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Elika has just cleansed The Ruined Citadel of the God of Darkness’ evil (via the mashing of a face button). Tall green grass, delirious butterflies, chirping birds and exuberant flowers spread across the barren, grey interior like ripples in a Garden of Eden pond. We’ve just finished Prince of Persia’s first post tutorial level and it’s been a blast. But the real fun hasn’t even begun.
Now, with the land cleansed of ‘The Corrupted’ – the physical manifestation of Ahriman, the God of Darkness himself – the Prince and swinging side-kick Elika are free to simply enjoy themselves. And that’s something we intend to do.
Whenever Elika restores what’s called a ‘Fertile Area’ in Prince of Persia, 30 Light Seeds appear in the nooks and crannies of the level. The Light Seeds act as PoP’s currency – to be spent on new combos as well as unlocking new Fertile Areas to tackle from the game’s main map. They won’t be lined up in a nice row for you to collect, however. To get them you’ll have to swing, slide, jump, clamber, wall run and even ceiling run upside down like Spider-Man on your way to the glowing white orbs.
It is during the Light Seed collection sequences when Prince of Persia evolves from being a beautiful and fun platforming game into being a completely and utterly exhilarating mess about on a huge children’s playground apparatus. Free from the shackles of having to worry about a threat, we’re able to enjoy the Ruined Citadel as more than a linear level to work through with an end boss to kill.
You’ll see a Light Seed somewhere in the distance, and then rack your brains as to how to collect it. You might inch your way across a beam, jump onto a column, twist around, jump again, wall run and jump, slide down using the Prince’s new Gauntlet, jump again, once, twice, three times – the last one too far for the Prince to make himself, so you press the ‘Elika button’ and she appears as if by magic to give you a helping hand, throwing you to safety. It’s brilliant fun.
And Elika herself deserves much of the credit. She acts as a safety net that replaces the Sands of Time mechanic that allowed players to reverse time and try death-defying jumps again after fluffing them. Here, if you misjudge a jump, Elika will magically rescue you and place you back at the beginning of the attempt. It gives you the confidence to try things out, to simply have a go. And, as you inch your way closer to the 30th Light Seed, some of which have clearly been placed with mischief in mind on the part of Ubisoft Montreal, you’ll realise that, actually, this is just about as good as action platforming gets.
In this way Prince of Persia is the game Assassin’s Creed should have been all along. That might seem a weird thing to say, but it’s the strongest feeling we have following our hands-on time with a preview build of the PS3 version. Why? Because PoP has exhilarating, free-form acrobatic exploration that Assassin’s Creed’s more constrained tower climbing didn’t. And for us, this is what’s most exciting about the game.
The combat is less compelling, but it’s still an interesting take on the standard Prince of Persia fighting formula. In previous games the Prince would have to fight a number of spawning enemies before he was able to progress. It played out quite repetitively: enter room, fight, progress, repeat. This time around fights are given far more importance, and are actually pretty damned hard. Your average Corrupted beastie, a black mass of physically formed evil, will target you and attack with a flurry of swipes that must be blocked or the Prince, sans a health bar of any description, will eventually be faced with quick time event to save himself from a killing blow. Fail and Elika has to step in and save you, allowing your enemy to refill its life bar right to the top. Sigh.
The idea is to hold block – R2 on the PS3 – to deflect these attacks. But blocking doesn’t make the Prince invulnerable. This is where the parry system comes in. You need to press R2 just before an enemy attack hits to parry it, allowing you carve open a hole in your opponent’s guard to attack. From there you can simply attack with the sword, use the Elika button (triangle) to get the princess involved, use the Gauntlet to throw your enemy into the air or trigger an acrobatic, get out of a corner, move. And of course, these moves can be strung together to form some spectacular multi-character combos.
The combat takes some getting used to, and rekindles memories of the lock on target-based, timed counter-heavy combat in Assassin’s Creed, you won’t be surprised to discover. Throughout the game you’ll encounter a Hunter, which acts as a mini-boss – a creature that can change its state at will, forcing you to use specific attacks at different times to do damage. It’s a tough nut to crack.
If you’ve even a passing interest in Prince of Persia, you’ll know all about the new art style, described by Ubisoft Montreal as ‘illustrative’. Playing the game, it feels like the love-child of an oil painting and a cel-shaded piece of fantasy concept art, and is effortlessly gorgeous. Anyone concerned by the new look shouldn’t be – the Prince and Elika are fantastically realised, and the environments we’ve seen (the Tree of Life main hub, the Temple that houses it and the Ruined Citadel) are dream-like in appearance.
The story is a typically gun-ho adventure yarn that has absolutely nothing to do with the Sands of Time trilogy (indeed this Prince is something of a reboot). The game opens with the Prince looking for his gold-carrying donkey. He stumbles into the company of Elika, who’s being hounded by guards for some unknown reason. The Prince, being the chivalrous type that he is (you’ll recognise his voice – it’s Nolan North’s heroic tones – the same guy who lent his vocal chords to Naughty Dog for Nathan “Nate” Drake in the PS3 exclusive Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune) jumps to her aid, but ends up regretting it. Elika leads him to a temple where the Tree of Life imprisons the evil Ahriman. Elika’s father, who you end up having a scrap with, cuts down the tree and releases the corrupting evil of the God of Darkness on the land. Free from his prison, Ahriman covers everything in a horrible black goop (as you move through the game’s levels the corruption will creepily snake out at your hands and feet as the Prince leaps around the environment). It’s then up to Elika and the Prince, who, really, only wants his donkey and his cash back, to restore life to the Fertile Areas which feed the Temple, which in turn feeds the Tree of Life.
There’s an irrepressible charm to the latest Prince of Persia that we’re falling for, quickly, and a lot of it is to do with the relationship between the Prince and Elika. Little things stand out, like the banter between the two as they get on with things, or the way Elika grabs onto the Prince’s back when he’s climbing vines, or even the way the two will gracefully swap positions when moving up and down ridges – it’s all designed to make you connect with your partner, rather than resent her.
Will it actually play out like that? It’s hard to tell from our limited time with the game – but we certainly didn’t at any point feel like she got in the way. She always catches up, and she’ll always be there when you press the Elika button. Apart from the odd moment when she got sandwiched in between the Prince and the camera during combat, we have no complaints.
For us, as we’ve said, the most interesting thing about PoP is that the game gives you the freedom to use the Prince and Elika’s acrobatic abilities to simply mess about. It’s not open world gameplay by any stretch of the imagination, rather, we’d suggest it’s open level gameplay – a series of large mini-sandboxes strung together by clear lines of story progression. Clearing each Fertile Area of corruption will bring you the satisfaction of colouring the environment in ‘pretty field’ paint, but really, Prince of Persia is all about letting loose. This December, you’ll get to experience the virtual wind rush through your hair for yourselves.
Prince of Persia is due out on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Nintendo DS on December 5.
