Prince of Persia

The Short


Pros
- Reboot that takes a lot of the core Prince of Persia elements and puts them in an open-world setting
- Looks absolutely beautiful
- Voice acting is superbly done, with both the Prince and Elika portrayed well
- Simplifies gameplay while adding a whole new layer and shift in focus with its platforming
- Music is excellent as well
- Areas you explore are unique, interesting, and (again) absolutely beautiful
- Can't die; instead of forcing a checkpoint reload you just start a section over. Good design choice.
- I liked the ending, ok?

Cons
- Turns into a "collect-a-thon" pretty quickly
- Simplified gameplay elements take a bit of the challenge away
- Script is a bit too "modern" for the characters it portrays
- DLC Epilogue feels like a "Oh yeah, buy the next game"
- One-on-one combat is new and starts decent, but quickly gets annoying. Seriously, cut combat from these games completely. It'll be fine.

New series, new Prince. 

The Long

I've been pretty clear that I loved the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time series of games. They revolutionized the idea of parkour platforming, and were pretty good games to boot. After closing off the Sands of Time trilogy (and before adding The Forgotten Sands into the mix), Ubisoft split off and started making the Assassin's Creed games instead, a sort of weird "spiritual successor" to the Prince of Persia ones. They ended up being so radically different they decided to comeback to the Prince of Persia title in the aptly named reboot: Prince of Persia. Which I will now call Prince of Persia 2008 in some attempt to stave off confusion. Remade with cell-shaded graphics, a new engine (the Assassin's Creed engine, actually), a new batch of heroes and story, and no sands of time at all, can this one really pull of the same magic that The Sands of Time did back in 2004? 

One thing is for sure: this game is gorgeous. 

The story starts off with the Prince (or we assume he's a prince; it never really solidifies he's anything aside from a thief) getting lost in the desert and stumbling upon this hidden civilization. He then meets Elika, a princess whose kingdom has been taken over by a dark presence, and only she can purge the darkness and restore it to its former glory. Also there's like a tree or something that has to be revived in order to keep the darkness from coming back and messing everything up, which would suck. So with Elika at your side you go to the many different areas of this land, purging them clean of darkness through crazy platforming and restoring light to the land. Simple stuff.

It's all pretty straightforward until the ending, which pulls a Final Fantasy X style twist (I might have just spoiled it if you've played that game and not this one. Oops?) and then twists it back in an ending that pissed a whole lot of people off. Personally, I thought it was fine. Without spoiling it, it has your main character (who you are controlling during this) doing something that sort of undermines what you've been doing throughout the game. People thought it didn't work, but I disagree. I felt the character arc of the Prince (similar to the Sands of Time, actually, with him starting as a selfish jerk and slowly warming up to not being a selfish jerk thanks to a girl) made the ending plausible, though I will admit that it (and the "Epilogue" DLC) were probably also conceived so that they could sell you sequels (which are yet to come out). Still, it's a charming story throughout, and the banter between the Prince and Elika is charming and fills the whole "we all know they totally are going to fall for each other" tension that works so well in games like this. 

Plus, they are constantly saving each other, so we all knew it was coming. 

My only complaint is that the dialogue sounds really modern at times. Mostly the Prince's, and that's probably because he's voiced by Nolan North, aka Nathan Drake in the Uncharted games. Nolan North is famous for his snarky, funny characters who don't take anything seriously, and the Prince in this game is pretty much exactly the same as Nathan Drake, except Nathan Drake is probably a murderous psychopath under his cheery exterior. Since you could swap probably 90% of either men's one-liners and they'd still make sense between Prince of Persia 2008 and Uncharted, it's kind of...weird to play this game after playing Uncharted. Well, whatever, it works, but they could have at least tried to make him sound like he was from ancient Persia instead of just off the plane from California.

The core element of traversal is still here, but with some modifications. 

The gameplay has seen a radical change of focus since the Sands of Time games. In those, the game's main goal was to tax your button-pressing ability and timing, punishing you for a slightest misstep but giving you a way out with the time-reversal mechanic. It was challenging and required a lot of trial-and-error until you got into the flow of things, and also meant you had to learn a bunch of button combinations and quick reaction times in order to not screw things up. The ultimate goal was to beat a room and move on, the games being completely linear from start to finish.

Prince of Persia 2008 keeps the cool traversal mechanic, but switches up the goal. Rather than having the goal be "get from here to here and never look back," this game is more open world. After purging an area of darkness, you have to gather mass quantities of little glowing orb seed thingies that are scattered across the environment, usually in the path of some crazy platforming. You have to gather enough of these orbs to unlock new powers, which in turn unlock new areas. You are given around four areas to start, and you are free to tackle them in any order you wish, your only limit being the number of seeds you've collected. This makes the game more of a puzzle game in trying to figure out how to get to certain seeds, rather than a game testing your controller dexterity by throwing impossible rooms at you. It's a good switch up that keeps the familiar and puts it into a completely new system, and I liked it (even if the number of stuff you had to collect was kind of insane).

You're gonna be gathering a lot of these seeds.

Since the focus isn't really on taxing, controller-throwing rooms and instead of seeking out pathways and following them, the actual climbing gameplay has been dumbed-down. This makes sense, giving the change of focus in the game. Rather than force you to hold directions and buttons down least you fall to your demise, each ability is mapped to a button. If it's something that would use your claw (grabbing a ring or a hook, etc.) just tap B when near it and the Prince will run off. Need to wall-run? Tap A while running towards a wall and he'll take care of it. You can still do complex stuff (like jump from wall to wall, or hold B to slide down a wall at a decelerated rate), but as a whole the gameplay is extremely streamlined. This pissed off a lot of people when this game came out, but I think it works better. Had I been forced to collect all those damn seeds and do the super-taxing gameplay from the Sands of Time trilogy, this game would have gotten frustrating really fast. As it stands, it's just tricky enough to keep it challenging, while not going overboard. I think it's a good step in the right direction for where they wanted to take the gameplay, and it all works just fine.

