POP Classic is a great new take on the game that started it all, marred only by poor controls and uneven difficulty.
Spaces such as the Xbox Live Marketplace have helped to fuel interest in retro gaming, bringing arcade and console classics to a both a new generation of gamers, as well as older gamers looking for a stroll down memory lane. The original Prince of Persia seems like a perfect fit for the Marketplace, and Ubisoft’s release of Prince of Persia classic has proven once again that the Prince is still as relevant today as he was nearly two decades ago.
Giving the game a considerable facelift, Prince of Persia Classic manages to capture a great deal of the fun and adventure of the original. Unfortunately, it also manages to capture a great deal of frustration as well.
The story of Prince of Persia is so cliche that it hardly bears mentioning. The evil vizier Jaffar has imprisoned the princess and given her an ultimatum: marry him or die within the hour. Fortunately for the princess, her true love has been jailed in the dungeons of the palace and has managed to escape. The Prince must battle his way past a multitude of traps, death-defying leaps, cantankerous guards, and even his own shadow to rescue the princess in time.
While the story was plain even for the time, the action was rather novel, and it still retains a great deal of its appeal today. Armed with the ability to run, jump, mantle, roll, and fight, the game will see the Prince negotiate spikes, blades, collapsing floors and brutal jumps with relative ease. The developers have also added a few new skills to the mix which are mostly cosmetic, but actually contribute to the flow of the movements. One new skill is a wall jump that allows you to keep your forward momentum and quickly jump up and turn a corner. The other is a backflip, which makes some of the narrower platforms easier to negotiate. While these new moves do change the gameplay somewhat, they do nothing to diminish the challenge or feel of the original game.
The game is also more forgiving in terms of its time limit. While the original game ended if you failed to freerun your way through the levels in an hour, this update allows you to continue your game past 60 minutes for as long as you need, provided you don’t mind a lesser ending sequence. For an Arcade title, this is a great design choice, since casual gamers don’t want to have to spend hours and hours replaying the game just to experience and master all of the challenges.
The game’s platforming is unquestionably the highlight of the experience, and even though the game is in 2D, much of the excitement that players of the 3D games in the series have experienced are for the most part intact. However, the gameplay is not all roses, as there are two major problems which cut the title just short of excellent.
The first problem is with the movement controls. Prince of Persia is a game made for digital controls, but the only option is to control the game with the analog stick. The analog controls, however, don’t feature any graded sensitivity to allow you to tiptoe by only tilting the control a little bit, and the imprecision of the stick may mean that you will jump, roll, or parry at the wrong time because the controls sensed the slightest upward or downward deflection of the analog stick. The control simply feels sluggish and imprecise, though an update that would allow you to control the game with the D-pad would fix most of the control issues in the game.
The second problem with the gameplay is the absolutely frustrating sword combat. While the original game’s swordfighting was punishing, this update’s combat is simply broken. While the first few fights are relatively easy, requiring only that you swing your sword, the later battles pit you against adversaries who will block and parry your moves, and require you to do the same. However, in the upgrade to the graphics, it would seem that the animation timings have been thrown off to the point that the battles are unpredictable and inconsistent.
One of the most common issues is that you will block an attack, and then launch a counterattack. However, before the enemy can block your attack, they already move into their counterattack animation, delivering an unstoppable blow. Other times, the same enemies block everything that comes their way, and then they inexplicably fall apart, being able to be hacked down by five rapidly successive blows. The inconsistent fighting is by far the biggest detraction from the game, and it seems odd that Ubisoft wouldn’t have given the combat the same facelift as the graphics.
Speaking of graphics, Prince of Persia classic upgrades the visuals to a style consistent with the Prince’s Sands of Time adventure. The smooth animation remains mostly intact, though the constipated running animation hasn’t really stood the test of time. The level layout is practically identical to the original, though it has been formatted for widescreen displays. While the gameplay visuals are not stellar, they are certainly competent and actually quite good for a Live Arcade title. The cutscenes, however, leave much to be desired.
The sound in Prince of Persia is very low-key, with minimal musical cues and uncomplicated sound effects. It’s all pretty much standard fare, but a nice touch was the stereo localization of off-screen sound effects.
Completing levels opens up different modes, including a time attack mode, which is a level-based time trial, as well as survival mode, which challenges you to finish the game in 60 minutes with one life. If the controls were up to snuff, this would be a reasonable challenge, but given the above-mentioned issues, it is doubtful that many gamers will be able to earn this achievement. The remainder of the achievements, however, can mostly be earned just by playing through the game.
All in all, Prince of Persia is a title worthy of the $10 download. Older gamers who fondly remember the original are sure to get a kick out of the new facelift, and newer games may appreciate experiencing for the first time the game that started it all. However, both are likely to experience frustration with the controls. Prince of Persia Classic is just one patch away from being a superb experience.