Xavier's Blog

This game has been disputed against since the first trailer came to air. How can they change the prince after the Award winning Sands of Time?
Trilogy. Have the Cartooned him, Have they destroyed the fabric of time and space. NO. This game is about a completely different guy. Supposedly.

Prince of Persia is an action-adventure and plat-forming video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on
December 2, 2008 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and was released on December 9, 2008 for Microsoft Windows.
The game is set in ancient Persia, although the exact century is not revealed. In the game, the player assumes the role of the Prince,
whose name is not revealed in the game. The Prince is accompanied by a girl named Elika,  whom he met after a large sandstorm diverted
him from his course and he ended up in a mysterious land. Players traverse many different environments using the Prince's acrobatic abilities to scale walls and even crawl on the ceilings. Throughout the journey, players combat various enemies as they attempt to cleanse the land of corruption.
I Played this game on the Xbox 360.

My first impression of the game is that it looked allot like the game Okami. Because the entire game has a watercolour effect on the graphics Now this game has tried to take a less linear approach to the storyline.
Having to traverse a very long way to your mission point. Only for it to be a boss battle, and for it to get you a little closer to the end of the game.
and you do this not once, not twice, but about 10 + times. It gets very repetitive very fast. And you fight the same four bosses at least 5 times. Another thing that was very annoying is that this game is based in Persia. A distant land... yet all the characters speak like Americans partner.
That ripped a big hole in my bag of immersion.

As you have gathered a game that gets good grades from me is a game with good immersion. If it lacks that spark it better make up for it in another way. The Sands of Time trilogy made up for their lack of immersion but creating a kick ass combat system. You can us walls, pillars and ledges to fight your enemy. Using walls to flip behind them. Using pillars to spin around on and attack your enemies and Ledges to pull tricky moves where you push them off. Plus in their later game they had the Quick-time combat. This added a small action where you could Instantly kill an opponent by performing a stealthy move and slitting their throat. Any way back on task, in Prince of Persia, they thought that that system needed a revamp... (hello anyone home) NO it didn't. So what do they replace it with, A tekken style slow combat system. Where you have four main attacks Sword, Acrobatic (just jumping and hitting with sword) Claw and magic plus block. That was a big no-no but good old Ubisoft makes another grand decision this falls back on them. They should have just used the gameplay elements from the Sands of Time Trilogy.

In this game they recreated the Following NPC. Usually in games where you have some person follow you they talk the whole way, Making you just want to kill them. But Elika is quiet and comes in handy when you need to make extra long jumps. The Prince cannot "die" in this game, as Elika will save him from any danger and bring him back to the last safe point of the game. For example, if the Prince slips and misses a jump, instead of falling to his death, Elika will grab him, and set him back on the last stable platform that the Prince stood on. So basically just like a checkpoint. If the Prince dies in combat Elika will save you but also allow the enemies to heal.

So here is the story for the game:
The adventure begins as the Prince is caught in a fierce sandstorm while seeking his donkey. The Prince, unable to see because of the sand, stumbles into Elika, who requests that he follow her into a temple at the centre of the kingdom. When they arrive inside the temple, Elika's father destroys the tree of life, which begins to free the god Ahriman, who was imprisoned by the god Ormazd, whom the Ahura worship. With the tree of life destroyed, Ahriman begins plaguing the land with Corruption. Don't want to say too much.... Or I will spoil you.

All and all I say that this is a good game. (I have decided to not use numbers to rate games anymore... I will not give in to conformity)
So this is a game I would say that Prince of Persia fans should play. It will prepare you for the future.
It has a good look graphically and has an all round comforting sense. As if it was giving you cookies and warm milk next to a fire, But it
didn't do it for me.

Happy Gaming