Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was easily one of the best games of the current generation, featuring gorgeous graphics, great music, and some of the best platforming gameplay to grace 3D gaming. Granted the combat was somewhat lacking, and the game only took a day for most experienced gamers to the complete, but those flaws were easy to overlook given the extraordinary amount of fun it was to simply maneuver around the grandiose environments. Regardless of their relative insignificance to the overall quality of the fantastic experience, these faults became the focal point around which the eagerly anticipated sequel, appropriately dubbed Warrior Within, has been designed- the results of which bear mixed levels of success. While the individual imperfections from the first title have all been dramatically improved upon in of themselves, changes have been made regarding the fundamental nature of the game; combat has overtaken platforming as the central gameplay component in the Prince’s latest adventure resulting in a game that feels dramatically different and distinctly inferior its predecessor. Make no mistake, Warrior Within is nothing less than a great game, but in comparison to the genre-defining near-perfection of The Sands of Time, it can hardly be considered anything if not a disappointment.

Story

The plot of Warrior Within has the player catch up with the Prince shortly after the conclusion of the Sands of Time, in which the Prince utilized the sands to rewind time and prevent them from being unleashed in the first place. It soon becomes quite clear to the Prince that his hell is only just beginning, as upon returning home to Babylon he finds himself being stalked by an unwavering, unstoppable beast. After years of running and fighting, with little sleep and never feeling truly safe, the Prince has managed to collect bits and pieces of information pertaining to his situation and the entity hell bent on ending his heart beat. As the man who released the sands of time, the Prince sealed his fate and condemned himself to death. Before he would meet that death however, he used the Sands to rewind time – essentially creating a loophole in this cosmic contract and becoming a time anomaly. As a result of this unforeseen circumstance, Fate has manifested an unstoppable beast called the Dahaka to track down and kill the Prince. Out of options and running out of time, the Prince decides that his only chance at survival is to prevent the entire sequence of events from happening in the first place. To accomplish this revision of history, the Prince heads for the Island of Time, the place where the sands where originally created.

The premise behind the story is solid, as the narrative holds quite a bit more complexity than what was found in the straightforward tale of personal redemption found in The Sands of Time. The only real downside to the storyline is a fairly weak cast of supporting characters. Make no mistake there are some cool characters – the Dahaka, the SandWraith, and Shadee are all look great and give off a persona of menace, but none are particularly developed and it is unlikely anyone will care one way or another about defeating them, other than the standard satisfaction that comes with defeating a challenge. Speaking of new characters, the Prince of Persia himself could essentially be considered a new character considering just how much he‘s changed since the last time we saw him. Having gone through hell the past few years, the rude yet undoubtedly charismatic young Prince we once knew has been replaced by a no-nonsense nomadic warrior, transfixed on the simple goal of surviving from one day to the next. While a character developing as a result of circumstance is hardly a bad thing, in this case it has had the unfortunate effect of removing much of the character’s appeal. Where there was once wit and charm, and where there should now be a sympathetic sense of desperation, there is merely a sense of aggression combined with general stoicism. Furthermore, the Prince is now a static entity, with nary a smidgen of character development taking place over the entirety of his adventure. The Prince is quite the brooding badass, which will no doubt make him immediately appealing to a large audience (myself included), but whereas the Prince from the original game grew on the player as time wore on, the appeal of the new Prince quickly fades due to a lack of depth.

Say hello to the Dahaka. No run the **** away!

Gameplay

Exploration

Warrior Within is built around the same fundamental gameplay paradigm as its predecessor and though some key alterations have been made to the overall structure of the game, the majority of the gameplay mechanics have remained essentially unchanged. First and foremost, the linearity of the Prince’s last adventure stands in stark contrast to the layout of his latest journey, as the Prince is now able to complete his primary objectives – the activation of two towers on opposing sides of the Empress’s palace – in any order the player sees fit, in addition to being able to wander about at his own discretion in search of various extras, unlockables, and hidden trap-laden hallways leading to health-boost stations. The upside of this setup is the obvious freedom it affords the player, the downside being that like many other adventure games featuring open environments Warrior Within has a fair degree of backtracking. The problem is exacerbated by arguably the least useful ingame map in recent memory, an illustrated top-down view of the castle from the outside that does little other than give the player the vaguest of indications where they are, and where they should be going. As such, players are likely to find themselves backtracking after establishing that yes, they shouldn’t have taken that left two rooms back.

