Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within – This guy puts Lara Croft to shame!

I have a bit of a confession to make. In all my years of gaming on just about every platform there is, I’ve never once played Prince of Persia. I have seen the game develop throughout the ages and I believe I never really took a shine to this game initially as I remember back when platformers were more like Donkey Kong, but I’m glad to see that this game has progressed to the standard it has become now... which happens to be pretty superb!

The graphics both for the cut away movie sequences and in-play screen shots are actually pretty good and would certainly rival the graphics I’d expect to see on more powerful gaming machines. The movement is pretty slick, being able to jump and shimmy along ledges and defying gravity as you run along walls and slopes all adds to the appeal and flexibility and dexterity of not only the character but the flow of the game. Being able to do things outside the box and make the game your own really helps make this game push the envelope that little bit further much to the delight of a gaming enthusiast.

I will say that the handling does take a bit of time to master as it moves with the camera angles. For example the left becomes down if the camera has rotated in such a way as you move. Needless to say this does make for some pretty kamikaze play at times and with some hilarious results (particularly leaping to your death down one of the many crevasses in mid-battle). The upside is that if you persevere you’ll get hours of gameplay out of it, the downside to this is that you might just want to strangle the game developer after the umpteenth time of killing yourself accidentally.

In fairness, you can move the camera angle around and even get a first person view (until you move your character – when it reverts to the third person view again). The camera however is usually quite likely to get jammed in bizarre angles which don’t really help.

So moving on from the movement and camera hindrance; what’s this game like? Well, all the ‘Thief’ and of course Prince of Persia elements are there and actually make it an enjoyable title to play. The story is quite compelling and mysterious. The difficulty level is able to be altered to suit your preference (ranging from easy to suicidal), and of course, the opponents give you a good chance to show off your sword skills as much as your puzzle solving abilities.

So will you like this game? The chances are you will if you enjoy Prince of Persia, Thief, Bloodrayne, Matrix, Assassins Creed or Tomb Raider games. If you don’t, then you might get put off from all the twitchy controls which make this game more fiddly and frustrating. However, you could do much worse if you’re looking to get into this style of third-person acrobatic puzzle-come-beat’em-up.

Rating: 76%

Positives

Graphics are amazing

Story is gripping

Fights and acrobatic antics are free-flowing and enjoyable to watch and pull off

Negatives

The camera angle and control combo messes things up somewhat

Frustrating at times

The levels are quite intense so not really for quick games