The genre of video games sure have come a long way, no longer are genre just genre within themselves, they now branch out to other genre in hopes of attracting a much wider audience than just the core audience within the genre. For example, role playing games aren't just role playing games anymore. Sure you still have the traditional role playing games that most of the core gamers are familiar with but you also have action role playing games (Action RPGs) and strategy role playing games (Strategy RPGs). Both Action RPGs and Strategy RPGs incorporate elements of the Strategy genre and Action/Adventure genre into their role playing games in hopes of broadening and attracting new fans into the rpg genre. The Platform genre is similar to this because the evolution of Platform games has come a long way. Platform games aren't just about jumping and moving around from one area to the next anymore like back in the 80s and 90s. You now have a strong storytelling presence with strong leading characters, the use of magic in a fantasy world setting much in the way of how most role playing games present itself. You can say that most in-depth platform games now uses or incorporates elements of rpgs into their game much in the same way the rpg genre incorporating elements of strategy, action, and platform into their games as well. Prince of Persia is a perfect example of this as it is a Platform game using key elements of role playing games. One can easily describe Prince of Persia as a Platform rpg game, containing elements of both genre into one game. The Prince of Persia series have become Ubisoft core trademark series and one of their best selling titles. Prince of Persia is the series first entry into the next generation consoles on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in the age of High Definition TV. Here we take a look at what could be the first game of a possible trilogy for the Playstation 3.
STORY
"Let's heal this land from darkness."
"To be continued...?"
In the midst of a desert storm, a tomb thief that goes by the name, Prince, searches for his lost donkey when all of a sudden he bumps into a woman by the name of Elika. Not quick to stay around, Elika warns him to get away from her or her pursuers will mistake him as someone that is helping her. The warning comes too late as the hunters manages to catch up to Elika and sure enough seeing the Prince with Elika, they mistaken him as someone that is associated with her. A battle ensued between the Prince and Elika's pursuers but it's a battle that does not last long as the Prince manages to dispatch Elika's pursuers quickly. After the battle, Elika inform the Prince that she is a Princess on the way to the sacred temple where the Tree of Life resides. She is trying to stop her father, the King, from cutting down the Tree of Life and freeing the God of Darkness, Ahriman. If her father isn't stop, the world will be thrown into corrupted darkness. With this dire situation, both the Prince and Elika rushed toward the sacred temple. However the duo arrived too late as the Mourning King cuts down the Tree of Life and thus freeing Ahriman four servants known as the Hunter, the Warrior, the Alchemist, and the Concubine. The four servants each now guard the four regions of the world, the Royal Palace, the Vale, the City of Lights, and the Ruined Citadel throwing the four regions into corrupted darkness as they wait for the resurrection of their master, Ahriman. Even though the world has been thrown into corrupted darkness, there's still hope as Elika can still use the power of Ormazd, the God of Light, to heal the corrupted land and defeat each of Ahriman servants. The Prince agrees to help Elika out, thus the duo left the sacred temple toward the four corrupted land in search of Ormazd's power plates in each of the regions. Only by unlocking Ormazd's power plates can Elika fully use her healing magic to purify the corrupted lands and bring them back into a world of beauty. A new chapter in the Prince of Persia saga begins right here.
