appear throughout the level. The player must collect enough Light Orbs to unlock a power that will enable him to move on to the other levels in the game. The four “powers” to unlock are nothing to write home about – for simplicity sake, it’s easiest to think that you need to collect Light Orbs to unlock other levels in the game.

The acrobatics can be pretty cool at first, but when it’s the main element of the gameplay, the game can grow tiring quickly.

Gameplay Mechanics
Elika
One of the major elements of gameplay that is present in Prince of Persia is the fact that you will always be traveling with a female companion named Elika. She is a magic user, so you can use her to double jump (hit the jump button again in the air and she will give you a magical boost) and she is adept enough to follow you however you navigate through a level. She is also helpful in navigating the world. If you go to the map screen you can set the level where you want to go to and in the game if you ask for Elika’s help, she will fire up a light ball that traces the exact path you need to take to get to that level. With it, you basically can never be lost or need to remember how to get somewhere.

The other signficant gameplay mechanic that she brings to the table is the ability to prevent you from dying. You never die in this game. If you mistime a jump and are falling to your doom, she will automatically grab you and pull you up so you’re at the ledge you just jumped from. If you’re fighting an enemy or boss and you’re about to die, she will step in to defend you from dying, letting your health regenerate. People may complain about it, but I honestly have no problems with this “saving” mechanic. It’s simply a convenience that beats the concept of checkpoints and having to reload every time you die. Of course, some may complain that not being able to die makes boss fights unchallenging – but I would argue that the boss fights are already unchallenging to begin with, so it’s a wash.

Acrobatics
Over half of your time spent in the game will be traveling from one section to another. While the game could have used ground paths to connect every zone in the game and achieved the same result, the emphasis in Prince of Persia is on acrobatics. This means that there are vines to climb, walls to run along, pipes to swing from, rings to grab, etc.

The game almost feels like you’re in control of a roller coaster, or an on-rails “non-shooter”. You have to run along walls, swing along pipes, grab hooks, etc. but they’re all along a set path and you have very little freedom to actually do anything different. Half of the time, it doesn’t really feel like you’re actually playing the game as much as you are just watching it. There’s not many decisions to be made. These types of mechanics are often in place in a game but with a much larger picture, adding some sort of opposition or other mechanic that doesn’t solely rest on the fact that the emphasis of the game is simply swinging from one pipe to another. Unfortunately, pipe swinging is the main game mechanic of this game.

Combat
Surprisingly, there is combat in the game, but not how you would expect compared to the previous Prince of Persia trilogy. In this iteration, the highest number of enemies you will ever face at one time is one. That’s all. Every once in a while when you are traveling through a level that hasn’t been cleansed of Corrupted yet, there are designated platforms that will spawn a Corrupted enemy if you take too long to get to it (if you land early enough you can simply prevent it from spawning and skip the battle altogether).

Engaging the Corrupted enemy is a relatively mundane affair as the combat system seems to lack any sort of “payoff”. You are able to block, but it’s better to time your block in such a way that you can deflect the opponent’s attack, giving you an opportunity to combo it to death. The combo system deals with most of the face buttons on the controller – there are predesignated combo chains that can be used to take on each opponent (like dial-a-combos in Mortal Kombat 3). But ultimately, the enemies are very unchallenging as I would just repeat the same 10-hit combo chain I memorized, killing them and moving on my way. Deflect, combo, move back to acrobatics.

Bosses are not much more interesting gameplay wise than regular enemies in the game either. With the game broken up into four hubs, each one is controlled by a particular boss: the Hunter, the Alchemist, the Concubine, and the Warrior. You fight each of these bosses four times, as they guard four of the five levels in their hub. While they prove to be a little more advanced than the regular Corrupted enemies you encounter from time to time, they’re ultimately not much more significant. Save for the Warrior boss, you can pretty much just deflect, dial your 10-hit combo, and repeat until each of the other 3 bosses are defeated. Even the boss of the game is a joke. Honestly, combat in this game seems to be an afterthought and is not what will attract someone to want to play this game.

Puzzles
Once in a while on a level there may be a puzzle that you will need to solve in order to move further through the level. I’ve personally never been much of a fan for puzzles in my action/adventure games, but I guess it’s a way for developers to throw a little variety (and sometimes frustration) into a game. Puzzles in Prince of Persia usually deal with the environment, such as turning platforms in such a way that they have beams pointed correctly at one another so you can leap from one to another. Take them or leave them I guess but there’s probably only about a handful of them spread out across the twenty levels in the game.

