Prince of Persia, the great galvanizer

The 3D Prince of Persia games seem to exist in a really strange realm in comparison to most modern "hardcore" games. As they're of the same school of design as 3D Mario games (that is, an update of a classic formula), there's a lot of the same things that seem to apply. I never (or almost never) really care about the Prince in much the same way that I really don't care about Mario. What both games seem to thrive on is the joyous freedom of running and jumping. In that way, they're more indebted to childhood play than they are of what one would associate with the standard conventions of videogaming.

The difference is that Prince of Persia, while still being ridiculously fun in 3D, took a turn towards creating this "deep" mythology, as well as a supposedly dynamic character who frequently dipped into the deep end of the Baditude pool – seriously, besides maybe Dante's Inferno, there's no worse example of baditude than in Warrior Within. The core mechanics of free running through the spectacularly detailed environments is as good as it's ever been, yet, there's something that keeps the Prince of Persia series from being in the same league as Nintendo's 3D revivals of old franchises (and there's still that thorny question of the "Persia" part. Considering that Jake Gyllenhaal is playing the Prince in the movie adaptation, they've never really taken that element of the narrative seriously).

I went to the recent Replay Games re-opening in Regina and needed a third game so as to take advantage of their "Buy 2 get the 3rd free" sale. Having already picked up F-Zero GX and Final Fantasy VIII, and remembering that I enjoyed the PoP games on the Gamecube (yes, even Warrior Within), I decided to pick it up. I fully expected the game to be fun, which it absolutely is, but I didn't expect that the game would draw such a clear line in the sand when it came to game design.

See, Prince of Persia is a game that has admirers and detractors on both sides of the fence – everything from a 9.3 score on IGN to almost literally all of the comments in that same article being players complaining about the game being no good and selling it back to whatever store they bought it from. There's a couple of reasons for this, and it's simply a matter of Ubisoft Montreal making a game so consciously geared towards the idea of fun that lots of traditional game design gets thrown out the window, for better or worse.

In Prince of Persia 2008, you can't die. Seriously. Or it's extremely difficult to, anyways (you can be felled by the game's pretty ridiculously easy enemies, I suppose). When you fall off a cliff, your magical partner Elika picks you right back up and lets you try again. When you come to an environmental hazard, the game helpfully points the way to perform the necessary actions. The game world can be unlocked at your own pace, and while there's some definite bonuses for completionists, you won't be punished for not picking up the various Light Seeds that are scattered around a level. Simply put, these sorts of things are things that I think I would normally hate, yet for some reason, Prince of Persia makes them work in a way that makes the game so much better. Exploration and the joy of doing your crazy parkour antics become the focal point. In a way, I appreciate the game's dogged urge to provide nonstop awesomeness rather than a mish-mash of styles and design tropes.

What I've found while playing the game is that I'll feel that some elements (say, being instantly revived after falling off a cliff) annoy me, and then I stop to think, "why?" Shouldn't Ubisoft Montreal be commended for finding an original alternative to the somewhat cliched "death" fail-state, especially when said deaths just put you back at the start of the level anyways? At least there's some context here. And while I generally hate HUDs, this game makes no pretense of being a "realistic" portrayal of the Prince of Persia, and the persistent HUD elements (i.e., health meters and the like) are basically non-existent, which is nice.

I think a lot of the vitriol directed towards the game have to do with that old "hardcore vs. casual" nonsense, because this is one of the most resolutely casual games I've played – not exactly in line with the punishing Prince of Persia games of old. You know what? The series has morphed into the videogame equivalent of a cute puppy – it looks good and it's fun to play with. That's more than enough for me. I of course wish the storyline was stronger, but I have to say that the characterization is better than it's ever been. I actually LIKE the Prince in this one. He's not an asshole – he actually says stuff like "You're welcome," which is literally one of the first times I've heard that in a game. If you can put aside your pretensions about difficulty (and as I generally suck at videogames, that wasn't too hard for me), Prince of Persia is a fantastic game, and one that hopefully other developers examine for ideas about videogame design (even if they choose to go the complete opposite direction).

All's not roses and candy, unfortunately. I sincerely fear for the future of the series with its proposed return to Baditude in the new sequel coming out called The Forgotten Sands, but for now, we've got this wonderful fairytale of a game, and that's good enough for me.