Perhaps I should start a touch earlier, though.
A warning before you continue: this is long. You who know me know I often write at length. Beware!
So, Prince of Persia. Sort of a cult classic for old computers back in the day, highly praised for its difficult puzzles and silky-smooth animation (achieved using an old-school version of motion-capture called rotoscoping). I can't say I've ever actually played the originals (there were two), but they sound pretty nifty from what I hear, combining the side-scrolling platformers of the day with a sense of physics and a hefty dose of puzzle-solving/timing/logical thinking. Skipping over the bit of history that was the allegedly bad Prince of Persia 3D, sometime before the year 2003 Ubisoft got Mechner's permission to take a crack at reinventing/revitalizing the games, and thus was born the first in a planned trilogy: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
The Prince looks pretty intense there on the box art, but in spite of that this is actually the only one of the three to have some real touches of lightheartedness to it. In fact, the writing is one of the best parts of Sands of Time. I sort of bought it on a whim, having heard some good things about it, and was definitely not disappointed. This game now occupies a permanent spot on any sort of Top 5 games list I might have, and I would honestly recommend it to anyone. It was great. Story aside for the moment (we'll get back to it briefly), each of the games in this rebooted Prince trilogy had three core elements to the gameplay, which I'll address for each for consistency: Platforming, Puzzles, and Combat.
The platforming for all three stays consistent, so I'll talk the most about it here and only note differences for the other two games. Most people have at one point or another played what is classed as a "platforming game--" games that involve a lot of running and jumping and avoiding obstacles to progress. Pretty much any given Mario game is a prime example. Here, that old-school running and jumping is altered to maintain some small degree of realism and to make the game unique--with the addition of the navigation art known as parkour, a brilliant maneuver on Ubi's part. For those not familiar with parkour, since it's still sort of an obscurity, I'll provide a couple video examples:
In this one, pay less attention to the general cartwheeling and flipping about on the ground and more to the bits where they complicatedly navigate things.
Here's an even better example. Some of the things done in here look like there were snatched straight from the game or vice versa.
Parkour is pretty much the most awesome-looking way to navigate usually un-navigatable areas, and is a good way around the whole complication of Mario being able to jump thirteen times his own height, if you're trying to make a "realistic platformer." It makes getting around the palace the entire first game takes place in exceedingly fun, and it feels very satisfying when you can rattle off a whole sequence of moves smoothly to get from point A to point B.
And I haven't even gotten to the how the Sands of Time, for which the first game is named, work. Both of the original games were, I hear, rather harsh when it came to player deaths, intent on preserving that sense of realism. There were very few hazards and traps that weren't instant death when you got on the nasty end of them. That carries over here as well, to a degree--the Prince is endowed with a fairly standard video game health bar, but traps and enemies are pretty brutal to it (a few solid whacks from even a basic trap will do you in) and it's very easy to die. This is made not frustrating by way of a magic known as the Sands of Time.
True to their very self-explanatory name, the Sands of Time are magic-infused grains of sand which allow people who possess artifacts linked to them to manipulate time. The Prince, very early on, stumbles across one of these artifacts--a dagger, also quite simply named as the Dagger of Time. You have access to limited quantities of sand to manipulate time in order to both correct mistakes you as a player are bound to make from time to time and to make tougher portions of the game a bit easier. The most frequently used ability is that of rewinding time--as long as you have the amount of sand necessary to do so, you can fully rewind up to ten seconds or so of the game (which doesn't sound like much, but it definitely is). So if you mess up and, say, fall into a nasty deep spike-filled pit, you can simply hold down the rewind button as the Prince falls upwards out of said pit to land back on the ledge, whole and fresh, which saves a lot of frustrating "game over" screens from happening. Likewise, you can slow down time if you're having trouble with something that requires you to move quickly, and even freeze it if you're having an especially difficult fight (very fun to slash away at a tough enemy who's been giving you grief who suddenly can't fight back).
