First Thirty: Prince of Persia (PC)

By Joe Haygood | December 19, 2008

So after a delay of a week for release on the PC, and my cheapness in paying for 7 day delivery, I have finally received my most anticipated release of the holiday season in Prince of Persia.  Yes, I have been hyped for this game for some time, and after I installed the game, I immediately jumped in to put together my first thirty article for Aeropause.

Suffice to say that in the first thirty minutes, you will go through a lot of tutorials.  The game does a lot of hand holding, as you will see in the attached video at the end of the article.  You are prompted for almost every action you need to perform, at least in the thirty minutes I have played.  The game makes a funny reference back to the last Prince of Persia games, but for the most part, is a wholly separate game from the last trilogy.

The sell of the game, is the look and the acrobatic action, and so far Prince of Persia is delivering on both.  Action in Prince of Persia is fast and a bit on the easy side.  Stringing a bunch of combos together is taxing at first as you get use to the keyboard/mouse controls, but as you move along and memorize your keys, you can put together some combos that put Dante from Devil May Cry to shame.  The claw glove is a new mechanic that really plays nicely into combat, although it seems to be far too easy to hit with it.  I did like the one on one combat, as it allowed for a more fluid response from the game engine.

The look of the game is what puts Prince of Persia in the layman’s eye, and it almost delivers on that promise in the first thirty minutes.  While the cell shading is amazing and is completely fluid, a lot of the beginning is in valleys and open plains, lacking any real detail for the player to enjoy.  Barring a few giant set pieces in the beginning, including the tree you see in the picture above, the environment is very scarce.  From the trailers, I know the environments get better, but it does not sell the graphics as well in this short period of gaming.

So far, I am enjoying the game.  If you have a gamepad, you might want to use it, as the menus and gameplay are geared towards it, but the mouse and keyboard work after some memorization.  The look is coming along and the action is highly enjoyable.  Look for a review soon, and enjoy some game footage from the PC version below.