When the Prince of Persia series started way back in 1989, it was celebrated for its blend of platforming and puzzles, as well as the lifelike animation of its characters. When Ubisoft revived the series with 2003's Sands of Time, these qualities informed the design more than anything else, and the product was one of the best games of the decade. Then came the sequels, and with them, a new emphasis on combat, distortion guitar, and stories with "edge." The formula of SoT was evident, but suffered under the weight of these...improvements.
The new, un-subtitled Prince of Persia was promised as a return to the series' hallmarks: namely, the acrobatic exploration and environmental puzzles that made Sands great. It delivers on that promise—mostly. It improves on the regrettable sequels, but it's a very different game from the original.
The story is straight out of chapter one of The Big Book of Game Plots. A dark god has been unleashed, darkness is spreading, heroes must drive said god back into his magic prison by systematically restoring life to the land, etc. etc. Luckily, the world itself is more interesting than your reason for being there; the vivid, quasi-cel-shaded environments are gorgeous, if a little cartoonish. They're the star of the show, and you can move through them in a completely non-linear fashion, with the option of quick-traveling between cleared areas.
Prince is all about leaping, scaling, and clambering around this world. The good news is that such movement is fairly well done. Wall running, swinging from poles, and a few new maneuvers look and feel quite fluid, and the game is at the best when you're stringing them together. Unlockable "powers" (i.e. magical forms of locomotion, initiated at plates scattered around the environment) mix things up a bit as well, although two of the four of them are nearly identical and non-interactive, and the one that should be the most interesting ends up being the most irritating. The powers exist mainly as a gameplay device to control your progress through the non-linear world. Combat encounters and genuine puzzles are present as well, but are few and far between, and they take a back seat to travel itself.
The bad news is that this travel, while exhilarating, is not all that challenging. Virtually every route in the world is signposted to a grossly excessive degree. Every place you're meant to wall run is scuffed; many jumps are indicated by projections or wooden beams extending from platforms, and other features like climbable vines and wall rings are dead giveaways (particularly in some environments, like caves, that are totally bare except for things you can grab). At a glance, you'll be left with very little doubt about where you're going and what you have to do to get there. You only really ever have to think on your feet when your path takes you around a corner. In Sands of Time, the way to progress along a route—or even its starting point—was rarely so immediately obvious.
Article comments
1 - Sebastian Kühn
Prince of Persia is awesome. I play it yet on my pc.
2 - Gabe Carr
I mostly only played the SNES version (I think). Good times. It's also available as an Easter egg in Sands of Time, but I only tried that once; I seem to remember the controls being painfully unresponsive. It might be time to give it another try, though.