Puzzles are definitely integrated into the first game, though few of them are difficult, and what constitutes a "puzzle" is up to debate. Traditional "puzzle" puzzles, where you have to actually stop and solve the workings of some complex mechanism, are few and far between, and rarely challenging, but there are lots of what I would describe as sort of "mini-puzzles" that are part of the platforming itself. You must actually pause and consider how to get from point A to point B, or even, to break it down further, how to get past a given section of traps sustaining the least possible damage (preferably none). You're constantly asking and thinking "hmm, where should I go from this point...and how?" That sort of questioning is rarely brought up in most other platformers (until fairly recently, anyway) and it's refreshing for it.
So the platforming and puzzles are awesome and really, a part of each other. That brings us to the combat. The combat is the weak link in Sands of Time, the one single thing that bars it from me declaring it "one of the best games ever" rather than simply "a very good game that is worth your time." The problem with the combat, mainly, is that it feels chorelike, an obstacle that prevents you from more runny-jumpy-flippy goodness. Enemies come in predictable waves, never of more than four at a time, and the Prince's repritoire of fighting moves is fairly shallow--mostly just generic sword slashes. What really sours the battles, though, are the means by which the enemies must be dispatched. Every enemy in the game (except for the final boss) is a sand zombie of some type. Because they are undead, they cannot be killed simply by hitting them enough times--you must knock them down and then, when they are prone on the ground, stab the Dagger of Time into them to suck up their sand. Which sounds neat until you realize you need to do this for every single enemy you come across, and it then quickly becomes tedious. The capstone on all this is a rather sad Final (and only) Boss. You are a physically impeccable young warrior prince with a sharp and hefty sword, he is an old man with a terrible case of tuberculosis. You do the math on how that turns out.
But I don't want to end what I have to say about the first game on a bad note like that, particularly because I have the most to say about it. I promised I'd rap a bit more about the writing, so here goes. I have to say, while Sands of Time's story isn't quite, say, literature-worthy, it is very entertaining and is still high-quality. It even considers its own narrative framing--the game as a whole is sort of a flashback (this isn't a spoiler, trust me), with the Prince narrating it from time to time, the game being the playing out of a story that he's telling to someone. This idea, of the game being a told story unfolding, extends to such a degree that when you actually die and get a game over, it's attributed to the Prince either having a bad memory or someone interrupting: you'll even get a little voice clip of him saying something like "no no no, that's not how it happened at all. Let me start again," or "that's...that's not right. I know I survived that, hold on." Very amusing. I'd like to say the voice acting is also very good--very few flat or awkwardly delivered lines, a good sense of emotion present (a bit overwrought perhaps at times, but fun overwrought, not eye-rolling overwrought).
The character-building/characterization may be the best part of the writing, though. The two main characters, the Prince himself and a young woman named Farah, begin as begrudging allies that only stick together for survival's sake and end totally in love with each other, fighting side by side willingly and for each other. The transition between the two here is silky smooth and, I feel, very believable, which is a breath of fresh air in a world of games riddled with very forced-feeling romantic elements. The Prince starts out as a total royal brat but remains likable in spite of this, due in part to the endearing Peter Parker-esque monologues he'll ponder quietly to himself as his character slowly develops into something far more mature.
A word ought to be put in for Farah alone, too--she stands head and shoulders above the majority of female video game characters for being treated equally as, well, a character. Too many games feature women that are for no good reason incredibly scantily clad, poorly written, resigned to little more than a the extreme occupations of damsel-in-distress or overcompensatory gun-toting sneerer, merely token, or perish forbid, all of the above. Farah is a person, her lines and personality feel like they have just as much thought put into them as the Prince's, she is attractive without being physically exaggerated, she can hold her own yet doesn't sacrifice her femininity for it. All of the exchanges between her and the Prince just crackle with good character chemistry; they bounce off each other in marvelous ways. On top of all that I'd like to add that she has a really pleasant voice.
Now then, Sands of Time is the only one of these games whose story is entirely self-contained and independent of the other games, perhaps as a safety measure in case it didn't sell well enough. But sell well enough it apparently did, and so they were given the go-ahead to make the second game. But they seemed to favor a, um, different approach...
