My first reaction to this game involved turning mushy over the gorgeous visuals. The character designs are all unique and eye catching, each environment has its own flavor and the backgrounds are beautiful living paintings. The art direction in this game goes back to world we all fell in love with in Sands of Time, then takes it a step further by injecting it with every performance enhancing drug known to man and adds a sprinkle of high definition awesomeness. As I started the game and slowly melted into a puddle of awe, I had a good feeling about how the next few hours would go.

   Then the dialogue began, and it all started to go downhill from there. It's hard to comprehend how you can hate something that's so pretty. Despite its great looks, Prince of Persia is about as fun as playing Guitar Hero on easy with PC speaker sound and a regular controller.

Why bother with exposition when you have donkey jokes?

   The game starts as you search for your donkey in the desert. How you lost track of a donkey loaded with gold on a flat terrain with not a tree in sight is never explained, but then again, little of the setup for this second-rate story is. You bump into Elika (your female companion to-be) who is being chased by some guards and, as you soon learn, her father.

   This intro sequence acts as a tutorial where you learn the basic controls for movement and some combat. You follow Elika, who appears to have magical powers she doesn't understand, to a large temple. I knew I was in for a treat when the prince (or thief, I guess) asked Elika what could possibly be inside such a secure building; this happened just as I simply turned a crank to have the door open instantly. Apparently, doors that needed to be opened were a great advancement in Persian security at the time. As opposed to open doorways.

Someone has daddy issues.

It's an open world game! Pick your linear path!

   I remember watching a developer interview of this game a while back, and they mentioned how PoP was an open world game. You start at the temple where this whole catastrophe originates, and from there you can reach any of the four immediate areas. Each of those connects to each other as well as a group of four more areas. Each of those four connect to a final "boss area." Picturing this basically gives you 4 paths consisting of 6 areas each with some paths interconnecting them all together.

   It is NOT an open world game. It is a linear game where you get to some limited choice as to the level order. This false sense of freedom may seem kind of nice at first but in the end is merely insulting. All this really does is let you choose in what order you play the levels and which two bosses you encounter first.

   "I fought the Warrior and then the Hunter!"
"I fought the Alchemist and then the Warrior!"

   Wow, what a drastically unique game experience for everyone. It's like it never plays the same twice! Except that it does, but in a slightly different order. This is no Grand Theft Auto, ladies and gents. This isn't even Mega Man.

Ohhh, that's why she wanted to get there so badly!

   Each of these twenty-four areas contains something called "fertile ground" - a circular patch that has been corrupted by the evil corruption. By "activating" these fertile grounds the area surrounding them will be healed of corruption, become all colorful again, and grow grass and pretty flowers. My first jaw drop in this game was over the graphics at the very beginning, but my second was over my first encounter with fertile grounds.

   Elika leads me to the middle of this circle where I'm prompted to press triangle repeatedly. She floats into the air then erupts into what appears to be a massive orgasm as balls of light explode out of her and transform the land. After these lightgasms, the current area fills with floating spheres of light known as "light seeds", which need to be collected in order to gain special powers and progress through the game. After performing her healing task Elika falls to the ground, understandably exhausted and weakened, and tells you she needs you to collect light seeds to regain strength.

   You need to collect a certain amount of these light seeds to unlock each special power. These powers are actually just the ability to use special plates found on walls throughout the world. Each of these is simply a variation on moving from one place to another. One lets your run down a preset track on walls or ceilings, one swings you around corners connected to some harness of electricity, one launches you large distances bouncing off other such plates, and the other makes Elika fly around on a rail while you make minute movements with the analog stick to avoid hitting obstacles. These powers are mediocre at best, and as they come up through the progression of the game, they only keep things just barely fresh enough to not shatter the game disc and gouge your eyes out with the remaining shards.

WOW! This game looks so pretty! What do we do now?

   It's not even debatable whether this game looks good, it's downright gorgeous. Sure there are a few jaggy edges, some collision glitches here and there, but nothing holds it back overall. As I played the game, however, I couldn't shake the feeling that the visual aesthetic was all the developers really put effort into. It's like they had this wonderful visual concept that they pulled off damn-near perfectly, and then at the last minute realized it had to be playable too.

   The first few times you fight some standard enemies, and maybe even your first boss, you will LOVE the combat. It looks amazing, and its simple 5-button control scheme pulls off stunning displays of agility and cool flashy attacks easily. Each of the face buttons controls either a grapple, Elika's magic, sword, or a jump attack. The order in which you press them creates combos. Simple. As the pretty factor starts to settle in, though, you realize it is far too easy to enjoy throughout the entire game. I actually tested this by fighting a few battles with only my index finger and got through the encounters in about the same time with the battle looking just as impressive.

   This simplistic mediocrity applies to just about everything else as well. The generically witty banter between you and Elika can be triggered by standing near her and pressing a button throughout the game. Though it does add some back-story, it's very shoddily explained, as if they thought of everything last minute. "Insert script here", as they say. Elika is a complete schizophrenic who flickers between being a total tease, playing a damsel in distress, and solemnly barking out commands. The prince (or "random guy", apparently) is a ludicrously boring character with no past of any significance and is undoubtfully the least likable main character in the series. Characters like this make it really hard for you to care about the story, which is already dull as hammers to begin with.

Run, jump, slide, swing, jump, run, jump, yawn.

   Read the above sentence out loud. Sound boring? Redundant? That's because it is, and that's exactly how the gameplay in Prince of Persia feels. It's really simple, but at least looks kind of cool and feels fluent enough for the first hour or so, until it progressively becomes painfully redundant. Everything you do to move around, like running on walls, swinging off rings, or whatever the case may be is an absurdly simple process. You see what's coming up ahead of you, press the corresponding button and repeat.

