Prince of Persia

[budgie 1]

I have been playing this game for a few days now and I thought I'd post a review. It hasn't been finished so I can't tell you everything, but it's quite likely I won't ever finish it so here's what I got so far.

The game is a pretty linear action outing in the vein of Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. The Graphics are very good and the music is professional and atmospheric. In all, the production values are high, marred only by it's being a port of a console title and carrying the accompanying baggage, which I'll get to.

You play as the Prince, an Aladdin-esque character with a smarmy British accent, who finds a magic dagger on his father's campaign againts "The Maharajah" (no more info given on this poor sap), releases the magical Sands of Time and chases a very hot Middle Eastern Princess in skimpy clothes around trying to recue her from various demons/undead. Sounds like good fun so far. The dagger, charged with the Sands can also reverse time for a few seconds or slow-mo the enemies at your command, so keep it charged. Even cooler.

At heart, PoP is a 3D platformer, driven by good cutscenes and spiced by a few battles here and there. This is where it looks and feels most like the Jedi Knight games, however there is greater emphasis on puzzles than combat and a lot of your time will be spent just trying to find the switch, combo or secret passage to get from one area to the next.

This is the first thing that doesn't really hold with me, although people with more patience or a love of platform games dating back to Mario Bros, Donkey Kong and the original Prince of Persia might gain more satisfaction. There were many times I just wanted to walk through a freakin' corridor, open the gate and get to the next area with out all this annoying jumping around and testing my IQ against developer ego. The good side of this is you get to play all the Prince's nifty acrobatic tricks, such as running along walls Jackie Chan style, climbing from ledge to precarious ledge and somersaulting from parallel bars. Sound cool? It got tired after a while. On the IQ side some puzzles exist where you have to use the right combination of levers to access a new area, but after a few failed guesses, I found myself seeking online hints. People with better logic will fare better than I did.

Traps are a big part of platform games and the entire Indy Jones suite is available here. You get Buzz-saws coming out of the walls, switchblades on rotating turnstiles, spiky pits - the whole kit and kaboodle. I never really found these particularly challenging, except when they were activated on a timer, and I had to bum-rush them to get to a rapidly closing door. Thankfully the player usually gets to activate the switch that opens the door and sets off the traps, so you get a little control in the do-overs, allowing you the time to plan your moves before you brave the boobytrapped paths and corridors.

Though traps don't bother me as much as pointless swinging or jumping, I found the selection in PoP to be a ittle too predictable. Not sure where to go next? Just look for the next obvious trap: a buzz saw in a wall means they want you to monkey-run along that wall. A crumbling ledge? Jump over it of monkey-climb under it. A punji pit? Go over there and monkey-jump it. Spikes popping out of the ground? This way please, monkey-boy. The developers treat you like an 8 year old, ever asking yourself, "Where do they want me to go next?" This is where the dagger's powers become most useful, as you can reverse time a few seconds and avoid that fatal mistake you just made without reloading the game. The modern equivalent of the old three-lives staple in platform games.

Fighting is fun at first but this is where I found the most frustration. A few issues with camera control and forced restriction of movement bothered me in the puzzles, but what do you expect from a Playstation port? When the fighting started, for the first few seconds, I thought, "Cool - just like Jedi Academy." And in truth you can enjoy sweet sword/dagger combos, acrobatic jumps and other cool stunts to dispatch your enemies an a variety of interesting ways.

But the camera problem rears its ugly head in a big way here and getting your view of the Prince blocked by a wall just as he's surrounded by four undead warriors can be a fatal accident. Furthermore, the Prince needs to drink water to regenerate health (there's always a fountain or pond nearby) and it would be nice to do this in the middle of a battle. Unfortunately your avatar refuses to take his attention off nearby enemies and backs away cautiously, no matter how hard you try to make him sprint for the pool. Sometimes you can somersault for a little more speed but none of this beats a good old fashioned sprint. To make it worse, most enemies are undead and can disappear and reappear in another part of the room, ensuring that your slow retreat never gets you ahead of them. By the time you've backed up to the water supply, you'll still have three demons in front of you and another waiting at the pool. At this point you'll find the action control (for drinking) is the same button as the Block control (in fights) and guess which one the game chooses for you? Not being able to efficiently recharge is only due to the game limiting your control of your character. Considering that bad guys who are killed reappear about three times before dying for good, you'll find yourself in looong fights (up to a dozen enemies and rarely fewer than four at any one time), and practically unable to replenish health. In such unforgiving battle conditions (harder even than Jedi Outcast), it's irresponsible not to give the player full control over the avatar. Control is all it would take to get to that life-saving drink.

