Prince of Persia Review Part 1 (360)

I love Ubisoft’s new Prince of Persia game. It’s not perfect, but it’s as damn near close as I’ve ever seen.

Story

There’s an actual plot with actual personalities and natural sounding dialogue. It’s like they hired a real writer and everything! Elika is a great female character with her own motivations and while yes, she is the obligatory hourglass shape, she wears clothes and has more purpose in the story than just looking pretty and supporting the hero.

Plot exposition is very well handled. Cut scenes are kept short to give you the bare minimum of information that you need to get on with the game. They haven’t let that destroy the story however – those of us who actually enjoy narrative can continue the conversation whenever we want by pulling the left trigger. Plot points are nicely interspersed with character and relationship-building dialogue. They’ve hired some talented voice actors, too. I love it.

Death

The death cutscene is barely a second long – no frustrated bashing the button to try and speed up the same slow-mo death-panning shot you’ve seen a hundred times before, a la Mass Effect. It’s quick and simple and you’re back on your feet, ready to go again. Best of all, the resume point is the last flat surface you were on which is rarely more than 30 seconds back.

Some people might complain that this makes the game too easy but I completely disagree. I think it opens up the world for experimentation that much more. In the recent Tomb Raider demo I spent more time clinging onto vines being afraid to jump because I knew I’d have to do the whole tedious climb-jump-traverse-jump-climb again and again if I was wrong. Even worse, if the camera popped over to a weird angle just as I was about to jump, it wouldn’t even be my failure but I’d still have to pay the price. In Prince of Persia, you’re not afraid to try risky moves in order to reach that light seed that seems just out of reach because the penalty isn’t so bad after all.

Combat

Battles are… interesting. Well, they were interesting for a while. I was very proud of spending an hour or so working out how to break each of the special defences used by the bosses. Then I flipped through the manual and it was right there on page 14 :| After that, the battles got a bit tedious but then, combat isn’t really the point of this game at all. Prince of Persia is all about exploring the environments, and they are beautiful indeed.

That it for part 1. Come back in a few days to read more about the environment and the sheer joy of moving around in this world.

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