The first thing you will notice about the story or the story telling is that it plays out like a mini CG movie. This is due to the excellent voice acting and cel-shaded animation in the game. The story itself is base on a mix of saving the world from the dark god, Ahriman, and some romantic teasing between the Prince and Elika. In terms of saving the world part, it's okay, nothing too great or interesting that would make that part of the storyline stand out. This is probably due to the fact the gameplay doesn't expand too much outside of just healing the corrupted lands and fighting Ahriman corrupted henchmen over and over. The story does dig into a lot of details about each of the corrupted lands and their historic background including each of Ahriman's henchmen but again it comes out as more as background development than actual storytelling to progress the story. The heart of the story lies in the romantic teasing between the Prince and Elika. This is where your interest will probably be focus on. The longer you spend your time in the game and healing the lands, the more interaction you start to see between the Prince and Elika. The chemistry and their conversation with each other is very nice and play out very well to the point where you are left smiling and laughing as they talk to one another. Even though the story doesn't show any real romantic interest in the story scenes, it does give a hint of it to the point where you want them to be together because they are so likeable. That's what keeps the story moving and fun to watch. However you probably notice or heard that one of the biggest controversy about the game is the ending of the story. Without going into many details about the ending as we don't want to spoil things for you, let's just say think about how the endings of Lord of the Rings movies are done. It's an ending but it's an ending that you know is part of a bigger storyline from a trilogy stand point. This may leave some fans with that half glass feeling where you want to see more but can't and they get upset about it. Remember the first Lord of the Ring move where it ended and you feel annoyed because it was so good that you didn't want it to end because you wanted to know more. That's the feeling you probably going to have with this story at the end. It's also an ending where it challenges your mind to think as it's sort of a loop of déjà vu. Of course not all gamers will understand this hence where the controversy comes from. You probably understand and appreciate this story more in a few years when the entire trilogy is release and you can see the whole story unfolds without having a pause and wait till the next Prince of Persia game is release. But for now this is a good story that is the beginning chapter of a possible trilogy. I say possible because we don't really know if there will be trilogy, one can only assume there is one.
Score 8/10
CHARACTERS
It's just the two of us.
Ok I'm going to be honest here, to say this is a small cast of characters is an understatement. You basically are looking at two characters in this entire game. The lead characters are the Prince and Princess Elika. There's a small semi supporting role that Elika father plays as the mourning King in the game. With this small cast, you're not going to expect much or get much in terms of character presentation. This is probably the downside of the characters is that it's too small. It makes the game and the world feeling small and empty. It would be much better if there were more of a bigger cast of characters or just more random characters in this world than just two people. Sure it's a story about a world thrown into devastation and darkness but there should at least be some survivors and such just to give it a better presentation than just two people in the entire game. However on the bright side of things, the character developments of both the Prince and Elika are very in-depth and thorough to the point where you actually can relate to them and enjoy their screen time. They have a chemistry about them that you can clearly see as they interact with one another and you can sense the fun and likeness they start to have with each other the more they are together in this game. Most of the interaction and conversations between the Prince and Elika are done by pressing the L2 button as you travel through the lands. The conversations range from seriousness on the world about them to their personal backgrounds to just silly random teasing stuff that friends do when having an attraction for another. It's very realistic and the actors playing these characters do a fine job at that. So overall good in quality but low in quantity.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
Nice day for a stroll in the desert.
"Holy cow Batman, does this game look nice or what?" There's no doubt about it people, the first thing you will notice about this game is the incredible graphics. If you ever wonder what cel-shading looks like on the next generation consoles than wonder no more. This is by far the best cel-shading game I have seen to date. What make the graphics so impressive are the 3-D art designs of the background environments. Everything is in rich realistic details from the sky down to the rocks, the hills, the vines, canyons, trees and old wooden buildings. You can clearly see the different contrasts between the dark corrupted lands to the beautiful rich healed lands. Once you heal a corrupted land and see it change to a healed land, you just have to sit back and say, "whoa". Sometimes all you need to do is stand on a ledge and just look around at the scenery and you'd be amazed at how rich and beautiful the landscape is, truly impressive. The only small drawback is that the character designs and the enemy designs aren't very clean and smooth as you like. This is more in terms of the style they are drawn than the actual graphic engine itself. The character designs just don't blend in too well with the environments because the character designs aren't as realistic as the background environments. The Princess is okay but a bit too shaded that it doesn't show her beauty as much. The Prince's body seem a bit too out of proportion and too dark in shaded that it's seem out of shape when blend in with beautiful colors of the environments. But these are small minor things compare to the overall graphics. It is highly recommended to play this game on a wide screen High Definition TV to truly appreciate just how gorgeous this game really is.
Score: 9/10
MUSIC
Bet you heard the sound of my
sword.
The music is good but the sound is outstanding is the best way to describe things. Each of the musical scores are rendered and played out perfectly for each of the story scenes and location. You can feel the sense of lingering doom and darkness as you travel through the corrupted lands with the music playing in the background. The battle musical scores are also done nicely for each battle and boss fights putting you in the right tempo. And when the lands are healed you feel the difference through the music playing in the background as the tunes are more on a lighter and softer note. The only drawback is that with the story playing out like a movie, you would hope there're be some nice songs to it but there aren't any.