As an additional note: you can't die in this game. At all. If you stupidly fall off a ledge, Elika will warp you back to the last stable ground you were on for another shot. This is another thing people complained about, and to those who did: you are straight up stupid. Seriously, you either are dumb or didn't think this through, because this is a great gameplay choice. First off, there's no loading for this revival; you just pop back and can give it another go. Second, how is this any different than hitting a "Load Checkpoint" screen? It's saving you time to read the text, as well as time to watch a stupid loading screen. Third, as I've said before we have lives in games because of old arcade games. Why shouldn't we be streamlining this? The challenge in Prince of Persia games is doing long sections of platforming (where you never hit the ground) successfully. It's enough of a penalty to be put back on the last stable platform because most of the time that platform is a long ways away. It's just saving you time. If you really hate it, then every time you die and Elika saves you just sit there stupidly for about 30 seconds. This is to represent the loading screen, text "Game Over" and "Reload Checkpoint" screen, and it putting you back to where you were before. Then you can start playing again. Congratulations, you won. Now leave it alone.

This beastie is suffering the Prince to not live. 

Combat has always been a problem in Prince of Persia games, and while this one makes a noble effort to mix it up, in the end it doesn't. Gone are group fights, instead having each battle be just one-on-one fights with powerful enemies. Again, you can't die, but if you go down Elika saves you and the enemies gets most of their life back, so you still have to be careful. Combat is broken up into simple distinct moves like the traversal: a button for sword, a button for grab, and a button to use Elika's magic. You can chain some pretty bananas combos if you know them, but usually you'll just button mash and pray. Counters are also the order of the day (hey, like Assassin's Creed!) though some bosses have unblockable moves that aren't projected as unblockable until after you take the hit, which is cheap. I can see they were kind of trying to make these battles be faster and easier, but honestly I think the game shouldn't have even had them. The platforming was challenge enough (especially near the end, where your timing has to be spot in in order to make it through the more difficult parts) and these battles just drag. Especially the boss fights, where messing up once and going down means having to redo the last 5-10 minutes of a fight. Obnoxious. 

You look cool, boss, but fighting you sucks. 

As you've probably seen from the screenshots, this game is freaking gorgeous. The cell-shaded look really works well and gives it a distinct style, with characters being colorful and well detailed. Perhaps the coolest thing is watching the sort of black/blue of the tainted worlds being transformed into the "Fertile" worlds, where the darkness flakes away like paint leaving luscious greens and browns beneath. It's really something to watch, and if you have a nice HDTV this game really works at showing off how beautiful games can be.

Music is also excellent, with more mellow tunes when compared to the previous Prince of Persia games, setting good ambiance throughout. As stated the voice acting is excellent from top to bottom, with enough of it to keep even the longest climbs entertaining. 

The production values are through the roof. 

If you came off this game from Sands of Time, you might be a little disappointed by the streamlined platforming and change of focus. But after you've been swinging around a bit, collecting the magic glowy seed things and unlocking powers, you'll find there's a lot to love in this reboot. It takes it's roots and does something new and unique with them, which is something gamers are constantly clamoring for (and then complain when people actually do it). It's also a weirdly good game to play with a girlfriend or spouse, because when you are seed-hunting it often helps to have another pair of eyes searching for pathways you might have missed to the more elusive ones. Just a thought.

Even if you never played a Prince of Persia game before, this 2008 reboot is worth looking into. It's fun, relatively non-frustrating (except a few bosses), looks fantastic, sounds fantastic, and lets you do some totally impossible things (like walk on the ceiling. HOW DOES HE DO THAT AND STILL MAKE IT LOOK NATURAL). If this is where the series is going, then I gladly welcome it, and look forward to the next installment.

Assuming they don't take our carefree Prince and turn him into a gritty angry dark shadow of his former self. But hey, who would do that after having such a successful first game?

Five out of five stars. 

I need to Finish the Fight! Where the crap is this game's sequel? 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

The Short


Pros
- Acts as an interlude between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within
- Original Prince is back, with the same crazy platforming as the previous games
- New powers in platforming are super cool and make the game harder (freezing water, etc.)
- Easily some of the best platforming puzzles in the series, and has great pacing throughout
- Unique story that focuses a lot on Persian mythology rather than the Sands of Time's mythos
- Scenery looks good and uses the next-gen hardware well

Cons
- Story doesn't flow well from Sands of Time or into Warrior Within; seems like a side-story
- Prince's character model (especially his face) looks awful 
- Sparse cast of characters and dialogue
- Combat is a dull mess
- Aside from being a fun throwback, I really see no reason why this game exists

The back of the box says "Find your Power, Unleash your Destiny." Um...shouldn't those verbs be switched? Anyway, on with the review. 

The Long


Six years after Sands of Time showed up and blew my mind, it seems this Prince of Persia thing is actually sort of a big deal. Jerry Bruckheimer (you know, the guy who made one good Pirates of the Caribbean movie and three awful ones) and Disney were working together to make a Prince of Persia movie in 2012, and Ubisoft realized they didn't actually have a game that they could sell along with it. Since it was based off a game that was already out (Sands of Time) and their last PoP game was a reboot (imaginatively titled just "Prince of Persia"), they needed to get something out there to cash in. Since The Two Thrones took place right after Warrior Within (and The Two Thrones pretty much ended the whole thing neatly), they decided to slam an interlude game in between Sands of Time and Warrior Within. I was actually sort of excited about this: we'd finally see why the Prince went from a witty, dapper young chap into emo goth Johnny McHardcore, and maybe then I'd actually not totally hate his character in Warrior Within. When I heard they were bringing the original voice actor back that was also a plus: I was pumped.