The annoyance is slightly reduced by the fact that in many cases of backtracking, the area will be slightly different the second way through. UbiSoft Montreal has taken a page from Crystal Dynamics’ Soul Reaver franchise in constructing two parallel worlds for the player to travel between in order to solve puzzles and make their way through the Palace of Time; the present day, in which the Palace of time is a dilapidated shell of its former grandeur and some instance in the past, a time in which the Palace was in pristine condition. Traveling centuries through time requires more sand than the Prince can hold at any given time, so doing so must be done through special pre-made portals littered throughout the Palace of Time. Different areas are opened up in each time zone as a result of the devastation that Palace has endured over its history; for example, rubble blocking an entrance doesn’t exist in the past, while fortified walls from the past are deteriorated to an extent that they are passable in the present. While this somewhat diminishes the sense of deja vu one feels passing through the same rooms and encountering the same enemies, it still feels a somewhat artificial way of increasing the game time from eight hours to between twelve and fifteen, as players will spend at least a quarter of that time renegotiating time consuming platforming sections, and simply making their way through several large portions of the castle over and over. Finally, there is the addition of actual boss encounters throughout the game, all of which are tougher than the last boss of The Sands of Time; the final battle in particular is a rather satisfying affair, but a few of the smaller ones along the way become tedious because your opponents are rather similar, and the best tactics rely on not using the advantages afforded by the new combat system (grappling and extensive combos).


Platforming

A litany of jumping, wall-bouncing and wall-running maneuvers makes up the bulk of the Prince’s platforming repertoire. Combined with an assortment of gymnastic skills allowing him to navigate everything from uneven high bars to balance beams and the handy ability to hang from any ledge large enough to set his fingertips, there aren’t many areas that the Prince can’t access with a little bit of ingenuity. Such ingenuity comes by way of combining the Prince’s abilities into intricate sequences of acrobatic artistry, which is really the defining characteristic of the platforming in UbiSoft Montreal’s Prince of Persia modernization. Whereas many of the abilities the Prince has at his disposal are present in other games, none of those games allow the player to integrate such maneuvers into one another in as seamless a fashion. For example, a wall-run can at any time be terminated through initiating a wall jump, which could lead to a triangle jump off of a directly-opposing wall, the arc of which could take the Prince to a protruding ledge or bar to grab hold of and/or swing off of, and so on – and that’s just one possible example out of countless permutations. The natural connection between each of the maneuvers and the ease at which they can be pulled off creates a profound sense of liberty within the environment, making something as simple as moving from point A to point B a satisfying cerebral exercise – one made more all the more engaging by the astounding structural design of every area the Prince comes across.

Indeed, the name on the box may belong to the main character, but the real star of the Warrior Within is the astounding environment the Prince finds himself in. All of the locales are beautifully designed, and while the overarching theme of menace permeates throughout all the settings players come across over the course of the game, the various sectors of the Empress’ Palace each feature enough variation in their aesthetics to provide each segment with its own distinct character. The largely outdoor environment of the Garden Tower covered in lush plant life bathed in bloom lighting, and the lofty yet confined Mechanical Tower filled with moving platforms, gargantuan clockwork gears, and an assortment of rotating mechanisms both are stand outs and both dwarf any of the grand vistas visited in The Sands of Time in terms of structural creativity. Rooms are strewn with interrupted sections of walls to run along, bars to swing from, beams to balance on, and every matter of gaps to jump across placed between them. These various points of environment interaction are far from randomly scattered about for the sake of artificial complexity; while some paths will invariably lead to dead ends, the correct route can normally be deduced through observational reasoning. Players will also come across a number of traps as they make their way through the Palace of Time , thought there are few new additions – anyone who has played through The Sands of Time will find the majority of the deadly devices they stumble upon rather familiar. The traps are not particularly difficult to bypass, but passing them unscathed requires a different type of thinking than the platforming and exploration element, with less emphasis placed on planning maneuvers and more placed on timing.

The Clock Tower is the venue for some of the best platforming in the game.

The problem with the platforming element in Warrior Within is that the challenge inherent to the experience essentially ends once the proper route has been discovered. Once the proper means of accessing the exit has been deduced, the platforming segments of Warrior Within just aren’t as engrossing as those in the predecessor. The environments fail to impose a sense of urgency on the player, as there are few instances in which the Prince is ever faced with a time limit or a deterrent to merely standing around between traps. Whereas in theThe Sands of Time, players often found themselves diving headlong into less-than-perfect circumstance in order to successfully make it to a certain point before a specific door closed or to simply get the hell off of a crumbling platform, Warrior Within allows players to sit back and wait for the optimal time to continue. The number of traps the player encounters throughout the game is far greater than that of the last game, but the player encounters the bulk of them in extended bursts, and rarely has to deal with them in the midst of platforming strings. The only situations in which Warrior Within presents the player with the same kind of demand to keep moving is during the chase sequences featuring the Dahaka itself, which get increasingly intense with each encounter. However, there are only about six of these encounters, which is somewhat disappointing; it would have been nice if the Dahaka had appeared more often and kept chase for longer when it did. Overall, the necessity for quick reactions in the midst of platforming has been considerably decreased, and the experience is somewhat less exhilarating as a result.