The dagger can be used here to slow the enemies down - giving you a form of bullet time to get ahead - but for some reason the control doesn't always work, even when your dagger is fully charged. Furthermore you'll find the reverse time feature practically useless in battle, as going back to a couple of seconds before your fatal blow won't stop the bad guy with a scythe doing it again, unless you're really lucky and quick.

This game has it's good points but is ultimately less satisfying than similar titles. It has pretty graphics and even some humorous moments, but the flaws get in the way for a true PC gamer. I didn't like the platform-jumping, but other players, particularly nostalgic types, might find this the most rewarding part of the game. The story is also moderately intriguing in an adventure-movie sort of way, and might be enough to keep me going to the end. Sadly the console-style restrictions, most of which are design decisions, mar an otherwise entertaining game. Today's twenty or thirty-something gamer wants more freedom of movement and space to decide how to solve problems in his/her own way, not simply try to beat, step by step, the next elaborate cluster of traps and enemies that the developer has laid down between the player and the end of the game.

Edited January 26, 2004 by budgie

[Zantar45 0]

I agree with just about everything you mentioned Budgie.

I played PoP on the PS2 and I gotta say, the game is really good.

The puzzles do get repetative after awhile though as does combat (every fight turns into a jump over the enemy fest).The camera really isn't a problem on the consoles since the controls are laid out very well (one stick moves, other stick is camera ) I got to about 60-63% of the game finished but stopped playing long ago. It's certainly one of those games that you can get really deep into and then stop playing it cold tukey.

One thing about fighting and replenishing health, when you are in ''combat mode'' and need health- put away your sword/dagger and you can go drink water only problem is you are open to be attacked and you cant jump out of the way since you arent in ''combat mode''.

[deadly_sniper22 0]

I agree with just about everything you mentioned Budgie.

I played PoP on the PS2 and I gotta say, the game is really good.

The puzzles do get repetative after awhile though as does combat (every fight turns into a jump over the enemy fest).The camera really isn't a problem on the consoles since the controls are laid out very well (one stick moves, other stick is camera ) I got to about 60-63% of the game finished but stopped playing long ago. It's certainly one of those games that you can get really deep into and then stop playing it cold tukey.

One thing about fighting and replenishing health, when you are in ''combat mode'' and need health- put away your sword/dagger and you can go drink water only problem is you are open to be attacked and you cant jump out of the way since you arent in ''combat mode''.

i also agree with what you both say.

The games worth a rent, but i woudn't buy it. I also seeked out online hints because i spent hours at a time spent and tryingg to figrure out one puzzle.

Overall the fighting is fun at first, the game is fun at first, the graphics and camera angles are great at first. but in the end its just plain repetitive.

[GRIN_Wolfsong 0]

Great game.... but WAY to short/easy.

First time it took 8½ hours to finish without any help except from my brother who was sitting next to me the entire time, but he hadn't played the game before either.... But puzzle and adventure games is my specialty so....

Second time I only played to 40% as I had missed to unlock PoP1 (so yes, I got hint on where to find that), but that took under 2 hours that time. One reason why it was so much faster was that we understood more of how the fighing system worked. First time around we only stabbed/gathered the sand monsters when they where on the ground. But when you learn the just stabb them in the back to gather their sand it's so much faster. We also missed the freeze time function as that text flashed by to fast the first time.... With it the bigger fights where so much easier.

Overall I'd give it 8/10.

Many cool features in the fighting system and nice maps but, as said, to short/easy. Should have more difficulty levels. And I don't think it's a good buy because of that. You can rent it and finish the game before you have to return it so that would be better money spent.

[magnumkp 0]

Little bump on this one, but I knew someone here would have played it. I've just got the demo at the moment, and that is hard enough. I agree with Budgie that it can at times be a test against the developers ego. However, it is very very nice to look at, there are some beautiful character animations when jumping from ledge to ledge, or column to column. Similar to Splinter Cell in that respect. Thanks for the warning, I was going to go and buy it, but I might just wait till it gets a bit cheaper if it is that short.

Edit: Finished the demo, it is great. One of the best looking games I've played. (including Splinter Cell). Quite like the blurry nature of it. Good stuff, but will wait for it to come down in price as said.