So...is The Forgotten Sands really all I wanted it to be? Or is it just a movie cash-in? Well...it's sort of in the middle.

But hey, it looks pretty good. 

The story doesn't do anything I described above. If anything, it's so far distanced from the original Sands of Time story threads it really is a "forgotten" story. The Prince decides to go hang with his brother Malik, who is some king somewhere, and when he shows up the entire place is under siege. His brother stupidly decides to unleash Soloman's Army, which makes a bunch of sand zombie guys show up and require killing. Then there's a good Djinn and a bad Djinn, and the good one gives you time-reversing powers (because why not) and the bad one wants to blow up everything. Pretty simple.

Again, this really has no ties with the other games, and doesn't bleed over in either direction. I'd have loved to see a Dahaka cameo or something in here (since he is supposed to have started being hunted around this point) or at least an explanation as to why he became so emo, but the Prince is just as lighthearted as ever (even if the script isn't particularly great) and just rolls with all the punches without getting all worked up over it. Alright, I guess.

It's a story more seeped in Persian mythology than the mythology the Sands of Time people created, and I'm fine with this. It makes it a very unique side-story, but it is just that: a side story. There are no revelations here, and because of that you can pretty much play this game without having played any of the other ones. So if you were holding back because you were worried you'd ruin the other games: don't. There are no spoilers to be had at all in this game, and no reoccurring characters, nothin. It opens and closes neatly, which makes it kind of feel like a cash-in. 

Yet another beastie to suffer not living. 

Luckily, the sort-of-pointless story is held up by the best platforming the series has to offer. The Prince of Persia reboot in 2008 was like the other games really in name only. Aside from offering a whole new world and set of characters, it also streamlined the platforming and changed the focus on precise button presses and more on exploration of the environment. The Forgotten Sands ignores that game was made and goes right back to classic Prince of Persia: holding triggers to wall run, precise jumps, and more. This game is made better, however, by implementing lots of the improvements made in Prince of Persia 2008. For example, you can now wall jump from wall to wall, neatly chaining them together. There's also lots more things he can do on ledges, and he can wall run up from a ledge, which is nice. Basically it was everything they'd learned from the previous Prince of Persia games put into this one, which makes it the best in terms of difficult puzzles.

But that isn't even the best part!

Swinging on water. OH YES. 

In addition to the regular stuff, the game ramps up the difficulty further by giving you new powers. My favorite is the ability to freeze time so all water becomes hard, turning fountains into poles to swing on and waterfalls into walls to run up. You have to be holding the button for it to work, though, which means it turns it into controller twister. There are also more powers, like the ability to air-dash to enemies to close long gaps, and a power to recreate broken bits of scenery. All these require extremely fast reflexes, with the final climb up the tower that is a culmination of all these one of the craziest, most challenging, and funnest experiences I've had in all the Prince of Persia games. The combination of all the old moves with these new powers (and smoother controls) makes this easily the best Prince of Persia game in terms of platforming, and I really hope they do something with this in whatever the next installment will be.

Then we get to the bad stuff. 

But it isn't an Ubisoft game if they don't counter something really good with something stupid (exception being Rayman Origins, where it's all good) and for this game it's the combat. Gone is the sand-sucking system from Sands of Time, the multi-weapon system from Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, and the one-on-one battle system from Prince of Persia 2008. Instead, we have a weird, Dynasty Warriors style hack 'n slash, which pretty much consists of pressing X to attack a lot, sometimes pressing Y to kick shield guys over, and jumping on enemies' heads if they surround you. Yeah. That's really bout it. It's focus is on group zombie killing, and it gets button-mashy extremely fast. While I guess it isn't bad (you do get tons of magic powers that make things stupid easy, though you should only use the invincible armor and whirlwind) its just tedious. Fights seem like they happen just to keep you from the next batch of awesome platforming, which is exactly what the fights shouldn't do. Bosses are the same: not focusing as much on the platforming as they should, instead just mostly hitting stuff by pressing X over and over. Dull.

And there's LOTS of fights. Seriously, it's ok to make a Prince of Persia game without swordplay. I'd be totally fine with that. 

Graphics look pretty good, fitting to the theme set in Sands of Time and The Two Thrones. It all has that sandy, lush look, and they use environmental effects effectively to spice up a lot of the areas. The magic looks pretty lame, though, with fire-trail just leaving a red mark on the ground (where are the flames?), and ice attack doing the same thing but blue. The Prince's model looks good, but his face...urrrgh! What did they do to your face, Prince? Did they forget to play the previous games before making the model?

Who the crap is this guy?

Music is good and voice acting (what little there is) is also decent, though the script is lacking. The sounds throughout the environments work and, as a whole, it sounds on par with the rest of the series. There's also no Nolan North which, as much as I love the guy, whenever they put him in a lead role I just think "Nathan Drake" and the whole game is ruined. 

This isn't a Sands of Time game, but whatever; I'm fine with it. 

I really liked The Forgotten Sands. Sure, it didn't actually do anything story-wise that I wanted (totally ignoring my and other fans' desires to figure out what the crap happened to the Prince before Warrior Within) and it really is just a "best of with change" from the previous series, but that series was awesome and a chance to revisit its fantastic platforming (even in this weird side-story sort of way) is a chance I will always take. Adding in all the new stuff from Prince of Persia 2008 as well as more original content, and you have a solid gameplay experience from start to end. You can play through it even if you haven't played the other games, so if you want to try these but don't want to invest in an trilogy, this might be a good one to check out. It is still pretty sad, though, that after making Prince of Persia games for six years these guys still can't make a good combat system to save their life (even Assassin's Creed's sucked). Oh well, maybe next time. 

