Prince Of Persia Classic
© Ubisoft
Mania Grade: B
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: T
Genre: Platforming
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Gameloft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Suggested Retail: 800 Microsoft points
Graphics: B+
Sound: B
Gameplay: B+
Replay: C
Fun Factor: B
Reviewer's Wild Card: B
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: T
Genre: Platforming
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Gameloft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Suggested Retail: 800 Microsoft points
Graphics: B+
Sound: B
Gameplay: B+
Replay: C
Fun Factor: B
Reviewer's Wild Card: B
Prince of Persia Classic
By: Captain Gordon EdwardDate: Monday, June 18, 2007
Welcome to Prince of Persia, or should I say welcome back? Over fifteen years ago the Prince of Persia series was created and it has come a long way. The original storyline was simple as the graphics, which involved a prince saving a princess. Future games added a bit of depth to the storyline, and even a few extra abilities. Some allowed you to control time, and another one allowed the prince to manifest his evil side. I bring these up because they also show their face in the game. Of course the main upgrade as the series continued involved the graphics, but that is the natural progression of any good franchise.
But rather than stray too far away from the original game, which brought forth all these future incarnations, the game is about a wizard Jaffar who captures a princess. He gives her an ultimatum of either marrying him or death. To further increase the tension she only has an hour to decide, or she surrenders her life. Rather than marrying him she decides to wait out the final hour of her life hoping that she is saved. Enter the Prince, whom has been thrown into the dungeon. Obviously his quest is to save the princess, but do so within one hour. Now he must crawl his way up from the depths of what some would call Hell.
As the Prince you must navigate your way through the levels by running, jumping, and slashing your way to victory. Running allows you to navigate levels fairly quickly, but it may cause you to fall to your death if you are not careful. Jumping allows you to leap forward quickly, hopefully over ledges, so that you can reach other areas. You also have the ability to jump vertically, so as to try and latch onto higher levels to climb your way up. Finally there is slashing, which can be done only after you have collected the sword in the first level and find an enemy to vanquish. No worries, there will be plenty of enemies along the way. Sword battles are quite simple, where you can either parry or attack. Parrying allows you to block incoming attacks, and hopefully score a counter-attack.
In short it is pretty much like the old Prince of Persia game, hence the classic tag in its name. There are a few upgrades though which help digest the game a little bit easier. The main upgrade assists the graphics, which are some of the best work in the realm of Xbox Live games. The in game graphics look great and everything flows nicely, and beautifully show off the Prince as he moves. There are also cinematics, but they do not live up to the style of general gameplay. They are not horrible, in fact they look fairly nice, but they seem a little off.
The second main upgrade comes in the form of controls. Back in the day Prince of Persia was a fairly tight game once you got used to it. Reflecting on it now though, in this new incarnation as well as the old one, I find that they were quite unforgiving. Sometimes you will try and bound off of walls and get to the next level only to plummet to your death. There are a few upgrades, like a back flip, and luckily they do not radically change the gameplay. The game is only slightly less unforgiving than the original incarnation but at least the improvements help prevent a few deaths. The controls feel a little loose at times, compared to current games, so here is where the game gets a little sticky. It really comes down to learning the levels and finding the proper places to make the jumps. As an odd note they have removed the d-pad from the control scheme, so I suppose the main update is about getting characters to surrender to the analog stick.
Graphically the game is quite nice in its traditional 2D style. I enjoy the in game graphics quite a bit, mainly because of how the Prince appears as he moves. The backgrounds are rich with colour and style, and over the hour or so it takes for you to beat the game you should be able to enjoy them considerably. As previously mentioned the cinematics were pretty good, but there was something a little off in them. They were in full 3D, verses 2D for gameplay, which may be one reason for them being a little off. The second reason is that they are a little under whelming when compared to a regular Xbox 360 game. I suppose the real problem with them is how little use they serve, as you are generally treated to them for but a second before the next level is loaded. Sound wise the game is also pretty good, but you will hear a few of the sound effects a little too often. The main time you will hear them a bit too often is when you get stuck on a certain area, so it really is not the sound team’s fault.
In the end, while the game looks quite nice, the main question is if the upgrade is worth an extra 400 points over a general port. The game is downloadable for the price of 800 points, which seems a tad expensive when compared to other classic games. The main reason why it feels expensive to me is that there is that there is little replay value, as experiencing the game on the first run through may be enough for the average person. Since the run time of the game is limited to an hour things can become a little sticky. Oddly enough upon death you have the option of restarting the level or continuing from the last checkpoint. If you start the level over your timer will reset to the entrance time, while if you select to continue from the checkpoint the timer will still count down. Getting back to the replay value though, of course you can replay the game through several modes, like survival mode, but overall the replay options are a little bland. For all it is worth though Prince of Persia is a great purchase for those that want to reflect on a reinvented classic. Wrapping up, Captain Gordon gives Prince of Persia a B.
