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Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Sequel Time!

Warrior Within, the second game in the Reborn Prince of Persia series, takes place not so long after the events in Sands of Time. This time though, it is the Prince's Task to go to the Island of Time, and stop the Empress of Time of actually creating the Sands of Time, and thus make sure a whole heap of trouble is NOT going to happen.

Trouble is, in a rare moment of wisdom, Ubisoft decided that this was perhaps a very meager concept to build an entire sequel around, so, in a not-so-rare moment of laziness and inoriginality, they decided to change the entire look and feel of the game and make it into something that can only be called unsuitable.

Now, judging by the story and some of the flashbacks, this is very much the same prince we're talking about, which makes it extra weird that he looks and sounds TOTALLY different. In fact, he's an entirely different person altogether, even though the creators insist he's the same guy.
Gone is the lovely charming Prince of old, with the slightly posh English accent, and in comes the generic American husky voice, which is neither here nor there.
Don't get me wrong, the voice acting is not that bad, it's just a totally boring voice, lacking any kind of character or personality.
It's not like he's getting anything to work with either, normal dialogue is straightforward, no frills attached, and during battle the Prince occassionally utters a completely stupid warcry, either a pathetic "HRAAAAAR!" (which happens far too often. Imagine a big, tough guy going "HRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" whilst smashing a bloody crate, and you can imagine how sad that looks)

Farah is also gone, and replaced by Kaileena, who, in a totally unsurprising plottwist turns out to be the Empress of Time of course. Spoiler? Only if you're stupid.
Kaileena is sexy, undoubtedly so, and Ubisoft tries to make a point of it by having her voice provided by Monica Belucci,



who is also not entirely unsexy, and even her voice is a joy to listen to, it just doesn't really make a lot of sense for an Arabic Empress to have an Italian accent, does it?

To accompany the change from professional charm to amateur "I want to be cool"-ness, the Exotic soundtrack of the original has been replaced with very very loud Rock music. Now, I don't actually MIND very very loud Rock music at all, but it is so totally inappropriate for a game like this, especially since it is not solely restricted to the battle scenes, but often also extends to the platform bits, which totally makes no sense at all.
The environments are as beautiful as ever. A lot darker this time, but still the occasional very pretty light areas with almost surreal looking lens flare, which made the original so great to look at, and which reminded me of ICO so much. Imagine being in a luscious garden, trying to balance yourself on a small ledge of some marble garden ornament, whilst in the background a couple of idiots are hammering away at electric guitars. It ruins the mood, to say the least.

The major problem with the original was the lacklustre combat. Ubisoft tried to fix this by giving the Prince a large amount of moves, and even the ability to hold two weapons at once, making combat slightly more interesting although still not actually fun. Also, it's spread out instead of concentrated on one area. The original had occasional rooms where you had to fight off dozens of enemies in a row, which I found terribly annoying, but this game offers more frequent battles with smaller groups, which I found to be less of a fuss. There are also some genuine boss battles some of which are nice, most of which are dull.

To add some much needed replay value, there are some treasure chests scattered all over the game, containing artwork and the like, which can be viewed in the special features mode.

Other than that, the game still offers the same brilliant kind of platforming that made the original so great, with a couple of small added features, like absailing down curtains and using ropes to run along walls etc.
It's still great fun even though you might wonder why you're doing it.
The game's story wants you to travel back and forth between the Palace in the Past and the Palace in the Present, which unfortunately means you'll have to backtrack occasionally and redo some things, which can be tedious. It's not THAT bad, but it's a cheap way of lengthening the game in any case.

And THEN there's the capital mistake EVERY company seems to make now and then, when they think gamers enjoy being chased by an invincible monster. Resident Evil 3 anyone?
In this case, the Prince is chased by the Dahaka, some ancient Demon who's trying to get to him because it is the Prince's fate to die or whatever, the story is rather stupid and predictable anyway, so don't bother to follow it. What it amounts to are these regularly occurring chase scenes, where, if you're not fast enough, you die instantly. Nice.
Speaking of which, the original had a great system, where, even if you didn't save recently, you're automatically put at the beginning of a room, or at the beginning of the last cutscene you witnessed, when you die. This made the game fun without being annoying, but the sequel throws you back to where you last saved, which again often means you have to retrace your steps for quite a while, which is annoying, especially since the Game Over screen is not as quick and easy to continue as in the original.

So, if you've reached certain levels of reading at your Primary Schools, you will have drawn the conclusion that this game is not nearly as good as Sands of Time.
The platforming is still cool, the graphics are better, if less atmospheric, but the rest is a shambles. I'll give it an 8, for still offering unparalleled platforming fun, but casual gamers probably don't want to bother.
Besides, the ending is totally unsatisfying too, basically giving you a "thanks for trying, now go and buy the sequel" message, with no kind of resolution whatsoever.
One for the fans.

posted by Ingen! @ 12:40 PM