PoP Goes my Expectations

An E3 without surprises just wouldn't be any fun. This year had several shocking moments, such as when Sony announced its news PlayStation Portable, or when Mega Man threw up on that kid. But the revelation that stands out most strongly in my mind is game-related, and it's that Ubi Soft's new Prince of Persia game didn't suck. In fact, quite the opposite -- it was great! While the combat seemed a bit iffy, the running, climbing and platform-leaping elements not only managed to bring classic Prince of Persia gameplay into the third dimension, but to greatly expand upon it as well. Like most other show-goers, we were taken completely by surprise. In fact, out of hundreds of choices, we named it the third-best game at the show.

Today I got some hands-on time with the latest revision of the PS2 version, and it's come along wonderfully since E3. Our friendly neighborhood Ubi Soft representative started off by showing us the preliminary intro cinematics. They're being handled by a new division of Ubi Soft Montreal that will be doing the cinematics for all of the company's biggest titles. I didn't catch all of the story, but the gist is that a Persian king and his son raid an Indian palace, and make off with the spoils. Among them are a strange, sand-filled hourglass and an ornate dagger. While presenting the hourglass as a gift to another royal, an evil advisor tricks the Prince into unlocking it with his dagger. The sands of time are unleashed, turning the people into sand monsters and wreaking havoc in its path. Thus, it falls to the Prince to undo the evil he unleashed and vanquish the tyrant behind it all.

New Millennium, New Gameplay

From there, we jumped right into various gameplay segments drawn from throughout the game, starting with a huge battle sequence in a long palace hallway. Magically warped enemies charged from all sides, leaving us little choice but to fight. Thankfully, the game's combat system left a much better impression on me than it did at E3. The Prince has both a scimitar and that dagger at his disposal. The scimitar (which is upgradable throughout the game) is his main weapon, used for whittling away at enemy health. The magical dagger has a more specialized purpose -- using it activates some of the Prince's five time-controlling powers (more on those in a bit). When either weapon is drawn, the Prince locks onto the nearest enemy, just like in recent Zelda games. However, he's a lot more agile than Link ever was, able to launch attacks off of walls or somersault over an enemy to gain access to its back. There's even a counter-attack system, where he can intercept an opponent's slash and turn it into a powerful reversal.

The powerful counter-attack is the best bet for tough monsters.
Once a creature's knocked down, the Prince can use his dagger to truly kill it, absorbing the magical sand that composed the enemy into his sand meter, for lack of a better term. (You'd best do this quickly, or the monster'll get up for more thrashing!) In any case, it's this sand that lets the Prince bend time to his will, and five time powers exist in all. "Delay" creates a Matrix-style slowdown, more for looks than effect. Revival rewinds the last few seconds, which can save you, for example, from a deadly fall. "Restraint" freezes a monster in its tracks -- very useful in combat! "Haste" is a kind of berserk mode, where the Prince dashes from monster to monster and chops them up at light speed. And "Destiny," finally, is a sort of sixth sense that offers clues as to what to do next. These powers, while useful, sap your sand reserve, so you might only be able to rewind that bad jump twice; the third time, it's do or die.

Upon losing their sand, the enemies disintegrate into funky particle effects.
While the combat and the time powers are cool, my favorite aspect of this new Prince of Persia is the running, jumping, and other environmental interaction. I used to think that Tomb Raider was a good 3D implementation of Prince of Persia-style gameplay, but all it did was copy the game's old 2D mechanics (stiff control and all) and bring them into 3D. What the new Prince of Persia does is update and change the old gameplay so that it not only feels fresh again, it goes places where a 2D game could not. Perfect example: the Prince's wall-running. Holding R1 and running at a wall causes the Prince to, depending on his angle of approach, either run right up it or run along it. The implementation is killer -- it's very easy to do, but it looks and feels awesome. So it goes with many of the Prince's other acrobatic feats, including rope swinging, pole and ladder climbing, ledge grabbing, long jumping, and ... well, whatever it's called when you swing around a horizontal bar like a gymnast. Yeah, that.