If you like Prince of Persia, you'll love The Forgotten Sands. And it's stupid cheap now, so you really have no excuse. 

Four out of five stars. 

Now stop making stupid Assassin's Creed II spinoffs and give me a new Prince of Persia game, dang it!

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

The Short


Pros
- Still the same extremely solid platforming from the first two games of the series
- Setting of the ruined city of Babylon is unique and makes for some fun areas to traverse
- "Dark" tone from Warrior Within has been diminished substantially. Thank goodness.
- Mixes things up with the "Dark Prince" gameplay segments and combat
- "Quick kills" are a great idea for this series, focusing on platforming and quick reflexes
- Music is back to its awesome Persian-sounding roots
- Provides decent closure to the Sands of Time series

Cons
- A bit "more of the same" from Warrior Within's gameplay in both combat and platforming
- Combat is still weak overall, with "quick kills" working only about 25% of the time
- While I appreciate the attempt to lighten the tone, it still doesn't come close to Sands of Time's brilliance
- Almost feels like a "best of" between the last two games, without bringing anything of its own to the table
- New gameplay bits like chariot races are ok, but hardly necessary
- Dark Prince isn't particularly fun to play, even if his concept is interesting

Yay! The old Prince is back! Sort of...

The Long

I was so mad at what Warrior Within did to the Prince's character that I didn't play The Two Thrones until nearly two years after its release. Yeah, the game was still awesome to play, but the sour taste in my mouth was so prevalent that every time I even looked at The Two Thrones' box I could just remember the Prince screaming "YOU BITCH" and stupid Nu-Metal blasting in the background. Ugh. 

When I finally did get around to playing The Two Thrones, I was pleasantly surprised. Ubisoft apparently had an entirely different game in the works for this one, but after an E3 showing that revealed it was going to be another dark, Warrior Within-esque sequel, the fan backlash was so bad they went back and redesigned it. Now you get what we have now: a mix between The Sands of Time's charismatic, quip-friendly Prince, Warrior Within's combat and excellent platforming, and general aesthetics more loyal to the original game. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? 

Well...sort of. 

Man, this series is just so much fun. 

The story picks up immediately after the "true" ending of Warrior Within. The Prince is heading back to his home city of Babylon with the Empress of Time, intent on making things right. Once he gets there, however, he finds the city under siege. Apparently since he undid everything that happened during both the first and second games (rendering them irrelevant, which kind of sucks) the Vizier from The Sands of Time invaded Babylon (even though that...wasn't his role in the story in Sands of Time. Whatever.) and is generally ruining everything. The Prince's boat is sunk, the Empress captured, and off he goes to save her.

First off: this game's tone is certainly more Sands of Time than Warrior Within, though some of the "hardcore"-ness from Warrior Within does poke through from time to time. The original voice actor for the Prince is back, with the Empress of Time narrating over the story. This storytelling idea ties it in perfectly with Sands of Time. Farah, the love interest from the first game, shows up again in this one (this isn't that big of a spoiler; you'll live) and we get more of their silly banter as they quest about the city.

Together again! Yay!

The ending is really satisfying, as I said before, and ties everything up almost perfectly. Yeah, it's a bit corny and maybe isn't exactly had in mind when I beat Sands of Time back in 2004, but whatever; it works, and it isn't the Prince cutting himself or whatever the original plan was. That being said, this game is not Sands of Time. While the Prince and Farah throwing insults back and forth is great, it isn't nearly as clever or believable as it was in the first game. It almost seems forced at times, like Ubisoft was saying "You liked this, remember? We liked it too! We don't know what we were thinking, taking it out last game!" which sort of works, but still doesn't have that same magic.

The Vizier also turns into some weird sand-monster-god thing that looks kind of like a mix between Kefka and a Silent Hill monster, so...there's that too. 

At least he isn't calling himself "The Vizier...OF TIME" or anything stupid like that. 

As it stands, it blends elements of the previous two games together, which I appreciate because Sands of Time was so good, but really...you could have just not put the Warrior Within bits. He erased that timeline anyway; just pretend it never happened and go straight Sands of Time. That might have worked better, but I'm satisfied with what I'm given. They even tried giving the Prince another growth arc this time, this one about becoming brave enough to face his mistakes and lead his people (something he's been avoiding since the first game), which again works but not as well as the arc in the first game. As it stands, it's a good story, and fixes enough of the Warrior Within's problems that I'm willing to forgive this series.

On to the rest of it, then. 

Gameplay wise, not much has changed with the platforming. At all. The Prince still has his same skillset from Warrior Within, though he's replaced his sword with the Dagger of Time ("See, guys? We remembered what you liked!"). You still pick up weapons that break, have almost exactly the same combos (and the same ones still work), the running and jumping is identical, etc. As regular Prince, this game plays remarkably like Warrior Within, which is a good thing, though it would have been nice to mix it up.

The biggest change in regular Prince combat is the "quick kill" system. Basically, if you can be both quick, sneaky, and have perfect timing, you can leap from a wall towards say, an enemy on a balcony, and if you time it right you can tap a button and kill them instantly. It's a cool idea, one that works well with the Prince's acrobatics as well as the idea of him needed skill to face overwhelming odds, but the problem is it doesn't work. Each situation usually only has one right way of doing it, and if you mess it up all enemies are alerted and you are basically forced to fight them normally. Since there really isn't a stealth mechanic in play, you either get it or you don't, and you can't go "hide" or anything to reset it. It's stupid that they took this idea and didn't bother fleshing it out well at all, because again: it compliments the Prince's style. Oh well.

