Review – Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia has been a polarising game between fans and critics, not a shocking revelation when both Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry 2 ran the gamut from idolising evangelists to scornful detractors.

Ubisoft’s latest game demos well; free flowing acrobatics, rhythmic combat and incredible faux-graphic-novel visuals. But, like a tantalising movie trailer, it shows its best cards in a two minute, show stopping attraction – what’s in store when you watch the full, ninety minute feature production, can be an entirely different story.

Persia’s strongest point of contention is the entire structure. Underneath the graceful acrobatic show and the beautiful graphics, the skeletal frame, doling out parts of the game in pseudo-sandbox chunks, is effectively broken. A rib poking into the organs and limb bones bent into malfunction, Prince of Persia drapes a visually stunning and mechanically tight game onto a skewed and distorted frame.

The Prince, a charismatic and charming bastard, with voice actor Nolan North aping his own Nathan Drake performance from a year ago, follows his heart (and a couple other organs too) by supporting Princess Elika on a quest to rid her homeland of its malevolent curse.

Shattered heaps of walkways, neatly spaced balancing poles and hot air balloons supposedly culminated into castles, observatories and communal areas, before the corruption invaded. Twenty four distinct locations are replenished and restored in the exact same fashion; navigate the jungle gym world to reach the “fertile ground”, defeat the guarding boss and pump Elika’s magical effervescence directly into the underbelly of the world.

One down, twenty three to go. Prince of Persia never shocks, impresses or even attempts to shake things up. From when the linear tutorial lets go of your hand, until the final challenge grasps it again, you’re in a hypnotic world of Groundhog Day-esque repetition and reiteration, leaving you to apathetically trudge through stage after stage.

Prince of Persia isn’t an epic story or even a cohesive experience; the structure imposed downright denies it. The game has a captivating beginning, and a memorable end, but ten hours of mind-numbing boredom in-between.

And with each level being accessible at any time (from a menu-driven map, disguised as a sandbox world) the game can’t accelerate the story, throw in new sophistications or even challenge the player. With every single area, bar the odd boss stage, available to the Prince after a couple of hours of interlude, all sixteen of the game’s main stages are in an eternal stasis of challenge. Every level must be designed as if it was the first stage the Prince entered.

Challenge is hard to dispense when the main character can’t “die”; a veritable misnomer (as the game has obvious fail states), but an unorthodox death system nonetheless. A careless slip into an abyss sees Elika grab the Prince’s hand and place him safely back onto the last secure, flat ground that he touched.

While the majority of games, including the Prince of Persia trilogy that preceded it, reservedly offer checkpoints like parenthesis around pockets of action, challenge or puzzle, Prince of Persia effectively generates thousands of faux-checkpoints, never pushing the Prince backwards more than mere seconds of play.

Making gamers go back, try again and damn well get it right this time, is an uncompromisingly callous ideology, but games require it; without challenge there is laziness, without practice there is imperfection. If gamers don’t struggle and fail, they lose the satisfaction of their eventual conquer.

Prince of Persia is so easy, so effortlessly one-hand-tied-behind-your-back boring that in Ubisoft’s attempt to negate frustration, difficulty and any slice of dissatisfaction, Prince of Persia loses any semblance of fun or reward.

The amalgamation of a repetitive world and a snooze-inducing difficulty level is of course most disappointing when the game they govern is so interesting.

Prince of Persia has an acrobatic flow unlike any other; while Lara Croft pauses and deliberates every move, the Prince leaps headfirst at every challenge. He trips between dusty cliff faces in a crisscross wall run, scurrying up to ancient wall formations, poking out of the clay. He clambers across vines and swings on poles, elongates his scrambles with rusty rings and slides down sloped canvases.

The platforming is another prisoner of the game’s difficulty free environment, marred by gigantic timing-windows for button presses; jumps, wall runs and dismounts locked like puzzle pieces and modest variance throughout the game.

Always one step behind is the restrained and rational Elika, following the Prince’s every step. Unlike most videogame damsels in distress, she never asks for help or assistance; she can drop from great heights without needing to be caught, and can vault back up without a boost.

But the Prince can help. Should the player wait underneath a drop, the Prince will catch Elika in his arms, or allow her to step onto his shoulders. It’s a beautifully subtle and understated symbiosis between the Prince and Elika, a level of character interaction rarely seen in gaming.

The two characters can spark up conversations, entirely at the player’s whim. With the tap of a button the characters share stories, discuss objectives and swap flirtations. With the player given full control to gauge how much dialogue they want to listen too, everyone is content.

But regardless of its strengths, Prince of Persia never evolves, never offers a heightened level of sophistication and fails to challenge or impress the player after the initial two hours of play.

Assassin’s Creed was criticised for its repetitive gameplay, and Far Cry 2 suffered to some extent for its open world nature, but both were championed for their immersion and organic feel. Prince of Persia is very much a videogame, an artificial place designed primarily for running, jumping and fighting.

With overt, unwavering rules, and a set of oft-repeated ideas, Prince of Persia exists in a stage, a level, a game: not a world.

It’s become obvious that a lack of challenge forms apathy, and familiarity breeds contempt. Prince of Persia trades both as its chief currencies – and all it can buy is a catastrophe.