Prince of Persia Classic (PSN) Review

Posted by Drew Robbins on 11.06.2008

19 years ago Prince of Persia rocked the world with its realistic platforming, and in an attempt to build hype for the upcoming Prince game, Ubisoft has remade the classic for PSN and XBL. How does it stack up? 411's resident Prince of Persia fanatic, Drew Robbins, will tell you!



Prince of Persia Classic
Developer - Ubisoft
System - PS3 (Playstation Network)

Long ago, a man named Jordan Mechner saw his little brother running in the backyard, and out of that he came up with an idea that would revolutionize both the animation of games, as well as changing the whole platforming genre up for several years to come. Mechner used a process called rotoscoping to create a character with life-like movements in his video game. The character was a Prince, set to marry a beautiful princess. However, the Sultan leaves the kingdom and it is taken over by the vizier Jaffar. Jaffar decides to marry the princess, and he locks the Prince up in jail to assure that his plan will go off without a hitch. This year, Ubisoft decided to resurrect this classic game on Xbox Live and PSN, with updated graphics and slightly changed gameplay. Unfortunately, some things are better left the way they were in the first place.

Gameplay

If you have played a platformer in the past 20 years, this game won’t particularly shock you. You guide your character from side-to-side on the screen, solving puzzles and avoiding traps. The appeal of this game is twofold, you are given a set time limit in which you must beat the game (60 minutes, it saves whenever you reach the end of a level, stopping the clock until you decide to pick it up again), and the puzzles require a lot of trial-and-error. Those familiar with Sands of Time (or the other two Prince of Persia games we don’t really like to talk about) will reminisce fondly over the satisfaction when you finally figure out a puzzle after having to use several containers of sand. Unfortunately, Classic is much less forgiving. Each level contains checkpoints, usually one per level, but these checkpoints are not placed very well. For example, at one point I walked across a hallway, jumped to the next platform, and leaped over a few spikes, provoking a checkpoint. Then, later on in the level, I kill a man, leap over some platforms…kill another guy, leap over more confusing platforms, reach a confusing hallway. Guess what, no check points there. If you die, you will be sent right back to where you were, sometimes forcing you to do the same thing several times.

That isn’t to say that Classic’s level design is bad, because it is quite the opposite, it is fantastic. The puzzles are inventive, even in this day and age. Nothing really feels out of place or unnecessary, it all fits. Classic’s real problem, in fact, lies in maneuvering your characters around these great levels, which is made quite a hassle by Ubisoft’s feeling that they need to change it up in areas besides the graphics.

What am I trying to say? Let me explain, the Prince in this game resembles the newer Prince, the ultra-speedy acrobatics master. In the original Prince of Persia, he was slower, and it allowed you to think your puzzles through. They threw the fast Prince into the old levels and it does not work at all. Slightly tilting the joystick will send him quickly to the edge, and because the slightest movement will throw you off in this game, you will die a lot more than you would normally.

My last complaint lies within the camera, which seems like a silly problem to have for a side-scrolling game. I mean, how can you go wrong? I shall tell you how; they had terrible choice in what should fit in one frame of the screen. In one of the early levels, I was running at full speed across a platform, the camera stopped leaving me to believe that I had plenty in front of me. I continued running and bam, right off of a cliff. This camera seems to rely on assumptions, especially with ledges that get you higher up. Many segments will have you on a floor where you can’t see what is above you, but if you press ‘X’ it will bring you up. You can never tell where these ledges are, it is all guessing and assumptions. Games should never rely on assumptions, ever.

Graphics

Prince received a slight “Bionic Commando” treatment in this game, and I say slight because Bionic Commando looked beautiful, Prince just looks like a PS2 game. This isn’t a really big complaint; it costs $10 so the graphics aren’t really going to be a selling point. If you want to look at it from a comparison standpoint, the game looks leaps and bounds better than the original. That isn’t really saying much, comparing a PS3 game to a game that was originally released on the Apple 2, but I must reiterate…who buys DLC games for graphics?

Sound

I’d like to direct your attention to flash games, the lowest form of our industry. Most of those games are filled with terrible sounds that just make you want to remove your ears. Surprisingly enough, someone at Ubisoft thought it might be a good idea to include these sound effects in an actual game. Most of the time you don’t hear music, but the second you reach a menu, the game spits out terrible noises. This is one of those games where you just turn the TV down and turn on your MP3 player. Even Metallica is more pleasing to the ears than this junk.

Lasting Appeal

Prince is certainly not a long game. The whole game spans over 60 minutes, and after that it will be good for nothing more than speed runs…a feature that most people will avoid with the remake due to the speed and lousy camera.

Fun Factor

Though I found the gameplay to be sloppy and frustrating, I can’t say that I was completely devoid of enjoyment. The combat was decent, and was made much more interesting than the “Press attack when you get close” style of the original…but this is Prince of Persia. Combat is never a selling point.

The 411

Prince of Persia Classic is not a terrible game, but it is plagued by flaws. It seems like they just tried to plug bits of Sands of Time into the levels of the original, and it didn’t work out as well as one would hope. Fans of the series might just be better off with the original, as for once, the remake does not out-do the original.

Graphics	7.0	Decent, about what you should expect from downloadable games.
Gameplay	6.5	The gameplay is good, but the attempt to meld the original and Sands of Time together comes off a bit flat.
Sound	4.0	Really bad, really generic sound. TNA Impact's announcers think that this game's menu is annoying.
Lasting Appeal	4.5	60 minutes isn't very long, but the game leaves room for speed runs.
Fun Factor	7.0	I found myself enjoying the game, but only when it wasn't screwing me over with faulty mechanics.
Overall	6.5   [ Average ]