Then we got this guy. 

The most radical shift is the Dark Prince, who your regular Prince transforms to when he runs through fire or something like that. He's supposed to represent all the pent up anger and douchyness the Prince had in Warrior Within (so casting him as a villain really pushes the point home that even Ubisoft knew they'd messed up), and often can be heard talking to the Prince inside his head (which is a cool touch). The Dark Prince is absurdly overpowered when it comes to fighting, meaning you won't need any stealth kills, though he does have a big weakness: his health keeps draining down to a tiny sliver unless you keep collecting sand (either by killing or finding it in the environment). The Dark Prince also platforms a little differently because he has a chain that lets him swing, but the environments are built completely around this so it isn't that big of a mixup. Ultimately, the Dark Prince just makes the game easier, and while I'm glad for the variety he just seems sort of tacked on.

And now we see some Warrior Within bits creeping through. 

There are a few other new elements. Most enemies can only be killed when in light, leading to some cool underground portions where you have to lure them to light in order to finish them off. Chariot races are a fun diversion but hardly necessary, though the slow-mo enemy chariot explosion when you run them off the road is kind of hilariously awesome. Bosses, despite looking really stupid, are actually pretty fun. Most require use of the platforms around to get up on and then kick the crap out of (though they do the "quick time event" thing that was just now starting to become the norm), which means you are actually using the platforming elements of the game to fight them. Good work, Ubisoft! Only took you three games to realize you probably should use your series' strongest feature in the boss fights!

Of course, some of them don't do this, relying on the still-decent-but-not-great combat system to pull through, and those are disappointing. As it stands, however, this game is pretty much Warrior Within but with easy Dark Prince areas and a brighter, more lighthearted approach. Which I am totally fine with.

Every room is a puzzle, and as Professor Layton would say "Every puzzle has an answer."

This game is still using a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, and it shows. While great lengths have been made to modernize the graphics, this engine is just outdated by now. Considering this came out the same year God of War did (and almost a full year after Resident Evil 4), it looks a bit dated. Still, the brighter color pallet and cityscape setting reminds me a lot of their future work on Assassin's Creed, and since the scenery and climbing was the best part about that game, I'm fine with it.

Sounds are so much better. As I said already, the original voice cast is back, complete with over-story narration, and it's fantastic. Though the Empress of Time kind of talks a bit too much in a whispy, "I'm so mystical" voice like Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings movies, she isn't annoying. The music is back to its Persian rock roots, and it all sounds really good. 

The Prince, before he loses his shirt. He and Jacob from Twilight share that character motif. 

As it stands, The Two Thrones was a step back in the right direction. It provided a satisfying conclusion to the series, helped repair some of the damage caused by Warrior Within, and was a pretty good game in its own right. It's a pity nothing it brought new to the table was particularly good, the game heavily resting on the shoulders of its predecessors to succeed, but those are excellent shoulders to rest on and so the game still works.

It doesn't reach the heights of Sands of Time, not even close. But for the end of the trilogy and the conclusion of the story, it does it all well enough. As I said before, you can get all three of these games in HD on the PS3 for only around $20-30, and I really suggest picking them up if you haven't ever played them. This is one of the best game series' I can think of, and really should be played. Just...treat Warrior Within nicely, ok? It's been through some rough times, and we just now got it on antidepressants. 

I'm sad to see the Prince go. Four out of five stars.

And they all lived happily ever after. Awww...

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

The Short


Pros
- Takes the core gameplay elements of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and improves all of it
- Platforming is harder, funner, and has more moves
- Combat, while not perfect, is streamlined and certainly improved
- Environments are less "this is where you obviously go" and instead require problem solving
- Going between an old, ruined temple and the past, fixed temple is a neat concept
- Dahaka chases are crazy intense, resulting in some of the best moments of the series
- Wild plot twist at about the 3/4 mark completely changes up gameplay in a crazy way

Cons
- Nearly every fantastic story element from the first game has been completely ruined by the "dark" tone
- New Prince is an angsty, raging jerk who has lost all his wit and charm
- In addition to adding blood and gore to make it "dark," there's bonus tasteless cleavage and iron thongs. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?
- The female enemies make weird, sexual/painful moans as you hit them and it's just...ugh
- Story is an incoherent mess about "fixing the timeline" or some such nonsense
- Still has some camera problems that the first game did, bosses are lame and unfun

The Prince is back, but not for the better. 

The Long

I love Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and stand by my statement that it was one of the best games released last console generation. The fast-paced, free-form platforming integrated with excellent puzzles is ingenious, and coupled with the charming story and brilliant script it really makes for one great trip. I played it for the first time my freshman year of college, and everybody in my dorm loved it to death. We were all crazy pumped when we heard the second one, Warrior Within, was coming out soon, and it looked like it was going to be bloodier, darker, and basically improve all the minor problems we had with the first game. It's worth noting that Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was the first game I ever bought full price, and on release day (and for the Gamecube, no less). I brought it back to my dorm, popped it in, and began round two of the Prince's crazy aerobics exercises. 

It...wasn't everything I expected. 

The difficulty in this game has been ramped up. 

Something must have happened between 2003 and 2004 at Ubisoft. I have no idea what it was. They couldn't have played God of War, because that game didn't come out until 2005. Maybe they thought having a cute, funny story didn't work with their game of running around sawblades and leaping from high areas to a crushing demise. Regardless, somebody decided that having a happy-go-lucky, somewhat sexist, actually three-dimensional witty character was a "bad thing," and that they needed to change him up to appeal to the "kids these days."