...eeeeyeah. While that's not the box art for the game, it certainly gives you a good impression. The almost Disney's-Aladdin feel of the first game was very jarringly swapped for a world of grit, grimness, and bloodstains. I'll go ahead and say straight off the bat that Warrior Within is the weakest of the trilogy, and this is due almost entirely to the drastic change in mood and atmosphere. This change is also why I was so hesitant to buy the rest of the trilogy--there was about a year between my beating Sands and my purchasing the other two titles.
Let me start with what good there is to be had. Let's first go back to my complaint about Sands of Time's combat segments. They fixed that in Warrior Within and they fixed it good. The combat was made far more complex, with the addition of much more move variety, a smooth combo system, and the ability to choose your secondary weapon from downed enemies (the dagger makes no appearance in this game, and the Prince's time-manipulation abilities are preserved through different means). The enemies themselves are also made of good old flesh and blood rather than enchanted sand, which means they stay dead when they're supposed to. As a result, the combat became fairly enjoyable and allowed you to get really creative (a bit frighteningly so since it's creative violence). You could really sort of tailor a fighting style to your liking--find moves that you like and string them together, and it even introduced some small touches of strategy to the whole affair.
The platforming was made slightly more complex, with the addition of some new landscape elements and moves in addition to all the old ones, and thankfully they all work and just further enhance that aspect of the game. The sand powers were also refined further--in fact, I think the sand powers worked best as a mechanic in this game, or at least they were used most often to greatest effect. Rewind is a staple for all of them, but Warrior Within also makes the slow-motion power truly useful. In the first game, it was just that--slow motion. Warrior plays it smarter by making it slo-mo for everything but the Prince himself. In this way it actually becomes necessary to navigate some particularly fast-moving hazards and closing doors, a practice that carried over to the third game. It deleted the freezing power from the first game, but replaced it with a similar one that keeps time normal for the world around you but causes the Prince to move extra-fast in combat, which came in handy for the occasional gimongous enemy cluster.
So, improved combat and further refined movement and sand mechanics. Noble accomplishments! But unfortunately lost in the mound of Warrior Within's numerous and heavy flaws.
First thing to tackle is the writing. Apparently improving what was improved came at the total cost of anything resembling good writing. WW is atrocious in this department. The story weaves around, feels at points like they were making it up as they went, and even flatly contradicts itself at some points. Not a single character is likeable, the Prince included. The cliche-ridden dialogue varies between unconvincing and overacted, and finds no middle ground. There is a romantic element, and it's about as forced as they get. The Prince's voice actor was replaced by someone with a generic gravelly action-movie voice who murmurs threats that would sound cool to a thirteen-year-old boy and swears like his mom's in the next room. The only other character (that the game gives any attention to, anyway), is this annoying-voiced woman in a woefully out-of-period red party dress (come on, this is supposed to be 700 AD!) and thick Maybelline makeup who we're supposed to buy that the Prince falls madly in love with despite her repeated (and eventually very bluntly stated) desire to kill him. I didn't care, she wasn't Farah. The Prince has apparently learned nothing from the previous game about maturity or personal responsibility either, because when he's not trying to be dark and gritty, he goes on whiny, overblown "woe-is-me" monologues that would sound more at home on Livejournal.
But the changes of course didn't stop with the characters and story, no no. The beautiful music from the first game, a mix of Middle Eastern beats and wails with the occasional soft electric guitar thrown in, was replaced for this game with generic, sludgy metal riffs straight from Godsmack, of all bands. Why not just throw some Korn and Linkin Park in there, Ubi, and complete the embarassing high school hard-rock trifecta? You can almost see the emo-banged growly Prince belting out a chorus or two of "crawwwwling innnn my skiiiiin." And the environments. The oh so pretty (and clearly researched) architecture of Sands give way to the second game taking place almost exclusively in very generic, gritty, dank caves. There are a few glimpses of a sort of Greek feel about the place, but not enough to avoid lost points. The aforementioned grittiness and dankness also makes it a bit hard to see sometimes. Most of the previous game's at least sort-of period clothing is replaced with Hot Topicky leather, buckles, and chains.
