Review: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (GC)

Since no local rental place carries POP: WW (strangely) I decided to go ahead and invest the "expensive rental price"...aka, I bought it. I picked up the GameCube version on the recommendation of the GameSpot.com review.

I was mildly impressed with Sands of Time, WW's predecessor, but never finished the game (as if to confirm just how "mildly impressed"), but after playing a bit of the PC demo for WW, I thought I might find something more to my taste, i.e. less cartoony.

Well, while WW is definitely that, it's possible that I'm even less impressed with WW than SOT. I'm finding it a chore to finish the game and may very well not. The reason I've even gotten as far as I have is testament to the few things about the title that definitely do engage. Since I didn't finish SOT all those months ago, I can't make a very good comparison, so this review will lack that perspective, unfortunately. There's enough to observe about this as a stand-alone, though, to render justice, I think.

GRAPHICS
The graphics are subpar. They aren't atrocious, but fail to reflect the progress made on all three consoles at this point. They are disappointing, in turns acceptable, regressive, and immersive. On the whole, fair but we should expect better not only from games in general on these consoles at this stage, but from such a prominent developer. About a C minus.

The Prince, himself, is more than a bit blockier than he should be, and the female characters in the cutscenes are just ludicrously outdated. That in itself detracts from a lot of very nice textures and typical diffused lighting that the series has used to nice effect.

I may as well also mention here the ubiquitous irritation of the camera control. The angles are often unhelpful and camera movement frustratingly limited, often unable to make little more than an acute angle of rotation. It's absolutely eye-rolling, and incomprehensible in a title of this stature from one of the world's foremost developers.

COMBAT
One commendable point is the fighting mechanics. Combos are deep, animations are fun. The ability to pick up dropped weapons, while hardly revolutionary, isn't quite standard yet, and adds even more interest to combat. Unfortunately, the variety of weapons leaves much to be desired and could conceivably have been improved sufficiently.

They permit the Prince to interact with his environment and his enemies in engaging ways, hopping from column to column, wall to column, wall to enemy, etc. He has some particularly interesting wall combos in combat.

LEVEL DESIGN
This is really where things start to fall apart for me, despite some very nice ideas.

The conceit of taking the same levels and playing them in two different epochs will, no doubt, meet with mixed reactions: clever or lazy. My own opinion is a mix of both, but in the end I have to say that I thought it worked well enough, even though theoretically it seems to some degree rather uncreative. It harkens to the emotions most of us get standing amongst some ruins or other trying to envision what it must have been like to be alive at the time when all of it was new. It captures some of that feeling, though really only a shade of it.

The really irritating and tired aspect of the levels are the traps. If I never see another rotating column of spikes and matching retracting floor spikes it will be too soon. Holy mind-numbing and just plain irritating. To navigate these, though, does require you to use the fun wall running ability of the Prince, but what promises fun quickly turns to "just let me past this stupid spike hall".

Those trap devices are done, fellas. As in, pull it out now, I really think it might be burnt. The next person who tries these babies on for size better have some kind of George Lucas/Stanley Kubrick like revolutionary new way of using them. Seriously. Enough is enough.

Also, objectives could be a bit more clear cut. The design already isn't incredibly open-ended, so there's not much harm in providing a bit of direction without making us run down more corridors of those really stupid, not fun spike traps.

Of course, the bane of most console games is the ridiculous inability to save at any point you like. Whatever the reason, it's a serious point of contention and detracts from much of the enjoyment. This seems a rather petty complaint, but other games can find a way around it; it's really difficult to forgive at this point, particularly considering some of the stretch of traps the Prince has to navigate between save points. I completely understand and sympathize with the desire to be creative about such a mundane task (and they do a good job on that count), but it shouldn't be so intrusive as to be an irritant as it is here.

MUSIC
Oh, my sweet Savior, don't let me get started. What is going on here. Really. Tell me. Tell me now. Are you going tonal or contrasting. Oh, both.... Okay...well-l-l-l, it doesn't work. My advice? Stay tonal. The rock music. Not so much. For Gauntlet Dark Legacy, yeah, it's camp enough to work. Not here. You've got some nice Middle Eastern sounding stuff there; stay with it. Don't jerk us out of the atmosphere with this not-terribly-good 90's rock music.

Other than the music, the sound design is just fine without being exceptional.

"That's all I have to say about that."
- Forrest Gump

Overall, it's a forgettable game due mostly to puzzle and level design and its fair but regressive graphics. It's worth a rental to tool around with some of the Prince's fun physical abilities, but you can pick up other action/adventure games that are years older that are much funner (Drakan: The Ancients' Gates leaps to mind).

I haven't been a huge fan of the POP series, and WW, though I thought it could convert, left me still mildly pleased, but ultimately uninterested. From the sounds of it, Two Thrones only promises much of the same, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong.