Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    Prince of Persia

    Game » consists of 21 releases. Released Dec 02, 2008

    A 2008 entry into the Prince of Persia franchise titled simply "Prince of Persia", this game stars an all-new Prince as he teams up with the mysterious Elika to fight Ahriman and cleanse the world of his corruption.

    boom_goes_the_dynamite's Prince of Persia (PlayStation 3) review

    Avatar image for boom_goes_the_dynamite
    • Score:
    • boom_goes_the_dynamite wrote this review on .
    • 1 out of 1 Giant Bomb users found it helpful.

    Not Your Parents' Prince Anymore

    To start things off I know that Prince of Persia is a game that has been out for awhile (specifically 7 months), but when I saw this game new for $20 at Gamestop I had to get it.  However, it was one of the games that did not come in a wrapped up box but an envelope that was behind the counter that was then put into the box on the store floor.  At first I was like well that's strange seeing how the box says new.  From what I have been told these are actually games that Gamestop employees have played to test out the game, this may not be true but is what I have read, but if it were true when I was purchasing the game I would have like dto have known.  This would not have changed my decision of buying it but it was the second time it has happened to me at a Gametop.  
     
    Ok so enough about my small gripes I may have had in the purchase of the game, Prince of Persia itself I found to be quite enjoyable.  I found this reboot to be a great breath of fresh air for the Prince of Persia franchise especially after the last two games that were dreadful.  Now since this is my first review for Giant Bomb I will break my review into a few catergories and see what happens. 
     
    Story:
    Not to give too much away but pretty much you play as a guy creatively named Prince, who by all accounts is not a prince but more a pauper who finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.  This is where the game starts with you the Prince running into the Princess Elika, she is actually a Princess who needs help for reversing what her father had done.  What did her father do you may ask, well he just released the dark god Ahriman onto his kingdom, bringing forth shadow and slime monsters to wreak havoc.  So now you and Elika have to go around purifying the land at fertile grounds in order to re-seal the dark god...good luck with that.
     
    Graphics:
    To be honest when I first saw the footage of Prince Of Persia at E3 I wasn't too impressed, in fact I didn't like the art style too much.  But now I have realised that I was foolish and I aboslutely love the style of Prince of Persia, it seems to me like a type of cell shading but a much more detailed version I do not recall seeing before.  Because when I think of cell shading I think of Dark Cloud 2 (a great game I might add), but Prince of Persia to me was much more stylistic which really helped make it fit with the movements of the characters by making everything seem much more fluid.  
     
    The settings, much like the characters, were very srtistic and the use of multiple areas of varying areas gave you a good variety of the new land the character was in going from an uderground city to a mountain top all very greatly rendered.  My only criticism involved the towers throughout the game that the player would have to sometimes navigate through to reach the fertile grounds (or next boss battle).  Instead of offering towers that would look or feel different similar designs were rehased for each tower, seemingly the only differences were how you reached the top of the tower.  For example if you were to look at Ahriman's tower and Ormazd's tower, you would noticed very little difference in the two where one might expect some given that one dude is the big evil you are facing and the other is the great good.   But overall the graphics were great.
     
    Gameplay:
    The gameplay is one of the things for this game that I find the most interesting, there is no more control of time, but that is so 2003 any way, but instead you have a partner that is every bit as enjoyable and interesting as the controlable character.  Elika is quite interesting in the way that she is utalized in the game, she is your double jump, your special abilities and your life-line.  Throughout the game the Prince will have to call out to Elika for support to cross areas the Prince never could alone, wether it be an extra boost in a jump or the activation of a tablet that activates an ability that will enable you to reach areas you otherwise couldn't.  
     
    But the most important of all is the fact that any time the Prince is about to die by falling an incredible height Elika will save him.  This is pretty cool, the fact that you cannot die in the game makes it quite unique and instead of making it a ridiculus game I found it to be pretty cool, due to the fact that it makes sense, when you have a partner that has an ability that could save you why wouldn't they.  Unlike other games where a partner does seemingly nothing to help save you this partner will.  But this also is activated automatically so sometimes instead of jumping to a ledge below your position Elika will save you when you seemingly did not need saving, which can get in the way of the platforming at times.  However, this is rare and usually can be easily avoided but when it does happen it does get annoying.
     
    Now onto the Prince, and even though this is a new prince the basic idea of what this prince does is eemingly the same.  You can still run on wall, jump onto the sides of pillars, climb up walls, swing around poles and land on the smallest of ledges.  Which all makes sense given the fact that this play mechanic was based upon Assassin's Creed, just was a little more suped up.  Sure you are still doing a boatload of platforming, but the combat experience is so different from Sands of Time.  
     
    This time around the Prince has a sword and a gauntlet and of course Elika's magic, the sword is of course for slicing and dicing, but the gauntlet is used for throwing your opponent.  At times an enemy is only weak against one of these three attacks; however, once  these buffs are broken the attacks can be stringed together to make punishing combos on your opponents.  The battles have a Shadow of Collossus feel to it, in that fights rarely happen and when they do they are either boss fights or an even rarer random enemy.  This was not a bad idea given that if there was too much combat I think it may have felt stale after awhile launching extended combo after extended combo.
     
    To wrap things up my one and biggest fault with this game is how easy it is, now I love it when I play a game and I feel like I am an expert at it, but when the platforming rarely seems to get much more challenging you know something is wrong.  The sheer fact that you cannot die in combat or by falling can easily be a reason behind this is as easy at it is, but I think it more has to do with the fact that the platforming itself is never too challanging.   Not too mention the ending is a big WTF!!! moment that I won't spoil you with, but it could leave a bad taste in your mouth.
     
    Conclusion:
    Although Prince of Persia is not a flawless game that can be quite easy I found myself having a great time playing it which is why I give it a 4.5 stars out of 5.

    Other reviews for Prince of Persia (PlayStation 3)

      A beautiful game in every sense of the word. 0

      I go way back with the Prince of Persia series. I played the SNES port of the original side-scrolling game, and I absolutely hated it. Then I played Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for the PC, and I was absolutely blown away. Superb graphics, beautiful art-direction, and a great story-book plot made The Sands of Time a great game. Then, Warrior Within came along. I started playing the game when it first came out, and I stopped as soon as that terrible hard-rock guitar music kicked in. The di...

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

      Prince of Perisa 0

      When i first found out about the new Prince of Persia game, i saw a trailer for it on tv. It had the song Breath Me by Sia, its a good song. First I thought, if they are making a new game, where is the old prince? Well in Ubisofts newest adventure in the Prince of Persia series, it starts off with new setting, character, and new acrobatics. I welcomed this change. I was a fan of the other games. But one thing Ubisoft did was totally redid the series. The last two games in the "Sands" trilogy wh...

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.