So they took the Prince we knew and loved and made him a generic, angsty, rage-filled idiot with a gravelly voice who curses frequently and is generally a cold-hearted bastard. And his hair color changed, inexplicably. Because he probably dyed it black after picking up some new threads at Hot Topic. 

Who are you, and what have you done with that guy I liked from the last game?

I'm going to try and not dwell on this, but it's hard not to because the Prince of Persia series (the Sands of Time offshoot, anyway) is still struggling to overcome this radical makeover they thought was a good idea for this second game. Replacing our sassy, funny sidekick we now have an oversexualized woman who I have no idea how her dress stays on. Biggest bonus is during the first 3D CGI scene you get a "nice" scene of a new girl villain, who apparently somehow got a one-piece metal suit that has an included thong and shows vast amounts of her chest. Seriously, who the hell saw the first game and thought this was a good idea? 

I find this ironic, seeing as one of the Prince's character arcs in the first game was overcoming the fact he was a misogynistic prick

The story itself is also all sorts of nonsense. When you used the Dagger of Time to mess up the Sands of Time, apparently that made some time-flux or something, and some nasty Time-Beastie called the Dahaka wants the Prince eaten or killed or something to fix this. So he sails to the Isle of Time to talk to the Empress of Time in the Palace of Time to...geez, you can't just take every normal word and add "of Time" at the end to make it fix. Come on, people. It was bad enough in the first game, this is just overkill.

Anyway, there's a twist at the 2/3 mark and a twist near the end, and luckily you kill the annoying metal-thong woman about 15 minutes in and the red hooker/empress woman is just gone most of the game so you don't have anybody to talk to. Unlike the first game, where the Prince was narrating throughout (often with hilarious results), this game is mostly done in silence. Which I guess fits the somber mood, but again it feels like something was taken away that shouldn't have been.

Point being that having the new baditude Prince shouting "YOU BITCH!" as one of his first lines of dialogue after going on a swashbuckling, roguish adventure with him in the last game was startling. Ubisoft is still trying to recover from this misstep in tone, with the two games following this one being heavily emphasized that "Yes, we messed up, the Prince is sane in this one. Sorry." Somebody probably got fired for this game, now that I think about it, and maybe I'm ok with that. Who knows. 

Back to the traps

Character sabotaging aside, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is actually a pretty big step up from its predecessor in nearly every gameplay element. First off, the game just feels better. The Prince is a bit faster (though he still takes a second to stop after a run, a realistic handicap you'll have to quickly master), his wall runs are quicker, and he just controls smoother. Second, the platforming segments of this game might actually be the best in the series (with the exception of the next-gen prequel, The Forgotten Sands). In the first game, it was almost blatantly obvious where you were supposed to go, with platforms and handholds easy to spot. They mixed it up in Warrior Within where the environments are more like actual background rather than a means to a puzzle (unless they are a means to a larger puzzle), so it can be tricker to even know where to go. They addition of being able to slow down time from nearly the offset can make certain segments a lot easier, but since it costs a rewind to pull it off you have to make an important decision: can I do it in two runs or less, or should I try slowing it down first?

It's just a better platformer overall, with harder puzzles and crazier setpieces. That element certainly was improved, and I haven't even talked about the Dahaka chases yet.

Death from above!

Stupid plot reasons aside, the Dahaka is cool. Basically he shows up every once in a while to scare the crap out of you, and you have to run as fast as you can to get away from him or he'll insta-kill you. He can't be beaten so you can't fight, you just gotta blitz across some crazy-hard platforming until you get to a safe spot. These tend to pop up right when you least expect it, and are quite intense. It was a good design choice, as a lot of people (like myself) spend big chunks of time figuring out where to go in these game before even attempting it, and this way it forced you to just go by instincts.

The game also has a cool feature where you switch back and forth in time between the "old" Island of Time and the "new" Island of Time, with the aesthetics being the opposite of what you thought. "Old" Island was before it was busted up, so everything is green and stuff is fixed and generally nicer. "New" is the modern setting where it's a big crappy ruin, stuff is a lot darker, and machines that were running before are now busted. While it's sort of them recycling content, the changes are so dramatic I never really minded. You don't really get to freely shift or anything to solve puzzles (the game decides when the swap happens) which is too bad, but it's a good aesthetic change that fits with the series' theme on time manipulation..."of time."

Oh yeah, it's more violent now. BADITUDE. 

Combat has seen a decent improvement, though it's a bit more button-mashy now than it was before. You don't have to knock enemies over and then suck 'em up with the Dagger of Time anymore, instead you can just cut their various body parts off and call it good. You have one sword at all times and then on your off hand you pick up weapons from the environment or enemies, all of which will eventually break. You have daggers, maces, axes, and swords, though most use the same combos. Once you figure out one or two good combos (the duel-blade "spin around in a circle so everything falls in half" is essentially a win-all) you can just spam them through most of the game, until the rare instance that it doesn't work and then just general mashing is ok. 

He can be a bit more aerobic in fights, too. You can spin around poles to cut heads, jump up walls and them leap back and dive down on people, and even attack on the walls now. This is actually my favorite improvement: being able to use his crazy platforming abilities in combat. It isn't done very well, but it's a step forward. 

Suffer not a beastie OF TIME to live

This game also has bosses for some retarded reason, all of which involve slashing at its ankles until you can jump on it, avoid him grabbing you, and punching at its head until you can get a stab in. They are boring and all are exactly the same. There's also boss fights against people (two boss fights against people) that are almost exactly the same as well: awful. In both instances you are put in rooms where you can't use your acrobatics (no walls), and instead have to just roll around and attack. Gee, great idea there. Take everything that made your game unique during the normal fights and get rid of it for what should have been some awesome boss encounters. Way to be. 