Free-Form Combat and Time Powers

Though the environment is unquestionably the Prince’s greatest adversary, he will also encounter a slightly more sentient brand of opposition. As the most highly criticized component of the Sands of Time, the combat system has received a major overhaul, transformed into what UbiSoft has dubbed the free-form fighting system. The mechanics of this new system have evolved through changes to the fundamental workings of the fighting engine, the introduction of additional offensive maneuvers, and alterations made to the integration of the combat element into the gameplay as a whole. Combat in Warrior Within no longer operates as a separate entity from the platforming aspect of the gameplay. The Prince automatically unsheathes his sword at the sight of an opponent and players are no longer subjugated to a jarring closing animation every…single…time a group of enemies is dispatched. Players also need no longer sheath the Prince’s weapons in order to utilize some of his most basic abilities, such as drinking water to regenerate health or wall-running. These two relatively small changes have a noticeable cumulative effect on the level of immersion, as the Prince feels less like a game piece obeying the abstract restrictions imposed on him, and more like an actual human being with immediate access to all of his faculties at any time.

The Dagger of Time is no longer a factor, and any attack is now capable of being used as a killing blow. The amulet imbedded in the Prince’s armor serves to absorb the sands released in the process of dispatching enemies. The combat achieves a faster pace due to these modifications, since the player is no longer restricted to finishing off one enemy at a time, and doing so is no longer as time consuming. For example the Prince can use a wide spinning horizontal slash attack on three weakened enemies, slaying all three and absorbing the resulting sands in a matter of seconds. The Prince is now also capable of wielding two weapons at once; he gains possession of six important weapons over the course of the game, and over sixty varieties of disposable weapons. The disposable weapons break easily and can be picked up at any time, but are only differentiated in aesthetics and range – axes, daggers, swords and various clubbing utensils all take approximately the same amount of time to shatter, and don’t inflict different degrees of damage. That said, merely having one equipped gives players access to a wealth of 2-weapon-specific combos that more damage than those available when the Prince has an empty hand. Should the player wish to dispose of the weapon rather than having it shatter mid-combo, they can simply throw the blade at an enemy to incur some damage and temporarily stun them. The constant picking up and dropping of weapons can get a little ridiculous as a result of how fast these weapons degenerate however, and it’s somewhat irritating that the weapons are incredibly durable so long as they are in an enemy’s hands.

Master Chief isnt the only guy who knows the value of duel-wielding.

In addition to learning how to use a sword in both hands, the Prince has added more than a few new tricks to his arsenal of offensive techniques, most of which are related to his extremely useful new grapple maneuver. When the Prince finds himself without a secondary weapon, he is able to use his free hand in order to hold an enemy at bay after flipping over their heads and landing behind them. Upon grabbing them from behind, the Prince has a wealth of choices as his disposal; for example, he can choke an enemy, slice them across the abdomen with his sword, or simply roll backwards and perform a monkey-flip sending his captive flying into walls, other enemies or off edges into pits – handy when the Prince is low on health and needs to end a fight ASAP. The Prince also has the option of disarming his hostage and using the enemy’s weapon in conjunction with his own to dismember the poor sap. Of course, he has the option to forgo grabbing them entirely and simply attack, spin-kick, vault off of, or even decapitate his foe upon landing behind them.

Speaking of vaulting, the acrobatic maneuvers were essentially all made the combat in The Sands of Time bearable, as they provided a energetic facet to the combat, unique to the game. Warrior Within expands the spectrum of such maneuvers, allowing the player to perform new maneuvers on the way down, such as kicks, multiple attacks, and even stealing an opponent’s weapon during the landing. Furthermore, as with every other facet of the combat system, the vaulting maneuvers can now be incorporated into fairly lengthy combos. Drawing on the same concept that makes the adventure portion of the franchise so appealing, all of the attacks in Warrior Within are capable of being seamlessly combined with one another, allowing the player to create their own combos as they see fit. For example, players have a wealth of combos at their disposal that range from two to five hits; after connecting on the first two hits, the player may choose to use a vaulting maneuver rather than the 3rd slice, and upon landing, steal the opponent’s weapon. This is just one example of how the player can create combos specific to the situation they find themselves in, and the combat is far more dynamic as a result.


