Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

"A disappointment for fans - but a worthwile play nonetheless."

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the next installment in the always revolutionary Prince of Persia series and from the Prince's point of view, it follows on directly from the Sands of Time - the previous installment. Without spoiling too much from Sands of Time, we'll just say that the Prince cheated fate to avoid certain death, and fate, it seems, does not like getting scammed. So fate has produced this indestructible beast called the Dahaka and has sent it after the Prince to assure he meets his "inevitable" end. This sends the Prince into hiding, and he develops an even more backhanded plan than before - to cheat fate by proceeding to the Island of Time, using it's rumoured portals to travel back in time to before the Sands were created, and stop them from ever being created and prevent himself from cheating fate in the first place.

The first thing you must know about Warrior Within is that it is largely focused on combat. Well, I say largely, but maybe "near completely" would fit things better.

We join the Prince on his ship and are briefly introduced to his crew, before they are attacked by another ship. This provides an excellent opportunity for the game to educate the player in the ways of the Prince, which are numerous and intricate. Fortunately, most of the core combat elements of the Sands of Time remain untouched. You've still got your sword and you still mash the buttons to use it. You still have all the classic moves from SOT - frenzied sword swinging, vaulting, launching, etc. But the Prince has learned some new tricks, too, and while neither of them are revolutionary in gaming terms, they allow the Prince to expand hugely on his previously limited combat options. The first is grabs and throws, and the second is Dual Wielding - using weapons dropped by defeated foes - which takes away your grab and throw options but replaces them with more powerful weapon options.

The combat options don't stop there, though. As enemies fall, they disintegrate into the Sands of Time that formed them, and the Prince, using the Medallion he acquired during SOT, can pocket them for himself and use them against his foes. As the game progresses, he will unlock new options of mass destruction. These range from simple charge-up attacks to elaborate time control techniques that allow the Prince to zoom around at light speed and generally slice things to pieces. The combat system as a whole has visibly evolved from SOT and now feels complete. It's exciting, varied (unless you're one of THOSE people who use the same move over and over, which - trust me - won't work in this game) and it has pace. It happens in more places than boring old floor - you get enemies who attack you in the middle of wall runs and on balance beams. It's much more challenging, too, which only adds to the inevitable sense of excitement when you FINALLY beat that one boss who spent most of the last hour wiping the floor with you. You'll need all the gaming skill you can muster up to best some of the enemies - in both reflexes (for the timing required to evade and/or counter blows) and strategy (to determine when to fight and when to flee).

And now back to the platforming element which, sadly, hasn't changed much. The platforming consists of rooms filled with wall and floor panels (bearing the game's logo), turning switches and timed doors, and between them, ledges, balancing beams, spike pits, poles, ropes, leaps of faith, and other moving parts, not to mention all the traps from SOT, including the rotating blade column, the spinning blade trap (different from aforementioned column), blades that run out of walls, spike traps, and the like. There are no new traps AT ALL, and some of the traps from SOT have mysteriously disappeared, too.

Even more sad is the fact that Warrior Within doesn't have half as immersive puzzles as it's predecessor. In fact, the closest thing to a puzzle you'll find in Warrior Within is a simple trial and error game in which you must press four switches in the correct order, and you'll find this game nine times in all, and you'll get irritated. While SOT managed to seamlessly blend classic block-pushing with amazing acrobatic platforming, Warrior Within replaces virtually all the puzzles with fights.

There is, however, one new platforming element to speak of - the Dahaka. Which in a way, makes up for the lot of the stale traps.

While on appearance, the Dahaka is only a plot element, in reality he is so much more. The Dahaka is Ubi's way of making formerly annoying timed puzzles so much more intense. Whereas before, you would pull out a switch, which would open a door, which was far away, and that would slowly close, meaning you had to navigate a room of traps under pressure, it's now so much simpler. Dahaka appears, you RUN, and screw the fact that the room you're running through is filled with traps and pitfalls, who cares if the Dahaka just teleports through the parts he can't walk through, you just move out of the way. It adds a feeling of pace to the game, which it needs, because while timed puzzles are fast, you feel slow, which is part of the frustration they cause. Well the Dahaka chases are fast, feel fast, and give you an excuse for lots of amazing acrobatic skills.

