Prince of Persia (PS3)

Go on and save yourself
12/9/2008 6:28 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

I must admit, I let out an involuntary laugh when I heard the title character in Prince of Persia let loose with the line, "either of us could die any minute." This laugh came not because the line was a bit hackneyed (it was) or badly delivered (it wasn't). No, I laughed because the one thing that sets Prince of Persia apart from other platform games -- more than anything else -- is the fact that the main characters are never in danger of dying "any minute." No matter how many 100-foot chasms the Prince falls down, no matter how many times he's sliced up by an enemy sword, no matter how many times he stumbles into the undulating black "Corrpution" that dots the land, his God-powered magical companion Elika is there to reach out a glowing blue hand and drag him back to the safety of the nearest piece of solid ground.

In practice, this failure mechanic isn't all that different than those in the recent rash of "infinite life" action platformers (Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank), where the only penalty for death is a brief animation, a fade to black and a reset at the nearest checkpoint. The difference is primarily one of flow. Elika's quick, magical corrections for every misstep give the platforming sections a nice, quick pace that's rarely interrupted by loading screens or extraneous animations. The game is further helped in this regard by some extremely forgiving controls (the Prince always seems to land in exactly the right spot to set up his next acrobatic move) and subtle visual clues that hint at the path the Prince should take. Faded scratches on a wall, for instance, highlight an obvious wall-running path, while a sudden on-screen color drain notes the need for a life-saving mid-jump heave from the floating Elika. It all combines to create a feeling of omniscience and invincibility , a smooth flow of inexorable progress towards the end goal, rather than the frustrating stop-and-go stutter-step of most other platformers.

But the things that make Prince of Persia so elegant and enjoyable to watch are the same things that make it so unengaging to actually play. The gameplay breaks down into a simplistic input-response feedback loop, where all you have to do is press the right button for each of the few different on-screen situations. See a golden hook on the wall? Press circle to grab it and keep the Prince running to the next location. Run into a magic plate on the wall? Press triangle to watch the Prince jump effortlessly to the next area. Sure, these oft-repeated set pieces are arranged into some beautifully organic levels, but they also combine to form minutes-long stretches where you don't even have to touch the control stick once. It feels like the game is largely playing itself for you, like a roller coaster that briefly stops at the crest of a hill to ask you to tell it to go down.