I won’t gush on and on about what a genius, mind-bending, ahead-of-its-time series Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” was. It’s available on the web, please watch it if you haven’t before, it’s truly amazing and deserves your attention.
Patrick McGoohan’s death is a tremendous loss. Be seeing you, Number Six.
Much like Sonic the Hedgehog in 2007, Prince of Persia shares a name with the 20-year-old original. I suppose that means it’s a “reboot” of the series although (full disclosure here) I haven’t played any Prince of Persia games since Sands of Time on the old school Xbox. (That said, I have played both of the original 2D games, so I got street cred.) It’s not just a reboot, it seems to actively taunt the player by actually making fun of Sands of Time—Farah is a donkey in this game! Bastards.
Prince of Persia also discards Sands of Time’s “rewind” mechanic in exchange for a pretty interesting variation: you can’t die. Whenever the Prince falls off a ledge, or gets struck too many times in combat, Eilka restores him back to life as good as new. When jumping and climbing, this means you’re reset to the last piece of solid ground you were standing on before you died. If you were in combat, you and the enemy reset back to your original positions and the enemy regains some health.
Oh, in addition to not being able to die, there’s no health meter in the game. Instead, powerful hits from enemies will make you vulnerable for a short period of time, indicated by a red glow on the edges of the screen. If you’re hit while you’re vulnerable, that’s when the combat resets.
These two factors lead to an extremely uncluttered appearance to the game: there’s no UI at all to ruin your immersion. With only one huge, huge, exception. Some of the bosses spit what I can only assume is tobacco juice, not at the Prince, but at the camera of the game. This obscures the camera, making it hard to see what the hell’s going on, which I suppose was the point. More to the point, though, it makes the player aware of the camera, effectively breaking the fourth wall. Boo.
(Back in “the day” when 3D games were still a pretty new and crazy invention, one of the selling features of many games was that their graphics were so good, the game engine would actually render lens flares when the camera was aimed at a bright light source. It’s a great graphics demo; lens flares require multiple transparent layers and lots of math to draw correctly. And, if you don’t think too hard about it, it makes the scene look more “real.” The problem is that if you do think about it, it doesn’t make the scene more “real” at all; it just makes it look as if it’s being recorded by some non-existent lens in some non-existent camera. In fact, the programmers of these game engines were expending massive effort simulating something that actual photographers try to avoid. Crazy.)
Gameplay consists of 70% running, jumping, climbing, etc. about 20% fighting stuff with a sword and about 10% solving moronic puzzles you’ve solved 500 times before in every game you’ve ever played. Environments consist of a lot of cliffs, columns, hooks, magical rocket-y things that I think they stole from Sonic the Hedgehog, and ladders. And of course, no floors. This Prince has more moves than the Sands of Time one, including one where he can run upside-down along a roof which makes no goddamned sense at all. Oh and he has some claw thing on his hand he can use to slide safely down vertical surfaces.
Combat consists of four basic moves: sword, gauntlet, acrobatic, and magic (performed by Elika), which can be used in various combinations to defeat enemies. The general tactic harks back to the original 2D Prince of Persia, where you block the opponent’s attacks until you have an opening to hit him, then string together as many moves as you can. The gauntlet can be used to toss enemies in the air, allowing you to hit them with another type of attack on the way down. In addition to attacking monsters directly, you can force them off platforms and laugh manically as they fall to their deaths, which frankly is a real time-saver.
The puzzles are moronic, and you’ve solved them 500 times before in every game you’ve ever played.
Prince of Persia takes place in an open map, and you have more-or-less complete freedom to go where you like in it. There are a bunch of fertile grounds, which can be tackled in (almost) any order, so if you’re stuck on one boss, just take off and move to another one. You can also fast-travel between fertile grounds you’ve completed. The one exception is that some of the fertile grounds are “locked” until you collect enough glowy-things for Elika to magically unlock them, but you’ll come across more than enough glowy-things during normal play and you shouldn’t have to spend any time grinding for them.
Now to the story: it sucks on toast. The Prince sounds like a total douche, partly because his voice was recorded by a total douche (or at least a voice actor who is very good at emulating a total douche), but mostly because his dialog was written by a total douche. And to make things worse, he jabbers on constantly. Not only that, but the game nags you if you don’t trigger the horrible dialog on a regular basis. Supposedly, listening to Prince Douchebag can reveal tricks or tactics to use on the next boss, but in practice you’ll either purposefully never trigger the dialog, or you’ll be too busy shoving scissors in your ear canal Uzumaki-style to listen. Even his scarf pisses me off.
(The voice actress who does Elika’s voice is fine. No offense intended towards her.)
If you’ve been exposed to virtually any media whatsoever, you already know the story of the game. An ancient evil who’s been snoozing for a thousand years wakes up and starts… well, he doesn’t really do anything I guess, except send minions to guard strategic points. The main character, a thief who is obviously a Prince because although the narration doesn’t say so we’ve all read the title of the goddamned game you idiots, teams up with the attractive young female magic-user who happens to also be a Princess because it’s always a goddamned Princess in any fantasy book, movie, or game ever written ever. Also, it’s always a thousand years, never like 570 years or 834 years.
I’m only about half done with the game, but I can confidently predict the following:
Anyway, to summarize: medium-to-good game, bad story.