The game looks pretty good. Mostly. 

Graphically, this game looks loads better than Sands of Time, though you can tell it's on an aged engine. Environments are a bit muddy but still look really good. Character models are less blocky and polygonal but still exhibit the same "this person is a bunch of pieces put together" problem of earlyish PS2 games. The animations are all fantastic, however, with the Prince looking awesome as he runs, flips, and flies around. 

The music is horrible. The middle-eastern sounds of the first game are replaced by heavy metal licks to prove how "hardcore" the game is, and when you are running from the Dahaka the chorus of Godsmack's "Alive" blasts in the background (thankfully without lyrics). The voice are also terrible, with the Prince having a completely different voice actor and the voices of the enemies being annoying. The blatantly-sexual moans of pain from the female enemies, accompanied by such classic lines as "There's so much...pleasure in pain" makes you wish they would all just shut up like the enemies in the first game. That being said, you do spend most of this game in quiet (until you get to a cutscene or combat), so it isn't that awful I guess, but compared to Sands of Time this game sounds ugly. 

"I AM THE PRINCE OF PERSIA RAAAAWR"

Despite all my complaints about the radical shift in tone, I can't deny that Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is actually a very solid game underneath the awful new coat of paint. It's still a blast to play, the combat being fun if not particularly deep, the platforming being completely incredible, and the new setpieces both great to look at and fun to traverse. It's still an extremely solid game, mostly because it was based off the formula of it's much better predecessor, and I have to recommend it on those merits alone.

However, if you were really sold on the Prince's character in Sands of Time, this game might be a bit painful to experience. In all truth, you could wiki the story if it really mattered and jump straight to The Two Thrones without losing all that much, since it ties up most Warrior Within plot threads in the first fifteen minutes of The Two Thrones anyway (almost as if they wanted everybody to forget this game's story ever happened. Huh...).

This is part of a Prince of Persia HD Collection on PS3, which I really should own because I love these games so damn much, but it was also on every last-gen system (so if you have a backwards-compatible Wii, PS3, or Xbox 360 you should be set) and on PC, and it actually looks best on PC so that might be the way to do it. I still wholly recommend this series despite this game's...setbacks, but it certainly wasn't the sequel I expected back in 2004. 

Four out of five stars. 

Though I wish I could lobotomize the story from my brain. 

New Super Mario Bros Wii

The Short


Pros
- A "new" Mario game made in 2D throwback of Mario's earlier outings
- Eight worlds and a ninth bonus world provide a decent amount of content
- New suits including the Penguin suit and Ice Flower mix some stuff up
- Looks bright and colorful and is faithful to the original Mario formula
- Included "Super Guide" means if you suck the game will just beat a level for you
- Handful of minigames like the DS version are fun, silly, and great for four players

Cons
- Has four player co-op, which (if you are playing the game seriously) is a massive mess
- The level of griefing (hurting your allies) in multiplayer is absurd and impossible to avoid
- Bizarre difficulty curve is inconsistent
- Why do video games like this still have lives? Seriously?
- Does little beyond what was introduced in New Super Mario Bros on the DS, especially for a full priced title
- While I welcome 2D Mario back, its weird mix of past and present seems like both a lesson in originality and a refusal to move the series forward
- Why are there two Toads? Why can't you play as Peach? Why aren't the characters unique like in Mario 2?

It's Mario, and he's Super, but is there really any "New" here?

The Long

I've made no secret in saying I believe Super Meat Boy and Rayman Origins to be the best 2D platformers this generation. Super Meat Boy for its incredibly difficult but immensely satisfying single player, and Rayman Origins for being an excellent multiplayer game that manages to do so without being frustrating or annoying. But what about that other 2D platformer franchise? You know, the biggest one in the industry, the one that could very well be considered responsible for this whole thing? What's Mario doing these days?

Well, New Super Mario Bros Wii, winner of an absurdly long title award, is Nintendo's sort of "spinoff" iteration of the classic Mario franchise. While he's blasting himself through space in 3D in the Mario Galaxy games, NSMBW is a return to form, going back to the series' 2D roots in an attempt to bring back players who were fans originally. Kind of like the exact thing they did on the DS a few years earlier, except now on the Wii. Oh, and you can play with four players now, so it's a party game! How awesome is that!

Well...it hits a few and it misses a few. Let's go over it in brief. 

Don't be fooled by its kiddy appearance: this game can get tricky. 

First off, there really isn't much to say with regards to the core gameplay. It's a Mario game, through and through. You start on the left and go right until you reach the end, where you'll jump up on a flagpole, get some meaningless points (or an equally meaningless 1-Up), and then continue to the next level. There's a world map like in Mario 3 or Super Mario World, and mid level castles/bosses like Mario 3 as well. With the same Koopa Kids as Mario 3. I guess they were saving the Tanooki suit from Mario 3 for Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, but the rest of this game really plays a lot like Mario 3. You get items that you can use before levels for a boost (which is completely unnecessary), the game has a similar feel as Mario 3, and it...it's a 2D Mario game, ok? I really shouldn't have to be going into much more detail than that; you've all played these things.

So what's different? A few small changes. There are some new suits that force you to use the Wiimote (shaking it, mostly) to do annoying things. For example, the propeller hat launches you in the air like the Tannoki tail, only without the balancing aspect the tail had of forcing you to have a straight distance to take off; just shake the Wiimote and away you go! You can soar over a lot of the early levels this way if you want, though the smartly put an arbitrary stone ceiling in the way of some others so you can't cheat to the finish. You also have ice flowers, which turn enemies into solid blocks that can be used as platforms or picked up (again, having to do the annoying "Wiimote Shake") and thrown like shells. There's a few other suits that aren't particularly worth mentioning as well. The point is: there's a little bit different, but the whole thing will feel very familiar to anybody who has played a Mario game. Which is everybody in existence. 

