A true revival of a great franchise.
There's something to be said for a long running series of games. We are all familiar with the modern approach to marketing, that is, if a game does well you immediately say it's a trilogy. That happened with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time way back when on the Game Cube, and I honestly expected the Prince's run to be over after that trilogy came to an end. But the good old boys at Ubisoft had other ideas for our friend the Prince, and thus came about my favorite Prince of Persia game yet.
This newest installment of Prince of Persia has the same magical quality to it that I found in another fairly recent 3D platforming game that really did a lot to revive its series: Mario Galaxy. In the same way that Galaxy did, Prince of Persia took all the things from it's previous installments and did them all just as well, if not better, while also adding new areas that really just took the game to a new level. I found the platforming to be incredibly enjoyable, the scenery was stunning, and even the combat was fun, even though it became slightly repetitive. The open world of Prince of Persia also made it more engulfing, more like you were in this living breathing place, rather than a long winding hallway from point A to point B.
The story, while not a completely unbeatable masterpiece, was very solid, and when coupled with the game's characters turned into a fun, exciting tale of fantasy and adventure. And the dialogue throughout the game is top notch. Well, until you reach the final "boss" where Ahriman taunts you in awkward ways by saying things like "Your dreams are mine to give!". I guess being sealed away for thousands of years will make anyone a little incoherent.
In the end, this is a great adventuring game in which it is hard to find any real, meaningful fault with. I know some people complain that "It's too easy" because you can't "die". Really what this means is that when you do die it just automatically sets you back a little ways instead of making you go through 2 loading screens to see "Game Over" and manually reload a checkpoint. Features such as this just do more to convince me that Ubisoft knows exactly what they are doing with every aspect of the games they make. Hats off to them.