So we know that the fighting is amazing and the platforming is good. You'll be pleased to know that the rest of the game is quite well done too - the graphics are generally better than in the Sands of Time, too, as they look more refined than before, and the game, when it judges you to be fighting with style, slows down some of the automated actions so you can watch as your sword neatly divides an enemy in two straight down the middle without having to worry about which button to press next. The FMVs in the game are of exceptional quality and are worthy graphical partners to the Prince's ever growing bank of animations. The sound - ranging from all of the Prince's "speeches" to the sounds of weapons clanging, to the sounds of enemies roaring to the simple atmospheric effects - is well done too, although the choice of a principally heavy metal soundtrack is perhaps questionable in it's context as a Prince of Persia game. While the series has a reputation for it's storybook style (something which SOT managed to pull off perfectly), the heavy metal soundtrack sounds a little too much like an appeal to the youth, saying "We're cool coz' we like heavy metal!" and it just doesn't go with POP.

Finally, we have Xbox Live. Not online multiplayer, no, it's not that kind of game. What we've got instead is an arena mode (in which you fend off enemies) and a time trial (in which you complete a course), and the results are tallied in an online leaderboard. Ubi also promises downloadable content.

And now we've covered the good, we'll get to the bad.

Whereas in SOT, the Prince was one of the most likable characters of his time, the Prince is now - for lack of a better word - angsty. He appears worn and has battle scars all over. He even has a tattoo. His voice is deeper and darker. There aren't any jokes at all. There are no allied characters for him to converse with. The only conversations he has outside of cutscenes are periodic outbursts such as "You should be honoured to die by my blade!" and "Die!". The enemies chat amongst themselves too ("Soften him up for me!"). He has little to no character and equal development. The narrative is gone completely. The Prince, as a character, has been ruined. Beyond repair.

Some would say that at times the game can be a bit confusing with not enough clues as to what you're supposed to be doing. The game provides you with one of the most unhelpful maps in gaming history, which only compounds matters. Part of the reason for this is that due to the game's use of sand portals to explore the same island in two different timelines, you will be doing a lot of backtracking, and this can get confusing, especially when you are forced to go one way and end up going round in a big loop, eventually unable to tell where the new path that's opened is. However, the game does at least try to make up for this by giving you a camera "fly through" of each new room as you enter it, which at least shows you where the exit is.

One more thing: "mature" themes and innuendo. Let's talk about Shahdee, the (female) commander of the ship that attacks the Prince in the beginning of the game. Her outfit resembles that which would not look out of place in a fetishist convention. There's a five second CG rendered cutscene that focuses entirely on her butt as she walks up a flight of stairs. She and the other "lead" female wear "suitably" skimpy outfits. And the female enemies are full of innuendo, blurting out with "there's SO much PLEASURE in PAIN", and "hit me harder, Prince! HARDER!". Everything that contributes to this game's M rating is unnecessary and reeks of desperation on Ubi's part.

And now we've covered the bad, we'll move on to the ugly.

We all heard the endless delay stories that plague big releases - the developers need time to fine tune their products, make sure that the final release worked exactly as it was supposed to. But not Ubi. Ooh, no. Warrior Within spent less time than most games in the making and by God, it shows. It's glitches, glitches, glitches. There are so many technical mishaps that can happen that a shocking amount of players find themselves having to restart and pray for better luck.

Let me make one thing completely clear. Warrior Within would have been a masterpiece - IF Ubi had done a little quality control and removed most of the glitches (a few are forgivable but this many is just wrong), and not gone completely overboard with Shahdee and Kaileena's outfits and perhaps cut down on the innuendo. Warrior Within would have been a very strong candidate for Game of the Year, just as Sands of Time was in it's day. What a shame.

As a game on its own, Warrior Within gets a 7 from me. But I would warn any diehard Prince of Persia fans - you will be disappointed. Badly. This game will appeal more to casual gamers than true fans, because all the characteristics of the Prince that were set up by SOT and the originals have just been torn to shreds.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/04, Updated 01/03/05