Prince of Persia

"Best in the series!"

I was probably what you would call a mild fan of this series, and I decided to pick up Steam's Prince of Persia deal pack (all the recent games). So after downloading this overnight last night, and starting play today, I only have one real word for this game so far. WOW!

Now keeping in mind that I've only unlocked one power so far (so I'm not very far in yet), this game is nothing short of simply gorgeous. Every single move of the prince, and Elika is nothing but pure art in motion. From the blue trails of magic that Elika leaves, her flowing blouse, the spark from the Prince's gauntlet as it scrapes across walls, it's pure eye overload as you watch these two run from place to place.

Controlling them is beauty in motion as well. Keep in mind with my writing this I use a wired Xbox 360 controller to play this on the PC with, and it works wonderfully. Every time I die (or get rescued rather)I feel like it's my fault, and not a fault of bad game design. From running, and climbing walls to crawling across ceilings in a very Spiderman-esque fashion it all feels very natural, and very fun. Honestly one of my reservations was how well controlling the two characters would work with the way the PoP games normally play, but that was blown away as soon as I started. Elika isn't cumbersome in the least bit, if you're hanging on a narrow ledge, and need to get to the other side of her, it's accomplished by the Prince simply flipping her to his other side, and moving on. Using her to double jump is also poetry in motion. All in all the traveling is some of the most enjoyable I've done in a game in a long time. It's simply fun to explore the levels, even with no real purpose in mind.

Combat is also entertaining, simple, but still fun. Bosses, and most other enemies all have certain strategies (which I won't divulge into here), but suffice to say once you figure out how the combat works, it's simply joyful when you run across an enemy. If there's one gripe I could make here it's simply that there isn't enough combat. With that said though, what combat is there feels pretty epic, and I'm guessing that was the way it's intended.

Performance is another thing I was worried about. That was another worry that was smashed as soon as I started running around. Seeing as the game was released the same day on PC, as it was on consoles you knew it was programmed for the PC, from the ground up, and not just a simple port, and it shows. Not one time have I seen a framerate drop due to too many effects on screen, nor have I had any sort of input lag. I've even done a bit of recorded, which traditionally destroys the framerate in graphics intensive games. Not here. The game ran smoothly at around 60fps constantly, and this is with only an Geforce 8600 gts. I can only imagine it's even better with a better card.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with the game, and I recomend it to any fan of the series and to any fan of action/adventure games in general. I'll be enjoying this game for a long time to come.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

Game Release: Prince of Persia (US, 12/02/08)