   Assassin's Creed may have been a huge disappointment, but it made major leaps with the freedom of movement in games, stepping high above the Prince of Persia games. This new game is by no stretch of the imagination a comeback. It's a major leap visually, but an even bigger leap backwards in every other regard.

No need for God mode here kids.

   You cannot die in this game. There is no 'Game Over' screen at all; you can't fail in any way. You literally NEVER die. No, this isn't a good thing. Whenever you normally would fall to your death Elika comes out of nowhere, takes your hand, and pulls you back to the nearest level ground and you start over. It's like having infinite check points that are set about as frequently as possible. At first I thought "Ok, not being able to die from falls - I guess I get that, it just makes things easier and makes sense for the game." But it doesn't end there. You see, no enemy can ever kill you, not even a boss.

   After getting hit once while fighting an enemy you become injured, as signaled by red flashes in the corner of the screen and a clear change in posture. When this happens you can be knocked down, and the enemy can use an attack that is probably meant to kill you. It always consists of you falling on your back, the enemy putting a foot on you or putting a blade to your throat - or something threatening like that - and this initiates a button pressing sequence a la God of War. So many games try this nowadays, but not a single one has made the mechanic as satisfying as it was in the original. The buttons to be pressed show up on screen one at a time and you are given way more time to press it than would ever be necessary. If you press it successfully you perform some quick counter attack. What happens if you don't get it or press the wrong button? You die of course, or at least get hurt right? Wrong. Elika will yell something like "NO!" or "Survive!" and blast a huge beam of light out of her hands knocking the enemy back. Firstly, that's just ridiculous and secondly, why didn't you do that in the first place, Ms. Iron Man?!

   Never in a game have I wanted so badly for the main character to die. Just once! Please?! Alas, my prayers were ignored by Ubisoft and you are constantly invincible. Elika saves you with her iron man beam even when you're fighting a boss. While fighting one of the final bosses I actually put down the controller and left to go make a sandwich. I returned some minutes later only to see (to my dismay!) the boss still pummeling on me while Elika saved me from sure death over and over again. For a second, I felt like wretching up my sandwich.

Time out man, I'm getting dizzy.

   Most gamers cherish the sacred tradition of boss fights. From Zelda to Metal Gear there have always been tense and constantly innovative boss fights. Being the crescendo to the sections and especially the final chapter of a good game, they can really make or break a gaming experience. Ubisoft did not get this memo, however. There's a boss for each of the four areas of the world and you fight each one five times. Well that's not so bad, right? 5 epic encounters with a tough boss, each testing more and more of your skills, cranking up the difficulty and trying to break your resolve? No, not at all. Unfortunately, the first four fights for each boss (with one exception) are exactly the same, differing only in the location.

   Speaking of locations, did I mention that every single fight besides the two or three in the tutorial take place on a circular platform? EVERY SINGLE ONE. The final fight of the game does mix it up a bit and takes place around the interior of a circular room (a drastic departure, to be sure). And please, don't talk to me about difficulty! The first time I saw one of the bosses, the Warrior - pretty much your standard huge, bulky bad guy,- my initial thought was "Oh I'll knock him off the platform." My second thought was "Nah, that's way too simple." Turns out that my first thought was correct - all I needed to do was push him off the edge; boss fight over.

   Incidentally, the Warrior is the only boss that had slight differences in each of his encounters - but they were very slight differences. I had to push him off the edge, push him into a cage and push him into a column. The final encounter was ended with - you guessed it! - pushing him off the edge into some lava. I almost cried at how disappointing that was until he jumped back up and started attacking me while engulfed in flames. I quickly realized that I couldn't actually kill him and I needed to merely wait for him to burn to death, rolling around to avoid his attacks. This was probably the best of the four, and it's really not all that good.

And the most helpful sidekick award goes to...

   Of all the innumerable flaws, the one thing that always had me on the edge of throwing my controller out a window was Elika's absurd pickiness. Many of the bosses (and even some normal enemies later on) can transform into states where only a certain attack can hit them. One of these states is to be suddenly enveloped with the mysterious oil-like corruption. When this happens you can only attack the enemy by using your magic attack which entails... throwing Elika into said enemy. The issue with this is that the vast majority of the time (and in boss fights especially), as you pick her up to initiate the throw you'll jump back yelling something along the lines "Too far!" or "I'm not close enough." Sometimes the move will work from what looks like 10 or 15 feet away, sometimes only when you're practically stepping on the big slimy baddie's toes; there seems to be no actual effective distance. You would think that if you're literally throwing her into the enemy, it wouldn't matter how close you are when you do it. This was by far the most annoying part of the game and when enemies went into this state I was more likely to just strafe around waiting it out.

Please look, but don't touch.

   Prince of Persia is quite simply worth seeing and just barely worth playing. I would recommend most anyone to rent it (especially if you have an HD display) but topping out at a generous estimate of 10 hours, and being nothing special (to be merciful!) beyond its pretty looks, it is not worth anyone's sixty dollars. Even if the Prince of Persia series is your favorite of all time, it's just not worth the purchase. It's fun for the first few hours and definitely has a visual style to drool over throughout, but there's just not enough there in the gameplay department. It plays like a visually impressive movie, but with a convoluted script, mundane dialogue, which happens to be horribly voiced, and just-plain-repetitive gameplay. As much as the game and movie realms have meshed together and as exciting as that can potentially be, games are first and foremost about escaping reality and enjoying yourself, and that's something I simply could not do with this game in spite of my greatest efforts.

       ... Ben Adamski