The key difference between the Prince of Persia games of old and UbiSoft’s adaptation of the classic franchise is the addition of time manipulation abilities. These powers were a brilliant addition to the franchise, specifically the rewind feature as it allowed to players to take chances without the fear that they would have to restart the game if they misjudged distance or timing. Warrior Within forces players to make more extensive use of the other powers, both in the midst of combat, and for platforming segments. The slow-motion power in specific actually has a purpose other than wasting sand, as many of the few puzzles involving the traversal of an area before a door closes require the use of this ability. While many people (myself included) never used the offensive sand powers, preferring to conserve sand should the need to rewind present itself, the battles in Warrior Within assault the player with enough opponents that most players will find they are better off being on the offensive. Use of such strategy is facilitated by the addition of new abilities that deal damage and/or stun several enemies at once, creating an opening for a death blow or attempt to reposition unhindered. The increased speed at which sand is absorbed is also helpful in maintaining a sense of security when using aggressive abilities, as a player can now use an offensive power and replenish the sand capsule in short order by disposing of a weakened enemy, keeping that sandy line between the ability to rewind a mistake and the ‘game over’ screen intact.

However, as far improved as the combat is, the amount of enjoyment garnered from it is still trivial in comparison to that reaped from the platforming sections. UbiSoft is to be commended for attempting to respond to criticism of their previous title, but they’ve overcompensated. Whereas a sequel with the same balance of platforming and combat would have only benefited from the improvements made to the fighting mechanics, the increased frequency of combat in Warrior Within makes the new free-form fighting engine grow tiresome quicker than it should; it’s a capable fighting engine for an adventure game, but it isn’t substantial enough to carry half of a game experience. The most obvious reason for this is the enemy AI, which is competent at best. Each enemy class as a group of attacks they are susceptible to, a group of attacks that they can block, and a collection of attacks and combos that they use against the Prince. This makes every enemy in the game extremely predictable, and once the novelty of the Prince’s new abilities and the general cool factor of his aerial assaults wears off, combat quickly becomes a matter of going through the motions. Furthermore, the controls in the midst of combat retain the sensation of floatiness. In a combo as simple as four pushes of the same button, it can take up to a few seconds after the third press of the button for the final attack to end. It creates a minor sense of disconnection between the player and the actions occurring onscreen, and it can lead to many instances of simply mashing the buttons in order to ensure that the Prince is not caught with his sword down.

Noticed how a lot of Warrior Within screens feature combat? That’s because you fight a hell of a lot this time around.

Graphics

The biggest changes to the graphics engine are obviously the stylistic ones, as UbiSoft has replaced the almost dream-like feel of the first game for a gritty, almost caustic aesthetic. While some may not particularly appreciate the new artistic approach, there’s no denying that UbiSoft has pulled it off well; whereas most games aiming for such a feel come off looking just plain ugly, UbiSoft Montreal has made the pervasive darkness eerily beautiful. Textures are, for the most part detailed, though some muddiness is evident on the character models, specifically during the real-time cut-scenes. Particle effects are also well done, as the sands give off a sense of weightlessness when they are released and Dust is kicked off of the ground in convincing fashion in reaction to footsteps. Dazzling flames and gorgeous water serve as a nice means to spice up the deliberately-bleak environments without detracting from the intended atmosphere. Warrior Within features some brilliant lighting, breathing life into the environments through the contrast of deep shadow and the emanating glow of sun seeping past overcast skies, finding its way into the Palace through cracks and small windows. Walking back and forth between light and darkness causes shadows to dance off of the Prince in brilliant fashion; a small detail that adds immeasurably to presenting a feeling of actual weight and presence to each of the characters – a detail that was somewhat overly subdued in the last game due to the effervescent bloom lighting. Source direction and varying intensity are emphasized over sheer beauty this time around, and the game’s atmosphere is only enhanced as a result of the decision.