The improved combat is not without a token grain of salt either-- Warrior Within does have legitimate boss fights, unlike the first game, but what it fails to do is make those boss fights much fun. They make you fight the exact same sub-boss six times (one of those times slapping a life bar on it and trying to pass it off as a legit boss), so the first one is interesting, but by the time you're done with all six you're sick of them, and the other bosses don't fare much better in the fun department.
The platforming puzzles still exist, thankfully, but any "puzzle" puzzles have been removed entirely for this trip. There is an oft-repeated segment where you have to hit four switches in the correct order, but it's an excercise in process of elimination, not strategic thinking.
In addition, the game as a whole is repetitous (there's a lot of backtracking, something not present to much degree in the other two games) and a bit too difficult for my liking(I expect difficulty from this series, but there's something wrong when you die multiple times even during the tutorial level). There's apparently two endings--the "real" ending you can only get if you collect all these little hidden powerup things, which are so well-hidden I didn't even know they existed until I stumbled across this fact on the internet by chance. Rather than traipse through the game a second time, I just cheated and watched the "real" ending on Youtube.
So it's pretty safe to say this was a bad turn for the series, overall. It had some good ideas (the improvements, yes, and also despite the writing there are a few small interesting bits to the story that I think could have been truly neat with a bit of development) but ultimately collapses under the weight of its own blood-spattered angst. It's not a terrible game, I've played many that are far, far worse, it's just a big disappointment given the awesomeness of its predecessor. So needless to say I went into the third game sort of jaded...
So here's the boxart for the third and final game. Well, the bright colours are at least a departure from Warrior's greys and reds, and that regular half the Prince there looks decent enough--it was the element of the "Dark Prince" that worried me. This seemed like it could easily ride the cliche express all the way to genericsville and have us revisit Warrior's angst and whining once more.
Thankfully, I was so, so very wrong.
Two Thrones unfortunately still does not quite reach Sands' level of good, but is still very good and manages to be a far, far worthier sequel than Warrior hoped to be. It doesn't forget Warrior entirely though--on the contrary, it keeps what little was good about it, i.e. the refined combat and sand power use. The platforming is once again expanded upon and brought to what I feel is its absolute best.
The best part of Two Thrones, however, is that it finally, finally manages to seamlessly merge the three core Prince of Persia elements--platforming, puzzles, and combat--absolutely seamlessly. Seamlessly! They blend into a rich harmony of enjoyable, enjoyable game. Though the Prince can be equipped with some variety of sword for the majority of this bout, the primary weapon this time around is the Dagger of Time, making its triumphant reappearance. There is a much greater emphasis on stealth this time around, through the use of a new gameplay element called "speed kills." Speed kills are excercises in careful timing and precision, necessary to parts of the game. Used on regular enemies, they can eliminate lengthy tough fights if you can manage to sneak up behind that enemy and quietly slit his throat (quietly because once your commotion is noticed, anyone else in the area comes running). On bosses, they are usually used as necessary "finishing moves." If this sounds gratuitous, trust me, it's less violent than Warrior's persistent blood-fountains and beheadings. The speed kills were a wonderful idea and serve to make the Prince an almost ninja-like presence in this installment. It also is what lends a lot of strategy to the combat--you will be perched high above a group of roaming enemies trying to calculate who to attack when from which vantage point, in order to provoke the least amount of attention.
In addition, though the boss fights in Thrones are fewer, they're much more memorable and fun (and strategy-involving!) than Warrior's uninspired slash-fests.
Ah, yes, strategy. Puzzles are back, in more ways then one--Two Thrones makes you think more than either of the two previous games, and this is something I appreciated. Nice to know that parts of my brain are definitely working while playing a video game. Having essentially covered the three core basics all in one lengthy sweep, lets move on to specific improvements over Warrior--and the few things that keep this final chapter from being quite as good as Sands.