Now in terms of the sound effects, this game provides probably one of the most realistic detailed sound effects in a game. If you ever play this game with a pair of headphones on you'll know what I'm talking about. You can hear almost every single realistic sound effect in the background as you travel through the lands. The sound of birds chirping far away, leaves falling, wind blowing, water flowing, your own footsteps on wooden prank, and so on forth, just absolutely realistic to the core. It is very impressive. In addition to the excellent sound effects, you also have a near perfect voice acting from the actors that portrays the Prince and Princess. Most gamers out there always try to find faults in a game's voice acting, but here you really can't find any. If you've played other games you probably know that these actors are veteran actors from other games so they definitely have experience doing in-game voice acting. A big thumbs up here.
Score: 8/10
GAMEPLAY
"I hit high, you hit low."
Let's get those Light Spheres.
Game Information
Genre: Platform
Publisher: Ubisoft
Disc: 1 Blu-ray Disc
Memory: 2 GB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Rating: Teen
Release: December 2008
HD Output: 720p, 1080i, 1080p
The way the game is done, you're not sure if the gameplay is set up base on the way the story is told or if the story is told base on the way the gameplay is set up. Either way the objective for the game is pretty clear base on the story, you need to heal each of the corrupted regions by using Elika's Magic and defeating the four Ahriman servants that guard those regions. In order to do that you need to unlock the four power plates that hold Ormazd power at the sacred temple. The power that is necessary to unlock each of the power plates at the sacred temple is called Light Seeds. Elika must first need to collect enough Light Seeds for each of the power plates. Once a power plate is unlock, she will inherit the power of the plate thus taking inside her one of Ormazd power. Light Seeds will appear once a corrupted land has been healed by Elika's Magic. After that it's just a matter of going around and collecting all the Light Seeds that appears. So in short the basic concept of the gameplay is you start off at the sacred temple which acts like a base of operation. You then can move out to any of the four regions. Note that each of the four regions has four lands for you to heal from corruption. You run, you swing, you climb walls, you run on walls, ect through each of these lands to where one of Ahriman servant awaits you. You then fight one of the Ahriman servant using combo attacks and magic to defeat them. Once they are defeated you then heal the corrupted land restoring the land to its original beauty. Then after that you collect up all the Light Seeds in the land. When all of the Light Seeds have been gathered up in the land, you can teleport back to the sacred temple to unlock a power plate if you had enough Light Seeds or you can just move on to the next corrupted land and repeat the whole process of defeating Ahriman servant and healing the corrupted land again. Note that there are fourteen lands for you to heal but you won't be able to access all of them right away as some of them will require you to have a particular Ormazd power plate power to access the inner sanctum of those lands. Naturally the gameplay reaches its conclusion once all of the lands have been healed and the four Ahriman servants have been defeated. The gamplay itself is mostly platform running and jumping to the extreme with some battles in-between. There are also elements of puzzle solving in each of the land but nothing too extreme or difficult for you to deal with. A bit of a warning for some of you as at first when you start playing this game, you might experience a bit of dizziness and nausea due to the realistic 3D movement of the Prince and his surrounding areas as he jump, run, swing, and climb through these lands. So you should take it easy and slow at first when playing the game and taking a few breaks until you are accustom to the gameplay especially during the first few hours as you are in the learning curve of how to use the Prince properly and how to move around in this realistic 3D world. Now lets look at some of the key features in the game.
