Downfall

Unfortunately, Prince of Persia isn’t as universally decent and well behaved as you might expect Persian royalty to be – Ubisoft has in fact made some fairly controversial decisions when it comes to designing the game.

Ready then? Here’s number one...

You can’t die in the game. Not at all. You’re more invulnerable than some bizarre combination of Colossus, two Wolverines, three clones of The Incredible Hulk and at least five copies of The Sentry. Or one Chuck Norris, in other words.

Elika is to blame for that, of course. If you fluff up a jump or accidentally get entangled in the mouldy-custard-corruption then Elika will promptly dive in after you and sort everything out with a wave of her jazz magic hands.

Likewise, if you take a tumble in battle then Elika will just revive you in super-fast time – though your enemy also will get time to recover their health in the interval, which can easily get you trapped in never-endng swordfights. Good thing you can save whenever you want, eh?


In a way, your immortality is A Good Thing. Unlike in Tomb Raider, the game moves more towards being an interactive and story-led movie than an actual test of player ability. That, combined with Elika’s Compass spell which shows you the right way to go, means you’ll never get stuck for more than two seconds. You plough relentlessly through the game like an earthworm after the world's largest potato.

On the other hand, you really do have to question a game where there’s no penalty for failure. When Elika revives you she doesn’t pull you back to the start of a segment, forcing a bit of repetition and practice – she resets you to wherever your feet last touched the terra firma.

When there’s no penalty then you quickly find that there’s no deterrent either – no fear. Running the Prince through the levels quickly degenerates into a mass of blind guesswork rather than intelligent estimation. You don’t really care if there’s an outcropping for you to land on or not, but it isn’t because you’re brave like Evil Knievel. It’s because you’re untouchable. Like a rubber duck held underwater in the bath, you don’t need to fear drowning. Mainly because you aren’t alive anyway.


Prince of Persia also treads down the path of quicktime events, much to our dismay and annoyance. Nothing ruins immersion than ‘Press X to not die’, though here at least it’s been reduced to ‘Press X to not have Elika save you and make you Press X to see this again so you can not die at all, ever’.

To be totally fair, the quicktime events aren’t totally reprehensible either and are nearly always kept to just a single button press, mainly when you’re on the verge of death and need to dodge a finish blow from a boss.

Other times though the game is a lot more unforgiving or pointless in its use of QTEs. Defeating certain bosses requires you to hammer the buttons faster than a hyperactive and over-sexed bunny might launch itself onto its mate. Once you reach each Fertile Ground you’ll have to tap the Y button too to make Elika heal the land, though what benefit it is to Ubisoft to wear our thumbs and Y buttons down instead of just playing the cutscene isn’t exactly clear.