Prince of Persia

Polished imperfection

Lost and wandering through a raging sandstorm, Ubisoft's ubiquitous Prince stumbles upon a beautiful mystery woman called Elika who's being pursued by her obsessive father and his accompanying henchmen. After protecting Elika through a mixture of explanatory tutorial confrontations and initially confusing flashbacks, the Prince follows her to a giant temple containing the mighty 'tree of life'.

Once inside, Elika's seemingly crazed father briefly clashes blades with the Prince before then proceeding to destroy the ethereal tree, which duly breaks a powerful seal within the temple and releases nefarious god Ahriman, who promptly unleashes a seeping dark corruption upon the world, draining it of both life and colour.

Ignoring the fact that the narrative thread of Ubisoft's newly envisioned Prince of Persia borrows heavily from Capcom's criminally ignored Okami (PS2/Wii), the resulting plot sees the Prince agree to help Elika reach and cleanse various 'fertile grounds' throughout the world, thus restoring power to the temple and once again banishing Ahriman back beneath his ancient seal.

Arriving as a re-imagining of one of Ubisoft's most renowned franchises, Prince of Persia exudes the Montreal development studio's trademark quality thanks to gorgeous presentation that runs from dazzling visuals and character design through to stylised detailing and scrumptious animation. And, much as with the existing Prince of Persia series, the new 2008 edition is built on the timeless attraction of liquid acrobatics, gear and lever puzzle solving, and thrilling battles - well, not so much on the latter.

Touching on the previously mentioned narrative pilfering, the new Prince of Persia also unashamedly lifts from Okami's credentials whenever Elika uses her magical powers to rid a fertile ground of its deadly corruption. Specifically, and while nowhere near as impressive as in Okami, ominous grey hues and patches of inky evil are quickly washed away in a rush of colour and sprouting foliage as life rightly reclaims its place. Yet, despite Ubisoft's light-fingered lack of originality, it's still an extremely pretty effect that only serves to add even more weight to an already breathtakingly pretty game world.

Keeping focus on the game world, Ubisoft's sprawling canvas ranks as perhaps the single biggest departure and improvement when gauged against prior series entrants. By dropping the more conventional linear structure of confined interiors and huge set piece puzzles, Prince of Persia gives the player almost free reign from the outset across expansive exteriors joined by interconnecting caverns and cave systems.

Of course, ridding each patch of fertile ground isn't merely a case of whipping out a dishcloth and a bag of seeds after engaging in copious amounts of relatively unchallenged wall running, pole leaping and ivy scrambling. No, while corrupted areas only offer a meagre smattering of quickly dispatched dark minions, each fertile ground is protected by a once-human guardian guilty of selling their soul to Ahriman.

With the game offering up four separate and gigantic arenas, which in turn contain four smaller sections, the Prince and Elika must repeatedly battle the same guardians over and over before finally putting pay to them for good in their specific lairs. And this is what lets Prince of Persia down. The spectacular arenas and pseudo-sandbox delivery are noteworthy but tarnished somewhat by Ubisoft's decision to place such an onus on exploration and acrobatics without a fair balance in terms of combat.

Rubbing a little unwanted salt into such an annoying wound is that what little combat there is can be epic thanks to the addition of Elika's powers and a dual character combination system that utilises powerful chained attacks and button-prompt defensive counters to create satisfying encounters. In short, the evolving combat is brilliant and testing, there just isn't nearly enough of it to sustain one of the game's main points of detraction - the incessant backtracking.

Likely to be something of a divisive element with series fans and newcomers alike, the Prince and Elika spend a great deal of time revisiting cleansed areas in order to gather the 'light orbs' that are revealed when corruption has been removed. Gathered orbs give Elika progressive powers, which are unlocked back at the temple and enable the brave duo to use transit 'power plates' scattered throughout the game world, which - you guessed it - lead to previously inaccessible areas, yet more valuable light orbs, and more backtracking.

Other points of detraction worth pointing accusatory fingers at include an unusual lack of challenge due to the Prince being all-but invincible. While the original Sands of Time gave players the limited ability to wind back game time in times of danger, the 2008 edition sees Elika yanking the Prince back to safety whenever he's in the jaws of seemingly certain death; be it when plummeting towards a grizzly death, being sucked into the black muck of corruption, or even about to be impaled on an enemy's blade.

Passing quickly over the guiding light Elika can conjure up at the press of a button, criticism is rounded out by Ubisoft's grating decision to lumber the good Prince and Elika with in-depth but ultimately worthless conversation scenes. These largely consist of flaccid exposition, cliche-riddled 'will-they-won't-they' relationship banter, and cheap one-liners - all delivered with distinctly cheesy Hollywood accents. The only saving grace here is that exchanges between the two main characters have to be initiated by the player and are therefore optional.

Despite cynically poking Prince of Persia in the ribs for a significant chunk of this review, there's little doubting that Ubisoft's latest offering is one of the year's most staggeringly beautiful releases. There's also no argument regarding its creative level design, ambitious scope, and its fabulous acrobatics. But sadly that's not enough. Ultimately, the scant combat, lack of challenge, constant backtracking, wholly predictable story, and an unappealing main character leave Prince of Persia as an incomplete package that's polished to an absolute gleam but fails to convince as a worthy reboot.

75%

By Stevie Smith