The Fall of a Prince

One of my favorite genres of games has got to be platform/adventure and puzzle solving. For years, Ubisoft and the Prince of Persia franchise has been at the top of that genre and have never disappointed me... until now. I have had Prince of Persia for the PS3 for some time now and I have beaten it and its exclusive downloadable content. This Prince of Persia is a new installment that has a new prince, a new world, and a new enemy. You start playing the game as the no-named Prince who runs into a princess that is running away from some persuers. This leads you into a quick tutorial on movement and combat and leads you directly into the story line, the princess, Elika, is a survivor of a group of people who believe in a god named Ormazd and defeated a dark god named Ahriman. Now Ahriman is getting revenge and its up to the Prince and Elika to stop him. The story is pretty basic and easy to understand, but the background of the first war and everything else is given in the game pamphlet and not in the actual game. There is an option during game play to speak to Elika to get new information on the story and on the background of both the Prince and her, but its gets redundent at some points and annoying at others. Actual gameplay is fun, you can still wall run and climb, and the new combat system had great potential but I believe was squandered on this game. Combat was very boring with high emphasis on counters and button timing, hard to do when you are blocking attacks and trying to counter right when a button press side mission comes up. As the game progresses, there are no upgrades or new weapons as in other installments, which leads to a lack of accomplishment during the game. Elika is actually very helpful during game play because everytime the Prince makes a mistake as like jumping to no where or getting knocked off of a platform, she rescues him with her magic and can also give hints on where to go next. The new team aspect of the game is actaully nice, during combat Elika can attack and help the Prince defeat the enemy. She can also provide a double jump move which allows the Prince to reach far away areas, as as mentioned before she protects the Prince from dying just like the Sands of Time did for the other titles. Now don't get me wrong, this game was pretty fun at the beginning and half way through the story, but it never gave that extra effort like other Prince of Persia titles. The actual story ends in a to be continued fashion, which left me on the edge of my seat and imediatly shelling out the 10 bucks for the downloadable content. Playing the extra level added to the story and was more of a prelude and didn't close the story, but instead left you with more questions. Graphics were by far one of the most compelling I have ever seen on the PS3, but all in all this game was more as a casual rent than a must own. I want to play the sequel to see how the story ends, but unless Ubisoft can step up the franchise, I will probably rent it then actually buy it. This game had great potential, but I think Ubisoft wanted to branch so far away from the first three installments of the title that they lost what made the franchise great. Here are some screen shots of the game courtesy of ign.com.