Movements: Your basic movement in this game are running, jumping, grip falling sort of like just dropping down, and wall running, nothing too hard. It pretty much just requires a press of a button here and there to do the basic movements. Acrobatics: The game doesn't just settle for basic movement as that would be too boring. Being able to jump from pole to pole, slide down ramps, run between walls, swing from rings to rings, or even jump from beams to beams, you need the acrobatics movement of both the Prince and Elika. What is nice is that not only are these acrobatics nice to look at, they are also very easy to do with a press of one or two buttons only. Making complicated movements easy to do. Elika's Magic: Outside of combat, Elika's Magic has a few services to provide
to help you in your game. Elika's Magic is needed to heal a corrupted land. Elika's
Magic can also instantly transport you from one heal land to the next cutting
down your travel time. If a destination has been selected on the map, Elika's
Magic can show you the way to your destination. This is probably the most useful
thing from her magic. And lastly with her magic, you can do a double jump. Light Seeds: Once a corrupted land is healed, Lights Seeds will pop up in the surrounding areas. You just need to touch a Light Seed to gather it. You will need a certain number of Light Seeds in order to activate an Ormazd Power. Ormazd Powers: There are four Ormazd Powers each with their own color plates.
Each of the Ormazd Powers provides a different usage from the color plates. At
first the Ormazd Powers will be dormant at the sacred temple until you have collected
enough Light Seeds to unlock them. Ormazd Power Plates are place in varies places
in each of the corrupted lands. If you have unlock an Ormazd Power, the corresponding
color plates will be activated in the corrupted or heal land allowing you to use
the color plates. The purpose of these color plates is to provide you with access
to areas of the land that you normally can't reach just be jumping or climbing
alone. Attacks: There are four basic attacks and they are sword, gauntlet, Elika's magic, and aerial. The Prince sword attack is the basic hack and slash while his gauntlet attack allow him to get close to the enemy to lift them into the air and throw them down onto the ground for some damage. The Prince can call Elika for help where she will jump in and attack the enemy using her magic. An aerial attack is when the Prince and Elika leap up into the air above the enemy and hit them from above. These are the four basic attacks that you will be relying on in the game. To get things more complicated and do some massive damage you would want to line these four attack up into a combo attack. Combos: With the four basic attacks, you can line them up to do massive combos. Sword, gauntlet, and magic attacks already have their own mini combos if you use them consecutively back to back. For example if you want to do a sword combo you just attack the enemy by using sword attack four times in a row. The fourth attack will be a sword finishing move. Gauntlet and Magic combos work in a similar way. But the real combos are the ones where you can chain sword, gauntlet, aerial, and magic attacks all in a long string of attacks. So basically you be chaining a sword combo with a magic combo, and than a gauntlet combo as a finishing move. Once you become really good with combos, you can throw in an aerial combo to keep the combo chain going and making the combo even longer. The game provides an in-game combo tree help guideline to let you know how to chain all these combos together.
Like with most games there are misses and hits on the gameplay. We'll recap the misses first and end things with the hits. The one thing you will notice is that the game can become a bit repetitive about half way through the game since it's mostly you doing the same thing over and over but in a different land. Now every game gets a bit repetitive but in this case it's a bit more clear cut due to the fact that you are basically fighting the same four Ahriman servants over and over. So varieties of enemies are really missing in this game. In addition to the fact there aren't many enemies in this game, there aren't many battles to be fought too. Granted this is a platform game mostly but still even for a platform game, you need to have more battles in the game than what this game provides. The battles themselves are very easy that they don't really offer much challenge to gamers. You would hope that at least boss fights be a bit more challenging in this game. Death itself doesn't have any real meaning in this game as each time you die, Elika will just leap in and save you and you are right back to where you left off. No need to even really worry about where your last save was incase of a death. The only major challenging aspect of the game is probably trying to find all those hidden Light Seeds. This leads us to the Light Seeds aspect of the gameplay. If you look at the gameplay overall, you probably notice the reason why the game is as long as it is, is because you are spending most of your time looking for Light Seeds. Reaching one of Ahriman servant to do battle with and healing the land isn't a challenge at all. Elika light magic will show you the way and it's just a matter of a few minutes for you to reach the battle arena. It's after you heal the land where you'd be spending most of your gameplay time looking for Light Seeds. At first looking for every single Light Seeds is okay but than it does get to be a bit tedious later on. You only need to gather about half of the 1000 available Light Seeds to unlock all four of Ormazd powers. After that the Light Seeds gathering becomes pointless unless you are trying for a trophy or to unlock an extra skin. At which point you can just quickly speed through the game defeating Ahriman servants in other areas and healing the lands quickly, cutting the game even shorter by foregoing the gathering Light Seeds part. And that's the main fault of the gameplay in that there's not much to do outside of just making your way to Ahriman servants and defeating them quickly so you can gather up some Light Seeds. This is the kind of stuff that hardcore veteran gamers may find disappointing as they are looking for something more out of the gameplay to challenge them.