You tilt the Wiimote to position the ledge the way you want.

Let me take a moment to talk about the controls. It's the standard fare at first: you can hold the Wiimote like an NES controller, with one button as jump and the other as Fireball/Sprint. What's obnoxious is the forced Wiimote integration (which is forced; no Gamecube controller support for NSMBW). Shake the Wiimote to fly, shake the Wiimote to pick up an ice block, twist the Wiimote to move a platform...I don't know about you, but I tend to play my platformers stone-faced and holding the controller still (unless I die a lot, then it gets thrown against the wall). Being forced to shake it in order to use a power is really annoying. This is probably due to the fact the Wiimote only has two real buttons; on the SNES Super Mario World it also had a spin-esque jump, but they just mapped it to a face button. The Wii controller integration really feels tacked on, and actually adds an unintentional annoyance/difficulty spike when you are trying to be precise while flailing the Wiimote about.

As a single-player experience, NSMBW works, and works well. While the difficulty curve is kind of all over the place, other than castles you probably won't get stuck anywhere for long, and finding all the big tokens/coins has that right balance of difficulty and intuitive reasoning that makes them fun to collect and not a huge deal if you have to go back and get them. Aside from some dorky Wiimote usage, this is a decent Mario game, not the best but certainly a welcome sight considering his last console 2D outing was all the way back on the SNES. 

Then your stupid friends want to play. 

It's the multiplayer of NSMBW where things get completely out of hand. Remember my rant at the end of my Rayman Origins review, about how I thought Rayman Origins took what it saw in NSMBW's multiplayer and fixed it for the better? Yeah, my point still stands; even playing two-player NSMBW is a overtly stressful and encumbering experience. It's just a harder game when playing with more players.

The first issue is the fact that no two players can take up the same physical space. Meaning if there's a small ledge to jump to, you'd better hope and pray you can shove your companions off least you be the one to succumb to the lava/spikes/death beneath. This also makes just traversing levels a pain; you'll ram each other, shove people off ledges completely on accident, push people into enemies, and more. It's a pain. 

The second is the lives. You all start with five, but I challenge you to get four people together and make it through a single level of NSMBW with everybody having the same or more lives at the end as when they started. I do not think this is possible. In Rayman Origins, this is fixed by just not having lives. If you die you float around as a bubble (like NSMBW) until punched or jumped on, and then you are revived and back in the action. While this certainly made the game "easier," because this portion was painless it meant they could add impossibly hard levels to counterbalance it, making the game a fun challenge. It wasn't stressful because reviving was so easy and there was no penalty other than looking like a moron in front of your friends. 

It let them do levels like this. Geez. 

Because of the lives, your friends can die completely during a level, or if they start a level with just one life they might as well just not play it, since they'll probably lose it and be out the rest of the level, where they can't play. This is never a problem in games like Rayman Origins since you can just keep going. And yeah, you have unlimited continues, but that still requires going back to the main map screen between levels before they can go again. It's a needless frustration when people just want to run around like idiots and shove each other off cliffs without penalty.

The combination of these two problems leads to the game actually being much harder in multiplayer, because the awful players will constantly screw up the good ones. It isn't even as fun for just messing around like idiots as a group, since the lives thing (and the fact it kicks you back to the world map when everybody dies, rather than just hit a checkpoint) means your fun will be limited.

But if you have three people who you want to hate after a few hours, this game works great!

The minigames luckily fare better, focusing more on the insane madness that is four-player Mario rather than trying to force you through what was clearly designed as a single-player experience. With simpler goals and quicker checkpoints, the minigame and miniscenarios are just the right size for four players, and some actually encourage griefing to beat your friends, which is always fun. Certainly the better multiplayer way to go. 

The game looks a lot like the DS version

Like most Wii games made by Nintendo, NSMBW overcomes it's lack of HD by having a great color pallet and art style. The one drawback it is does steal a lot from the previously released New Super Mario Bros on the DS, and while it's flashy it isn't particularly gorgeous like, say, Super Mario Galaxy. Still, it gets the job done, if being a bit par for the course. The music is in the same boat: exactly what you'd expect, nothing particularly catchy or new, but it works as background sounds. It's a solid package, if a wholly unoriginal one. 

Single player: The way this game is meant to be played

I think this game was a product of incorrect marketing. They slated it as a fun multiplayer Mario game, and while the "multiplayer" part is right, the "fun" is only there if you are really reaching for it. Sure, it works with kids if you don't actually want to beat a level ever and just want to send them off into madness, but even then Rayman Origins is a better "toy" in that regard than NSMBW. This game does work very well on its single-player roots, though you won't find anything particularly new here that you haven't already seen in Mario 3 or Mario World or even New Super Mario Bros. As it stands, if you were really hurting for a new 2D Mario game, it isn't a hard sell. If you were looking for a slightly more refined or modern approach on this genre, however, I'd say pick up Rayman Origins instead. Double that if you are buying for the multiplayer aspect: Rayman Origins blows this one out of the water. 

Still, a solid Wii title and a decent Mario game. And those multiplayer minigames are pretty much quality. Here's hoping they learn from their mistakes and the New NEW Super Mario Bros Wii takes a few plays from the competition and makes their multiplayer aspect funner. But this is Nintendo, so I'm not banking on it. 

Three out of five stars. 

Slidin' to the finish line.