Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I’m going to start this one with another old geezer note about how I played the very first Prince of Persia back in the day. Still, I lose geek cred by admitting that it was on the PC (under MS-DOS) rather than on the original Apple II. I’m still amazed that this was done by one person working alone in Assembly. I actually went and looked at Jordan Mechner’s design docs when the source code of the original was discovered earlier this year. I never did play any of the sequels and skipped the Sands of Time trilogy entirely.

This version that I played recently is the 2008 reboot of the franchise, which is why it is simply named Prince of Persia again. As a reboot, it pretends that none of the previous games ever happened and starts you off with a fresh story and new characters. My impressions:

• This is pretty much a pure platformer. The combat elements take a back-seat. There are few fights in the game and the combat mechanics are rather simplistic. So this game is all about navigating the environment with fancy acrobatics. I’m actually okay with this as I haven’t played a platformer in a while. The Assassin’s Creed games don’t count!
• I guess the Prince’s repertoire of moves must be familiar to those who have played the newer games but maneuvers like wall running, grabbing onto pillars, backwards jumps etc. are all new to me and quite fun. Not to mention cool to look at. I really dig the painterly art design which is reminiscent of animated watercolors though I do wish they would tone down the anime elements.

• The combat system is the worst offender in this regard. Lots of showy, implausible moves but no depth to the game mechanics at all. Thankfully, you mainly fight only the named bosses in this game and very few cannon-fodder. You can even skip the fodder if you move fast enough. So it’s not a show-stopper. Just accept that this isn’t a good combat game.
• This game’s claim to Internet controversy fame is how the designers made it so that you can’t ever die in this game. Ever. You play the Prince but you have this girl Elika who follows you around constantly as your companion. How this works is that whenever you’re about to die, she jumps in to save you. If you’re plunging to certain splatteriness, she flies in and pulls you up. If you’re about to be finished off by a monster, she casts a spell and turns back time. If you’re engulfed in foul, black corruption goo, she grabs you and pulls you out. So you can never die, no matter how badly you mess up.
• Predictably this caused the gamer community to erupt with geek rage about videogames being dumbed down to meaninglessness. But that’s not true because Elika works more like an always on quick save and quick restore function rather than an I-win button. It dispenses with having to load a savegame to continue but doesn’t remove the challenge of actually having to complete that portion of that game yourself. When you fall for example, Elika always moves you back to the last solid ground you stood on. However since a series of acrobatic moves between areas of solid ground may be quite long,  the effective checkpoint might be some ways back and getting everything exactly right can still be difficult. In the same way, if Elika saves you in combat, this also restores health to the enemy, so you can’t cheese your way through.

• So I ended up rather liking this system. My only complaint is that it does hurt suspension of disbelief, especially when Elika is supposedly in trouble, incapacitated by an enemy or whatever, and she still gets well enough for the short time needed to save you and then goes straight back to her previous state. Plus it fosters the impression that Elika is way more competent than the Prince is. Why am I saving the world anyway when she’s so much better at everything?
• The biggest problem is that this is ultimately a very repetitive game with lightweight mechanics. There’s no advancement system. The light seed collection thing is partly mandatory because it’s used to gate progress but doesn’t add anything beyond the bit of extra challenge needed to collect more than the minimum required. And don’t even start with me about the terrible travel powers, especially when a clumsy QTE game is imposed on top of it. I actually got bored and soldiered through only because it’s not a hard game to complete.
• I do give props for a cool ending. I know it’s pretentious games-as-art shit but I still liked how the game gives you a perfunctory end credits sequence and then lets you still play after it. It’s like they’re saying, “You can choose to end the game here if you want. But if you continue, it’s because you made that choice not because we forced you to.” Because, without going into any spoilers, what happens after the first credits roll is very, very terrible indeed.
• On a final note, using voice actors with North American accents for characters with dusky skin tones and vaguely Arabic costumes does not work in any way. Wait, the main character isn’t even a Prince is he? And this isn’t even Persia I think. I better go lie down and not think about this any more.