Reviews// Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within

For those yet to sample the delights of Ninja Gaiden, it is widely regarded as the definitive 3D hack'n'slash game. It really does represent a martial art, as the player leaps and bounds over heads and from walls, slashing and stabbing in a beautifully-choreographed way. And because Sands of Time already had a similarly stylish platform base to it, with no shortage of acrobatic leaping and bounding, enhancing the combat was a logical thing to do. However, in itself, it doesn't add as much to the gameplay as hoped. There's still a lot of puzzling to do, and this breaks up the quick-fire action needed to make a combat-heavy game exciting. Adversely, the puzzle sections occasionally feel a little crowded by the fighting. So the end result is that Warrior Within is quite a stop-start experience and so feels less slick than it should. In trying to be a Prince of Persia of all trades, it has become a master of none; which is a massive shame, because it comes extremely close.

Fundamentally, most people will enjoy Prince of Persia: Warrior Within as a great video-game. And taken in isolation it is just that. The player is presented with an expansive environment - The Castle of Time - which can be traversed by working out some thoughtful puzzles, and although that does involve a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing, the gorgeous backdrops make exploration something you’ll want to do. And even though the combat isn’t perfect, it’s still considerably more impressive than the average. If you threw Sands of Time, Metroid Prime 2 and Ninja Gaiden into a big pot, you’d get something along these lines. For PS2 only gamers especially, Warrior Within therefore holds a rather special appeal. It takes a great game and adds influences from two of the Gamecube and Xbox’s greatest games this year into the mix. So, if you only buy a few games a year, Warrior Within represent a superb choice - as it now offers a more diverse range of experiences. Indeed, the Xbox’s general lack of decent platformers and the Gamecube’s recent lack of good third party titles also work greatly in the game’s favour.

It still retains much of what made the last PoP game so good, and as far as ‘mature’ type platform games, this is clearly one of the best examples available today. The platforming itself is executed superbly: running along walls and leaping over chasms is hugely satisfying and it just *works* better than most platform games seem to. And like the prequel, the ability to re-wind time in order to rectify an error helps fend off the frustration factor often associated with more demanding platform games. But those features haven’t really been enhanced, they’ve just been repeated. So again, we’d recommend trying the original first: it does the same thing with considerably more personality.