Posts tagged ‘prince of persia’

Rebooting franchises is the new black recently, what with Batman, Bond, and the recent watercolourish Prince of Persia game. I was dubious about the latter, but I came around, and by the end had developed something of an affection for Nolan North‘s latest video game incarnation and for the cute chick who kept saving my bacon all the time.

But now what do I find? Ubisoft are debooting (unbooting? rerebooting? retrobooting?) their franchise to coincide with the new Jerry Bruckheimer Prince of Persia movie. The new game will be set between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within, and presumably explain the ancient mystery of how the prince became so unlikeable.

What about the cliffhanger ending to the ’08 Prince? What about Elika? What about the big god trying to kill the world? It seems our only hope for answers to these questions is some kind of unretrobooting. And that seems about as likely as Ang Lee making a Hulk sequel.

I likes me some Prince of Persia. I have a soft spot for all the parts the Sands of Time trilogy, even if they did manage to screw various things up royally in the sequels. I’m very keen to play The Sands of Time again should they ever get around to releasing it on Xbox Live. I’m nostalgic.

So, do I hate this crazy new Prince, with his illustrated body, big scarf, and strong american accent? Well, no, because Ubisoft seem to have the knack back. After two sessions I’ve been won over; mostly due to the care they’ve taken with the dialogue between the Prince and his new friend, Elika. Someone over there has clearly found wherever they wrote down the secret of charming, simple, entertaining and amusing storytelling before they lost it for Warrior Within.

The platforming is simpler in many ways, but unlike some I don’t think that necessarily translates to easy, or at least, not to bad easy. Yes, some of the obstacles are removed by having you simply jump at a wall to wall-run, rather than holding a thumbstick towards the wall. But those obstacles were the obstacles of irritation and not the obstacles of working out where the hell to go next. Meanwhile, the game takes the surprising move of having collectables which actually have a story function — meaning that when I do eventually scour the kingdom for all 1001 of them, I’ll have the dubious excuse that not all of them have been collected in the name of obsessive compulsion.

Finally, and I’m not sure it’s even necessary to point this out, it’s a beautiful game. After the gorgeous visuals of Assassin’s Creed I’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t, but it’s its own crazy kind of illustrated, fairytale beautiful, with the beautifully animated Elika the icing on the cake.¹ If you leave the game alone for a bit, it’ll even pan across some of its soothing landscapes, just to make sure you realise that it’s very, very nice indeed.

It’s kind of easy, but it’s kind of nice. Certainly, after playing Left 4 Dead and constantly being brutally slaughtered by legions of hideous zombies, this hits the spot.

1. Clearly someone’s learned the value of subtlety at some point since Warrior Within. ↩

It’s been a quiet time around the Grapefruit office while everyone’s away on summer break. Or at least, that sounds like a good excuse for the lack of things around here. I have been watching films and television, and playing games — I’ve just been a bit lax writing about them. I’ve only got three episodes of Battlestar: Galactica season one to watch and it’s still awesome. I won’t start reviewing it until I get to season two, though. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was great, too — I’ll probably review it too, at some point. Yes, I’m a little behind.

We got the yellow pages the other day. L-Z is now sleek and black with yellow highlights, an inverted A-K. I reckon A-K must be getting jealous. L-Z looks awesome. Speaking of awesome redesigns, the DS got a whole lot more sexy yesterday (or rather, it will) after the announcement of the DS Lite. A hot Australia Day was made even more annoying when I had to wipe the drool off Andy’s keyboard as he gibbered in the corner.

Finally, X3 seems to be getting a subtitle: ‘The Last Stand’. I don’t like subtitles. I don’t know where to put them on reviews. When X2 came out I saw ‘X-Men United’ bandied around the place but it’s not on the actual film. IMDb calls it a “promotional title”. After the film’s release they’re lost in the mists of time. Besides, what’s the point of doing subtitles when “The Secret of the Ooze” has already been taken? Nothing’s going to top that. X3 is apparently “the conclusion of this trilogy” according to some 20th Century Fox executive. I like how studio bosses are getting artistically involved in movies these days.