Just to follow up on Dave’s review of Prince of Persia. This is Prince of Persia : The Fallen King, which Ubisoft released on the same date as the PS3/360 version, to cash in on the popularity… I guess (being pretty confident there aren’t they?). Featuring the same Prince as in the console release, but using a more cutesy graphic style, this game basically tries to emulate a similar style of gameplay from the console versions. So let’s jump right in see if this attemp at cashing in on the latest PoP sucks balls or if it’s actually fun.

Graphics
As mentionned before, this goes for a completely different graphic style than the console versions. It goes for a chibi, more cartoony style. I mean, the Prince looks like a little kid. I’d say the graphics aren`t bad at all, the style works, the animations are mostly fluid, the models are okay. The only problem is that it’s really repetitive. The level design, while not bad, is kinda lame as all the stages look pretty much the same. There’s differences from time to time, but overall it’s just sand everywhere.

Story
I actually have no idea about this. None at all. It’s hard to say where it takes place in regard to the console game. Most likely after, but it’s really strange. Elika isn’t there, but Ahriman is free and is spreading the corruption. At some point the Prince is joined by some flying wizard thing named Zal, though little is know of him and frankly I didn’t care. Now the corruption is a lot worse than before it seems, with the god of light or something being corrupted as well. That’s really all I gathered of the story, because, frankly, they didn’t even try to make it interesting. At first I was trying to follow it, but soon I just found myself skipping all the dialogue because it was boring me. A lot.

Gameplay
Ah, now let’s dive into what makes this game surprisingly “meh”. Let’s start with the platforming. Basically, the Prince goes where you’re pressing on the stylus, and depending on how far you press it from him, the faster he runs.  At first I thought that, to jump on walls and sutff, I had to press exactly where I wanted to go, but to my surprise I was completely wrong. You just have to press in the general direction of where you want to go to do it. Well that sucks, and removes a big part of what could have made this game good.
There’s various obstacles. Traps, pits, spikes, all the usual stuff. Some holes you have to jump down, and the only way to do that without dying is to hang on to the wall and slide down with your claw. But that’s a not easy. After a while the Prince will do it automatically, but if you want to speed up things you have to double tap under him. But lots of the time he won’t recognize your input properly and jump to the opposite side, either latching on to the other wall or down to his doom. 
The rest of the platforming is quite straightforward. Jumping over pits, rolling under things that are too low (by double tapping in the general direction to where you want to roll), walk slowly through spikes and…. that’s about it. The stages offer a relatively good amount of checkpoints so you’ll never be set too far back if you die.

The new thing here is Zal, who follows you around instead of Elika. He’s a bit annoying to control, as, when you use him, you can move the Prince at all. To use him you must press  button (any button) and use to touch screen for his powers. When he joins you he can only shoot magic bullets or something, which can activate switches or make enemies twitch. As you advance through the game, much like Elika, he’ll gain more powers. He’ll be able to move weird… things… which will move platforms, latch on to… some weird objects, and open certain doors. He’s relatively interesting to use, but it would nice to be able to control both him and the Prince at the same time.

Now to fighting. Well there’s really not much to say. Tap an enemy to attack him, until it dies. Get hit too much, and you die. Some enemies explode if you get too close so you just have to hold them back with Zal until they die, other have shields you have to remove with Zal, and others you have to get the right timing to attack. The normal battles get easy and boring as you learn the simple timing.
But the boss battles, now they really tried here. The bosses have patterns, and you must learn them to be able to hurt them, and when they get weaker they’ll have more attacks and such. And figuring out their patterns isn’t simple sometimes. They really managed to make the bosses interesting to fight.

Really, the only really enjoyable part of the game is the boss fights. The platforming has lots of issues of the Prince not doing what I want, Zal could have been implemented better, and normal battles are really boring.

Overall
Do not buy. Really, they could’ve done something really interesting with this. But the gameplay has little variety, the controls are unresponsive or they don’t respond properly, the fighting is really lame(other than the bosses), the story is boring. If you’re a really big fan of the console versions you might want to check it out, but wait for a price drop.

jobocan Games, Review