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Prince of Persia : Warrior Within
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Game Name:
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Prince of Persia : Warrior Within |
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Console:
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PC |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
I've been playing this new title over the weekend (the PS2 version actually but I doubt there is much difference). The tone of this game is a fair bit darker. The Prince is very grim having been on the run for years now. The Prince is being chased for years now by a creature call the Dahkra which is a guardan of the timeline. I'm not sure whether it is hunting him because he unleashed the sands of time or if it's because he was meant to die but saved himself by using manipulating time. I get the impression it's the latter, possibly it was the first time the Prince used the dagger of time to stop the stone block from falling on his head. The Prince has come to the Island of Time where the sands were first created. He has been told of portals leading to the past which he intends to use to prevent the sands from ever being created. It's somewhat of a temporal paradox but hey, it's only a game.
The game has improved over the original in a number of ways - there are new traps and new stunts the Prince can perform to get to his destination. The floor spikes have been changed - moving slowly no longer gets you past them, you need to move quickly by rolling as they will spring out a half second after you step on them. Two new additions to the Prince's stunts arsenal are wall ropes and curtains. The Prince can climb the ropes like a ladder or run back and forth along the wall before continuing on with his normal wall run. Curtains can be used to slide down a wall to reach the ground safely. Combat is greatly changed as well. Fans of the original will recall that fighting was almost a chore rather than fun - most enemies could be beaten by flipping over their head and knocking them down from behind. The few that couldn't tended to be a pain as they'd often block your attacks. The fact that they all teleported was another annoyance as they'd keep surrounding you no matter what you did. This time enemies are a bit more realistic, they are stuck on foot like you and you can position them for your advanatge. In many places in the game there are ledges or spiked pits etc. One of the simplest moves the Prince can do is to flip over someones head and then throw them. This gets rid of most enemies quite easily although you can't capture sand from enemies you don't kill with your weapons. The Prince can also pick up a secondary weapon and use it to enhance his attacks. One of the combo attacks with the secondary weapon can't be blocked by common enemies although it is a bit slow and leaves you vulnerable to flanking attacks. Often your swinging swords hit more than one enemy though.
The cons of the game are numerous as well, in some ways this game has gone backwards from the original. Firstly the load times are a bit longer than the original. This wouldn't be much of a problem except the "continue" feature has been made worse. In the original, if the Prince died untimely he'd quickly say that he'd made a mistake and you could get back into action from the last check point. This time the game wastes time giving you a game over screen, then it asks if you want to continue and the it finally reloads the game to the last checkpoint. This is annoying, I bought the game to play it - not to stare at game over screens. During the game you will be pursued at certain points by the Dahkra and you must move quickly to escape him. When the Dahkra is close, colour leeches from the landscape turning it brown and grey. This is mostly not a problem but sometimes the missing colours make it hard to see what is around you - in one case I missed a rope on a wall twice because it blended in so well. In some other chase scenes the game keeps changing the camera angle, in one case even showing what is behind the Prince. This is very annoying as it makes it hard to navigate. The Dahkra's means of attack is using some tentacles which come out of.... Well, let's just say he'd be really popular with the ladies.
Another big change to the game is water. In the first game there was a health replenishing water supply nearby in pretty much every fight in the game. This time water is far more scarce and most of it can be found in special fountains which double as your save game points. This can be a problem if the game has a checkpoint between fountains but you can't get back to the last one to heal up. You can become stuck without enough health to have a chance of survival. It generally isn't as much of a problem since combat is easier on average but it's still a concern since traps suck out your life force as well. For some reason the Prince will only drink water that is sitting still. In some places you will find it pouring down like a waterfall but the Prince can't be made to drink it.
There are a number of "boss fights" throughout the game against women. I've been playing on the medium difficulty level and short of using your time powers to get an advantage these fights tend to be pretty hard. Even though your opponents aren't wearing any significant body armour (one is in a dress, the other is wearing a metal G string) your attacks tend to hit like the Prince is armed with a feather duster while they hit like the wrath of god.
Smashable objects aren't worthless like they were in the first game. There is a chance they will contain sand refills. The Prince is able to manipulate time using the amulet that Farah left him in the first game, he can't at first though. He only gets these powers as he activates time portals to travel between the past and the present. Many of these powers tend towards being useless though. In the original you could unleash a power which lets you dash around and slash any enemies quickly for a short period of time, however it costs you all of your "special power" sand. This time it only costs a single sand bulb, gets upgraded twice and then gets replaced by an annoying area damage attack. I say annoying because while the former two make you pretty much impossible to hurt since you are moving so fast, the latter can be charged up and you can't block while charging it - of course since it's an area damage attack you'll only want to use it while you are actually surrounded by enemies. Does anyone else see the problem here? Either way you can also simply slow down time which lasts longer although you can't attack quite as fast. The same power is needed to solve some puzzles where you must reach a door before it closes. This is a concern since if you have no sand left then these puzzles are unsolvable. Thankfully the game usually leaves behind some smashable objects whenever these puzzles appear.
Enemies are a bit more varied this time as well. There are a number of "human" enemies to fight. There are also these big "lizard" creatures which pose a special threat in themself since they explode when the died. In some cases you need to use them tactically to destroy a doorway. There are also these giant monsters who try to pound you to death, you need to hamstring them, run up on their back and beat them around the head until they die. These can be a problem if they grab hold of you while you are on their back as they will throw you off - possibly to your death. Speaking of which, in the original game you could run up to an enemy and hit the jump button to vault over them (unless they block) and then slash them from behind in midair. This time around, the same move will only work if you hit the attack button shortly after hitting the jump button. Otherwise the Prince will vault far away from his enemy. This is a real pain if the only thing behind you is empty space.
Life upgrades are back but they are different this time. In the original they start off easy to find and became harder to spot and harder to reach as you progress. This time they are all hidden well - so far I've only found one on my own. Each upgrade gives you another 1/8th of a lifebar. Unlike the original you have plenty of life to start with so you can win the game without finding them all or any of them for that matter.
Time travel is interesting since you will often cross over places you've just been in a different time period. The changes are quite "realistic" as certain traps might not be functioning correctly in the present as well as things being overgrown and buildings turned to rubble. The game does suffer from "where do I go now?" syndrome from time to time. At one spot I had to refer to a walkthrough because I didn't notice a hard to spot beam that I was supposed to jump up to. Also, since you have to come back from certain places I sometimes found myself looking at things that represented the way back, not the way forward.
Although many of the traps have been reused I've yet to have any feelings of deja vu - the puzzles all seem fairly new and well designed. All up this is a decent successor to the original game. I give it 8/10.
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