Construed

a tense male/female combo but will all that tension come to nothing?

I expected Fable II to be the more the child-like game in theme before I got to play it – only to discover sex & bigamy to be areas which had been thrown into the games mix. I was happily surprised that those elements were included into a Fantasy setting, where normally many Fantasy games = childish storylines & I had high hopes that Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia would raise the bar further to include & go beyond a simmering sexual chemistry between the games two counterparts, Princess Elika & the Prince of Persia.

What has spoiled the build-up to my own fantasy of something more than child-like flirtation in Prince of Persia is the voice casting of the Prince. Princess Elika is OK but both voices are typical European sounding & break a little of the illusion of middle-eastern mystery. Although we are not talking anything like re-writing history here, it would have made the game that much more alluring if middle-eastern voices were used throughout the casting. The Prince of Persia videogame has been developed using cell-shading that has created such a emphatic fantasy image of an eastern land – it’s a beautiful game to look at. It’s just a shame that we only get to hear an almost Americanised voice come from the Prince’s mouth – some of the comments he makes throughout the game really don’t fit the setting either.

Gameplay itself has elements of Assassins Creed which are there for all to see in the combat & the wall climbing/sliding which is something that looks to be a big theme for the player to master & be able to traverse the landscape of the game. Combat is always against a single villain, so none of the waiting to attack periods that were littered throughout the Assassin Creed’s combat system, show up here. Which brings me to the combo attacks that Elika & the Prince can perform. The only combat upgrades in Prince of Persia are to Elika’s magic, the Prince has to make do with the same trusted sword throughout the adventure – so I have read, am taking this on hearsay for now. So a little co-dependence is there in the gameplay for the Prince & Princess but will the relationship between the two of them be a formulaic one, one that we see the majority of the time in videogames or could there be something brewing nicely later on in the games storyline?

I suppose I can still dream, eh..?

DM∞