On the other hand, this game is perfect for beginners and casual gamers looking to try something new, fun, and easy to get into that doesn't tie up their real life duties. Despite the realistic movements and acrobatics of the Prince and Elika as they scale walls and swing from pole to pole, gamers don't have to worry if those are hard to do as the game, itself, make it very easy to learn with just a press of a single button and the game does the rest automatically. While battles maybe easy, it's very fun to do and a treat to line up combos and watch the animation of the Prince and Elika jumping and moving around hitting and tossing the enemies. This isn't just some simple hack and slash animation you have here. Tying in the use of Ormazd powers to the puzzle solving element of the gameplay is a nice touch too. Allows gamers to challenge their brain a bit but not enough that it annoys them to the point where they are stump. The incorporation of elements from other genre is a nice way to make the game more than just a platform game and help introduce gamers to different genres that they might be interested in later on.
In the end of it all you will have fun with this game and enjoy it. The story mode gameplay is fine the way it is for the most part and does what it needs to do to balance out between the casual gamers and the more serious gamers in terms of the platform genre. Mixing in magic with puzzle solving elements is a nice touch. And the overall flow of the gameplay is done nicely to the point where you are able to play the game at a nice pace to get things done in the game but have time for other things in life too. The only flaw of the story mode gameplay is that you need more fights but outside of that, thumbs up all the way.
Score: 8/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Artworks and Skins for you.
This is probably the most disappointing feature in the game to the point where it actually lowers the overall scores of Prince of Persia by a lot. If the game developers had spent more time in coming up with a way to offer in-game extras and some sort of replay ability, Prince of Persia wouldn't have left you with a bit of an empty leaving of isn't there anything more in this game. As it stand, Prince of Persia is pretty much a one time play through unless you really enjoy this game a lot and want to retry the game again for old time sake. The game does offer extras with an Extra Menu. As you play the game and heal the various corrupted lands, you will unlock the Art Gallery of each of the corrupted lands. You can view the concept artworks anytime in the Extra Menu. There's also a Skin Manager in the Extra menu where you can unlock various new costume for the Prince and Princess to wear if you have the right code or met the right condition. These are nice extras to have but they are considered low priority extras at best. I think it's safe to say in this day and age, gamers are looking more for in-game extras where you can find something more to do in the gameplay as an option such as an extra dungeon, an extra land to heal, an extra boss, just some sort of extra in terms of gameplay. Something more to do in the game besides just the story mode gameplay. But the game doesn't offer anything more than the story mode gameplay. Even in replay ability the game doesn't offer any sort of hard mode or a new game+. There're just no incentives in playing the game again. You can collect trophies in the game if you meet certain criteria's but those trophies are more symbolism than substance as those trophies don't add or unlock anything in terms of extras. Trophies are just there to remind you of your achievements in the game.
Score: 5/10
Prince of Persia is a good platform game that you would enjoy playing and is worth a buy. It has a good story, good characters, great graphics and sound. But despite all that, Prince of Persia fans can all agree that it's probably not the best game or perfect game out of the series so far. The one thing that it lacks is the "more" part. You hope that there's more in this game than what is offered. More fights or more extras, just something more to do than the regular story mode gameplay of collecting light seeds and clearing each area. That's the one empty feeling this game tend to leave you with if you are a hard core platform gamer or a Prince of Persia fan. On the bright side of things, this game is a great game for those that are new to platform games or those that mainly play rpg games but looking to try something new outside of the rpg genre as Prince of Persia incorporates elements of rpgs into the gameplay excellently. It may not be the best Prince of Persia game but it is a good introduction game to possibly a new Prince of Persia trilogy series in this new age of consoles. Here's hoping the next Prince of Persia game takes all the good of this game from story to graphics and improves on the gameplay to include some much needed extras and "more" part that this game lacks. The lack of in-game extras and replayability really hurt this game overall score.
