Prince of Persia

A lesser company than Ubisoft might have been tempted to carry on churning out sequels to its popular Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy until the law of diminishing returns finally took its toll. Instead, the developer has treated the Prince to a complete reboot for his latest adventure. And the risk-taking doesn’t end there.

For starters, the Prince himself is a completely different character this time around – in fact, it’s not even clear whether he’s a prince at all. The evidence seems to point to him being quite the opposite: a common thief. By chance – or perhaps fate – he encounters Elika, who appears to be a classic damsel in distress. As it happens, the Prince ends up spending much of the game relying on her to save him, rather than the other way around.

To prevent an ancient evil from engulfing the world, the Prince and Elika must travel the land, bringing life back to several ‘fertile grounds’, defeating a motley selection of minions in the process. This involves taking advantage of the Prince’s amazing acrobatic skills to navigate a series of different environments until each goal is reached.

It might sound a bit repetitive, and it probably would be if it weren’t for the fact that not only is the game beautiful to look at, but also the Prince himself is an absolute joy to control. It doesn’t take long to master his various athletic leaps, slides and wall runs and before long you’ll be slinging together multiple moves into long sections of fluid motion.

Prince of Persia is an intensely satisfying experience and rarely did it frustrate. Which brings us to the game’s other big leap of faith: your character cannot die as such. Whereas other games would have you restart from the last save point whenever you fail, the Prince is always rescued from the jaws of death by his mysterious female partner, who will pluck him out of mid-air or save him from a mortal blow in combat and instantly return him to the action.

It’s a neat trick that keeps the game’s pace flowing nicely, whilst simultaneously encouraging the player to experiment without fear of reprisal.