Prince of Persia (2008) Hands-On Preview

We get to grips with a fresh build of Prince.

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By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, October 24, 2008

Old Princey's had more personality shifts than the high security wing of Arkham Asylum. In the PS2's Sands of Time he was a lovably brash, wet-behind-the-ears goateed kid, kind of like Ico's older brother. But rather than rolling with this robust temperament, Ubisoft decided that the gaming public favoured baying, unshaven heroine-addicts instead, and so along came Warrior Within and its cringeworthy taste in banded leather. Fortunately, the aforesaid public was quick to disabuse the publisher of its preconceptions, and Two Thrones steered the Prince back into likable territory, albeit with the angsty element tagging along in the time-honoured form of a "dark" alter ego.

The series' current generation debut, titled simply Prince of Persia, marks the final stage of the boy's development. We've had fourth grade earnestness, mid-pubescent gloom and high school identity crisis. What's next? Ah yes, the college jackass.

Jackass is the only word for it. Don't be fooled by Princey's exquisite new cell-shaded threads - the man's a pillock of the first rank, a 3-for-1 bumper edition of sodden one-liners rendered all the more shameful by ham-and-cheddar voice-acting. He has an unpleasantly apt foil in Elika, the whiny slip of a girl he (literally) runs into while searching for his treasure-laden donkey. Even on the strength of our few hours play, it's pretty clear how this particular partnership will unfold. Elika quite rightly thinks the Prince is a bit of a prat, he thinks she's an ice queen, and they're both destined to charm each other against the odds and wind up making hay by the finale. That's how we're calling it, Ubisoft. Prove us wrong.

To universal relief, the game lurking behind these frat-boy characterisations has definite 8/10-plus potential. In short, it's Sands of Time's exhilarating corridor stunts chopped up and parcelled out across Zelda's open world, with cooperative mechanics and an enhanced fighting system thrown in for good measure. Events take a predictable turn at the outset when Elika's silly old dad breaks open the tomb of a diabolical god, Ahriman, who promptly covers the world in malevolent black gloop. The Prince manages to get caught up in the proceedings, as action heroes are wont, and sets off with Elika to cleanse the land component region by component region.

Starting from a hub basin dominated by the vast, shimmering Life Tree (another nod to Zelda) you can tackle the game's dozen or so discreet areas in any order. Getting lost is a struggle indeed thanks to toweringly distinctive landmarks and linear environmental puzzles, but should you lose your bearings Elika is conveniently equipped with a sort of magical GPS, which lights the path to your waypoint at the touch of a button.

Convenience, of course, is one of the series' gilded attributes: no game (barring perhaps the developer's prior gem, Assassin's Creed) has ever let the player pull off such a huge array of ninja acrobatics with such becoming ease as Prince of Persia. All the old gang are here - wall-runs, wall-hanging, wall-jumps, tightrope walking, shimmying on ledges, and so on - plus some tight new tricks such as wall-grinding, where the prince digs his spiked gauntlet into a surface to control his descent, and an improbable but nifty ability to crawl along the ceiling.

As ever, much of the game's allure stems not from the motherly way the level design maps itself to your capabilities, but the sheer glory that is the Prince in motion. A long swathe of beautifully arabesque cloth trails out behind him as he finds lizard-like purchase on bald rock and trips elastically along slender beams. Dust unfurls from his footfalls during a wall-run, as though the Prince were mounted on a partly-visible magic carpet, and subtle acoustics - hands patting on rock, or slapping against wooden pillars as you climb - pin down the supple animations. Ubisoft's perennially reinvented protagonist might be off-putting in conversation, but Great Odin's Raven the boy can move. Much like Michael Jackson, then.

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