UbiSoft has become the undisputed king of hand-crafted animations, and Warrior Within is a fine example of their talents. As in the The Sands of Time the beauty of the animation is in the fluidity with which the Prince shifts from one action into another. Rather than returning to a neutral state/animation as is the case in most games, UbiSoft has created an engine where in latter frames of animation of one action are intelligently blended into the starting frames of the next action, the result of which is movement so lifelike you’d swear they had spent hours motion capturing every conceivable chain of maneuvers within the game. Not merely noteworthy for the seamless transitions, the animations in Warrior Within are all ridiculously detailed; every minute shift in weight is articulated flawlessly and an overarching sense of character is expressed within even the subtlest of movements. An action as simple as picking up a secondary weapon is done in such a way to breathe an uncanny life and distinct personality into the main character. Slow motion only helps to make the detail within each movement more immediately admirable, and the subtle blur effect used in the first game still works as well as ever, as it does for all of the time powers. The only graphical missteps in the game are the aforementioned muddy textures and occasional dips in the framerate during chaotic moments.

Sound

The audio element of Warrior Within is inarguably its weakest component, though criticism leveled at the change in musical direction and/or the quality of the tracks themselves are unfounded. Considering the air of aggression that permeates throughout Warrior Within, this musical direction seems appropriate and is far from poorly executed. Stuart Chatwood of Canadian band ‘The Tea Party’ once again works wonders in combining middle-eastern themed music with good old-fashioned hard rock; he simply leaned a little further toward the hard-rock end of the concoction this time around. Godsmack also lends one of their tracks to the game, ‘I Stand Alone’ which fits the theme of the game quite well, though it’s far from their best work and is a tad overplayed within the game. The actual implementation of the music into the game leaves much to be desired, however. Tracks cut in and out seemingly at random, providing the players with pounding riffs as they enter a new room, and leaving them in dead silence during a chaotic fight sequence. It has a huge negative affect on the atmosphere and level of immersion, to the point where half way through the game I just turned the music volume all the way down, which is a shame considering how much I truly enjoyed Chatwood’s work. His music added immeasurably to the energy in any given gameplay scenario, but only on the occasions when the track started up at a sensible time.

The sound effects within the game are fairly well done, as everything from the metal-on-metal clash of swords to the simple sound of running water features high quality sound samples. However the sounds – grunts and attack cries – supplied by the Prince’s enemies are downright painful at times, and I mean physically painful. During the second encounter with Shadee, I actually muted my television so that I didn’t have to hear the war cry associated with the attack she uses to end her combos. While the basic sounds provided in the midst of combat by the enemies didn’t particularly annoy me, the actual English banter uttered by various parties is absolutely amateurish. The Prince loses a piece of whatever credibility he has as a badass every time he opens his mouth, as he sounds more like an insecure teenager trying to prove how tough he is, rather than a weathered veteran who would more likely than not just keep his mouth shut when he killed someone. The enemies don’t so much taunt the Prince as they voice their desire to kill him, but the sycophantic cries that signal their demise are actually entertaining; put the two together and you have strong incentive to kill everything you see on the screen, which may have been UbiSoft’s point all along, though I find the idea unlikely. Undoubtedly the biggest disappointment was the absence brilliantly-implemented narration technique used in The Sands of Time, whereby the Prince recounted the events transpiring on screen in the past tense – accented by reflections on his feelings at the time. The Prince occasionally talks to himself over the course of Warrior Within, but in these cases he generally just states the obvious, and does so with none of the charm of his former self.

Overall

Warrior Within is a great game. Unfortunately, as the follow-up to one of the best adventure games since the advent of three dimensional gaming, only being ‘great’ is still somewhat of a disappointment. While some would have you believe that the new thematic direction is franchise-killing blasphemy and the root of the game’s downfall, the decision to take the franchise to a darker place was not a bad idea – UbiSoft simply took it a tad far and the game has lost connection with series’ roots, as anyone who looks at or plays the title without knowledge of its connection of the venerable series would probably require some convincing to accept that yes, this action game was an entry in the Prince of Persia franchise. While the game features better mechanics in many areas, it fails live up to the sum of its parts as a result of misguided tinkering made to the game balance, most notably a larger emphasis on combat. The length of the game has been sufficiently increasesd and Xbox-exclusive Live modes (Time Trial and Arena) provide an hour or two of extra play time. The combat engine is vastly improved, but a jump from poor to above-average in one area is not sufficient reason to place more weight on that gameplay component instead of a gameplay element that is near-flawless, i.e. the platforming. Time will tell if UbiSoft’s makeover of the Prince and increased emphasis on violent combat will attract more consumers than The Sands of Time did, but in making such drastic changes to the formula for Warrior Within they have almost certainly alienated a portion of their very supportive fanbase. That said, anyone who enjoyed The Sands of Time should not hesitate to pick up the latest Prince of Persia, as the gameplay you fell in love with is still very much a part of the formula.