Prince of Persia Revelations Reader Review

Sometimes, reviewers get too involved in their idealism. Such is the case of some reviews who blame a publisher for not choosing "the best game to port", and as such proceed to penalise a game, based on it's publisher's history, rather than review it for it's own merits and flaws.

Before going through this, I would like to point out that I had never played any of the modern 3D Prince of Persia games before, only those old 2D versions. For this reason alone, I will surely not make any needless comparisons between this game and other similar ones in other platforms, and just speak my mind about what I believe to be an indeed very nice platformer to play on the go.

Prince of Persia Revelations is an extended port of Ubisoft's cashcow known as Prince of Persia Warrior Whithin, in which the fabled prince tries to cheat his fate through time travel. The storyline is pretty much at the level of a typical B-series movie you'd watch on a lazy Sunday, and the soundtrack has a nice heavy metal ring to it. The first couple of levels serve as an introduction to the prince and camera controls, and I should really emphasize that the camera is really well handled, even including a first person mode to look around your surroundings. Not only is this helpful, but it also makes the atmosphere a bit more involving. The whole game has a dark and gloomy feel to it, sometimes appearing to be a bit over the top, but nevertheless, still enjoyable.

The "Freeform fighting system" expression you'll find on the box is just marketing BS, it's just a regular fighting engine in which you can interact with the environment in a couple of ways - such as running and jumping from walls a la Matrix, or swinging around columns. But it "just" works fine. It's easy to learn and yet rich in tricks and combos. The controls are pretty intuitive and simple, in spite of the absence of more trigger buttons and/or analog sticks so many PS2 gamers complain about once they grab a PSP.

To sum up the good parts of it, gameplay is simple, the graphics look very good - with it's a few action slowdowns thrown in for good measure - and the platform puzzles are just challenging enough to engage, but not frustrating.

Now come the flaws of the game. Sound is sometimes out of synch with the in-game cutscenes, especially in the early levels - this really gives a bad impression, especially on reviewers eager to find flaws in a Warrior Within port - and music halts due to UMD access are commonplace in the first few levels. Ubisoft was simply not as careful as Rockstar with streaming data, and this seems to be a very important aspect to learn for anybody who whishes to develop for the PSP. You will find some clipping errors here and there, and collision detection could use some more work too - there's the occasional glitch, even though they're not common enough to ruin the overall gaming experience.

So, in my opinion, the game is good, not perfect, but good.

Are there bugs? Sure there are. But, is it really a bug-ridden mess that looks like it never was beta-tested? Not really. It is, in fact, quite playable, and the most important thing is, it is fun!