Prince of Persia

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 where dark, violent and depressing in atmosphere. While i was a fan of Warrior Within, I am happy to see that Ubisoft went back to more a Sands of Time kind of feel. This was looked down upon by many critics and fans. But what i got out of it was a great story with memorable charcters.

So the story. You play as a totally new prince, hes not really a prince, hes more of a adventurer. It starts off with a narrator

saying "what is one grain of sand amongst the storm?", which is one of my favorite quotes in any game. You see the Prince in a sand storm looking for his lost donkey. He later runs into Elika, who is running from some guards. After you first meet her, you enter some tutorials, you learn how the battle system works, how to attack, block, use acrobatic attacks, and your gauntlet attacks. After the tutorial, you learn why Elika was running. You go into a temple. In that temple it is guarding Ahriman. Ahriman is a basicly the head of all that is evil in the game. When he is released, darkness fills up the world. As youd expect its your job to get the light back to the area. How you do that is, you have to activate the Fertial Grounds that are located in four different areas. Theres a good amount of them to get to. After you unlock a certian area, you unlock abilitys for plates that are found around the levels. Some let you fly, run up walls, and leaping great distances. The flying parts and running up walls dont work as well as what youd think. The camera gets weird and you fail a lot. Before you can unlock a Fertial Ground you have to fight a mini boss. There are four of them, one in each region. You fight all of them a great deal, but each time you have to do something different to defeat them. Which adds a bit of challenge. The story ends with i think one of the best twist in a long time.

The reason that twist works so well, is the interacton between Elika and the Prince. Often in the game, Elikas face will pop up on the screen, that a que to talk to her. You dont have to talk to you. But she will tell you info on the area, what each enemy is. This is also the time where you bond with you, and you see them growing on one another.

Elika helps the Prince survive basicly. There is no death in this game. If you fall off the edge of a building or miss a jumb, Elika will pull you back to the last surface you touched. Its very forgiving. I personally liked it, it cut down on frustration. Though when platforming it does get very easy. You dont really even have to be close to the place you want to wall run on to be able to wall run. The game snaps you to it if you dont jumb directly at it.

The game looks stunning also, just beautiful. if you dont like anything in this game, you have to appreciate the visuals. The game runs on the Scimitar engine, which was used in Assassin's Creed. When you heal a land, it does a Okami type of healing cut scene. When that happens, color just flows on your screen. Ubisoft does a great job with the shadows and draw distances. The Prince is highly detailed, from his scarf to his gauntlet. Elika is equally as detailed.

So was Ubisofts attempt to change a franchise successful? Yes. They made some great characters that you will

remember long after playing, though there is absolutely no replay value. Though besides some draw backs like some of its platforming falls flat. I had trouble controlling the Prince. Also the collecting light seeds to gain enterence to new areas was a awful idea. But those faults aside, i had a great time with Prince of Persia, and to me, was the best game of 2008.