Light Seeds
Light Seeds are the main collectible in the game. They were my bane – just when you don’t think the game can be any less fun, something like Light Seeds are introduced. Apparently the developers thought the game needed a little more “depth” and decided to just randomly place hundreds of Light Seeds throughout the world for you to collect. And while it’s optional to collect all 1001 of them, you are still required to collect hundreds of them in order for you to progress in the game since you can’t unlock the next set of levels until you find enough of them.

That just frustrated me to no end. I travel through a level, defeat the boss, restore the level, and now I’m supposed to go through this same level again looking for Light Seeds? Several times I found myself short of Light Seeds to unlock the next set of levels. “What, I need 100 more of these things?! Son of a…” and then I would have to go poking through each level climbing the same poles swinging from the same bars, etc. all hoping I could find the stupid Light Seeds so I could actually progress in the game. What a waste of time. The game could honestly have been a lot shorter if we weren’t forced to go hunting for them for hours.

Get used to 1 on 1 combat in this game – you’ll never face more than a single enemy at once.

Achievement System
Based on how easy this game was I would have been simply content without Achievements. It’s honestly not a difficult game so I think Achievement design for a game is poor when it clashes with the general flow of the game. Prince of Persia suffers from this. While there are general Achievements for going through the game and clearing the levels, there are others that are just not in line with the game itself. I thought it was supposed to be a relatively relaxing magical adventure. And come on – not even individual icons for each Achievement? Lazy.

First of all, there’s an Achievement for beating the game in under 12 hours. I thought this game was about the journey and not the finish? Why give us a time limit at all? I guess I’ve always been against time-limit Achievements in any game, as they lower your ability to appreciate the game (although it’s obvious there wasn’t much appreciation I had for this game in the first place). And then there’s an Achievement for beating the game while being saved by Elika less than 100 times. Is this really an Achievement? Here we have the ability to simply save anywhere and reload, and that’s what people have to do to get the Achievement. Missed that jump and Elika saved you? Better reload to be safe. What the heck is the point then of having her saving you as a gameplay convenience when you still have to reload anyway?

And finally, the biggest annoyance of all: Achievements related to collecting every single Light Seed in the game. You’ll probably end up spending more time looking for and collecting every Light Seed in the game instead of trying to get through it. Thankfully, your map screen tells you how many Light Seeds you’ve collected and how many you have left to find on each of the 20 levels, but still – does anyone have fun with collection related Achievements? Just a waste of time and I felt like a monkey swinging around looking for every single orb.

Elika can always show you how you need to acrobatically get from one area to another.

Final Thoughts
Prince of Persia was a very difficult game for me to review. While I’m no longer in my “gaming prime”, I’m still a hardcore gamer and Prince of Persia can best be summed up as definitely not a hardcore game. The fundamentals of games I tend to enjoy either have me strategizing, planning, or simply playing well in order to beat levels, missions, objectives, etc. The only exception to that is my appreciation for RPG games, where the lack of challenge is made up by interesting characters, treasures to amass, and an involving storyline. Prince of Persia does not have any of these. It looks great, has enjoyable level design, and lots of dialogue, but there’s ultimately no depth to the game. Gameplay is remarkably shallow, and dialogue is meaningless due to a relatively generic story. I honestly had to stop playing it every hour or so just because I kept falling asleep.

It’s an unchallenging game that seems more fitting for people that want to play games not to win, but to simply enjoy. Yet at the same time, it still manages to frustrate with all of its collectibles! I give the game a C-. The gameplay is just not there even if the game itself looks phenomenal. But for me, gameplay means everything – graphics and presentation are certainly nice but can’t replace the main reason we play games in the first place. I can still play River City Ransom today with its NES graphics because the gameplay is good enough to stand the test of time. Such cannot be said for Prince of Persia.

The game seems to be a little more challenging than a typical casual game, but the problem (at least for me) is that it sits right in between a casual game and a gamer’s game. Ultimately, I think it will prove to be too difficult for casual gamers like our parents, but at the same time, too mundane for the hardcore crowd. If you’ve played the first level, you’ve pretty much played the entire game – the mechanics are the same but only the level design changes. There’s nothing really deeper than that – no new abilities learned, no items to use, no leveling up, etc. Maybe it’s worth checking out for some if they feel they want a casual game that’s an adventure but not as dumbed down as most games on the Wii. If you want any sort of challenge from a video game, avoid this one.

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