The morning of April 14, 2017 was so cold. And I mean cold that if you took an ice pick and plunged it into the ground, you’d shatter the earth into a million pieces. It’s like the seasons were out of whack or something. Oh great, now I’m worried about the environment when I should be talking about videogames.
Many years before that day, Prince of Persia (2008) came out. I was a young, naïve and I would get excited for the stupidest games, just like a Hobbit would with a second breakfast. Unfortunately, no Maia asked me to go on a journey so I had to settle for playing Prince of Persia and when I got my hands on it I did enjoy the game plenty. Sadly, even though the game received great criticism the general feeling was that the great scores the game got were due to the game being part of a popular franchise rather than being a good.
The plot of the game is as it follows: Corruption and madness have spread across a large city-state of Persia. Elyka, the princess and heir of the empire, has decided to put an end to the darkness by rebelling against her father, the one who got corrupted in the first place and is to blame for the blight. She obviously fails in her attempt to save Persia but when she is up against the ropes the Prince, a drunken happy-go-lucky vagabond-thief who is looking for his precious donkey, appears and saves her. They end up teaming up and set on a mission through blackness to restore Persia. Yes, this story has been told multiple times and it’s part of the “1001 nights” book (go read it if you enjoy arabian tales like I do). The issue here is not that t the plot is unoriginal because in videogames the main point is not what you tell but rather how you tell it (heck, The last of Us didn’t tell anything new and we all loved that game).
Gameplay wise, despite the great platform sections and dynamic fights, it’s pretty repetitive. The Prince and Elika start in a central point, the temple, this point branches out into four more points each with a different thematic and boss. The player can start wherever he wants but light seeds are needed in order to unlock new areas. When an area is unlocked, fast travel to it is available, pretty simple. It basically consists in going to point A, getting as much seeds as you can and then going to point B, you repeat until you have as much seeds as possible to release every area from darkness and c’est fini. Fighting sections consist in 2 vs. 1 fights with combos and acrobatics between the Prince and Elika. This is interesting because dying isimpossible in battles since Elika always saves the Prince from death and resets the fights. That decision was very controversial at that time because the casual vs. hardcore gamers (bs) debate was very present in 2008. In my opinion this was one of the greatest thing about that game because it didn’t help players that had mastered the combos and made the flow of the game more agile and fresh instead of making the player face loading screens after dying.
Composed by Stewart Chatwood and Inon Zur, the soundtrack of the game is pretty good. The tracks are usually calm and ominous which are great to hear in the background while exploring the levels. On the other hand, fighting melodies are much more fast paced and thrilling.
At this point the main issue of the game is crystal clear to me: the game relies in its characters to make the plot advance but sadly, Ubisoft didn’t quite hit the mark with them because the relationship between the protagonists is usually unidirectional. The Prince is charismatic and charming but he doesn’t have anything else going for him. He only tells a handful of things about his past and is more of a comedic foil than anything else. Yes, I know that the Prince figure has always been mysterious but Prince of Persia 2008 was supposed to be a reboot of the series so in my opinion they should have gone all-in with everything. Elika on the other hand is the complete opposite of him: she talks a lot, worries about others and doesn’t believe she is the center of the universe. I’m not trying to say either of them is right or wrong but even though they get to know and like each other it never feels like the Prince is allowed to mature. He is in the game to protect Elika even when she is more than capable of doing so herself. Despite all, I do thing they make a good team and there is a lot of chemistry going on for them, it’s just that it sometimes feels fake and the developers could have worked more on what was supposed to be the great appeals of the game.
In conclusion, albeit all the flaws it has, it’s one of those games that shines rather of the sum of its parts than specific parts of it. It’s great, enjoyable and very dynamic.
Like I said in my last piece, thank you for reading. I know it’s still pretty boring and dull but I’ll get there eventually. Since I’m unfortunate and I can’t play Nier:Automata, Persona 5 or any other recent game I decided to talk about past game. I loved rediscovering Prince of Persia and I hope Ubisoft ever makes this Prince the main character of a game while we wait, today is no longer cold and the memories of the frost day the MOAB was launched feel distant although still very real.