The atmosphere lives and returns! The music has tossed aside its brooding phase to bring us back some more gorgeous Middle Easterny tunes, the setting of ancient Babylon looks convincing enough, the clothing no longer feels misplaced. As for the writing, well, that's somewhat more of a mixed bag.
The story itself is a big improvement over Warrior's sinking feeling of being made up on the fly, but it's simply good, not great. The original voice actor for the Prince is back and does an amazing job--he's the strongest character in the game, as he well should be. The voice acting for him just plain rocks, which makes it kind of a shame that the rest of the characters' voices do jobs that vary between "gets the job done" and "ehh." The Prince/Dark Prince dynamic actually works out really, really nicely--he's constantly having arguments with him in his head, sort of like a much more rational, wittier Gollum and Smeagol.
Any fears I had about the Dark Prince were put to rest pretty soon after he's introduced--partly because, for the majority of the game, he's not even overtly evil. He's a lot of negative things: sardonic, violent, predatory, single-minded, highly critical of the Prince's actions and even a bit lecherous...but the actual evil is saved for short, rare, outbursts (there's a moment in there somewhere of a Dark Knight Joker-esque "LISTEN TO ME"). And yes, there are times in the game when Dark Prince's personality does take over and you physically become him, usually because of the environment--the smoky doppelganger of Everyone's Favourite Babylonian uses a faintly ridiculous bladed whip called a "daggertail" rather than a sword, which allows him to swing from things Indiana Jones style, produce more efficient speed kills, and generally hit harder. These sections are also usually timed, as Dark Prince's life slowly depletes but is refilled by sand. In a nice twist, during these segments the true Prince actually becomes a voice in Dark Prince's head.
I've said that the rest of the voice acting is merely mediocre (for the most part, anyway), but one piece in particular deserves sad mention. It appears they weren't able to get Farah's voice actor back, and the resulting replacement unfortunately drags her character down a bit. This sounds minor but really does affect her character...Thrones Farah is unfortunately just not quite as likeable as Sands Farah. Her lines feel a bit off, not quite flat, but just faintly wrongly delivered somehow. There were complaints made by some reviewers about her changed role as well (Thrones Farah is a bit more of a tough-gal soldier than Sands Farah), but I accept this change due to events within the trilogy's plot itself. It would almost be silly to expect the Prince to come home to Babylon to the exact same Farah he left there.
There are four other more minor complaints about the third installment I'd like to address but can't think of any real context for them within this already long entry (perhaps I should have made this three separate posts?), so I think I'll just dash them off. The occasional chariot-racing sequences are appreciated as an attempt to add more variety to the gameplay but in practice are more annoying than fun, it's got a really weird difficulty curve that's sort of scattered all over the place (random really hard bits, random really easy bits), the villain's design is sort of ridiculous (making it hard to take him seriously), and it's the shortest game of the trilogy, which is sad because in the end it was the one I felt I could have played for the longest (Sands is assuredly still the best of them, but is best enjoyed in small chunks rather than in the large blocks I found myself playing Thrones in).
So, there you have it, my stretched two cents on Ubisoft's 2003-2005 Prince of Persia reboot trilogy. Sands of Time, a genuinely fun, well-written romp marred only by boring fight sequences, Warrior Within, a dark brooding mistake that still yields a few good contributions to the series as a whole, and Two Thrones, a joyful return to much of what made Sands so good, unfortunately without quite getting back there again. As a certain Australian entertainer once claimed, in total they have the ingredients of one of the best games ever (if you combined Thrones' fully refined gameplay and strategy-involvement with Warrior's combat system and Sands' storytelling skill, overall length, and not-too-easy-not-too-hard difficulty).
Maybe I'll review their 2008 re-reboot of the series someday...when it's not forty dollars.
Holden Out.
Join me next time, when maybe I actually won't forget to do a Sunday Comics post!
1 comment:
Or you could just play my copy...
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