Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (GameCube)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was critically acclaimed but commercially underperformed; this sequel has a chance to right that wrong early on with a noticeably darker and more violent adventure. The Prince is being hunted by an "immortal incarnation of Fate", who's peeved with him for mucking about with the space-time continuum in the last game and aims to make sure he won't be doing it again.

Although the Prince has a number of new acrobatic moves (including the rather Errol Flynn-esque ability to shimmy down tapestries) and time attacks (such as a new fast forward move that allows him to buzz through a cluster of enemies as nothing more than a blur of light) the most important new feature in the game is a completely new combat system.

Using the analogue controllers to full effect, it's now possible to incorporate your weapons, enemies and environment into a seemingly endless stream of combos as you leap behind and around bad guys, steal their weapons and turn a normal wall run into a lunging slash attack. If this game was only as good as the last one it'd still be amazing but the genuine improvements already seen should see the Prince take his rightful place as king of the action platformers. --David Jenkins

However, now the bad points. The main one being the cynical attempts to make it 'cool' for the GTA generation, with heavy metal, instead of mid-eastern music, and the fighting. You walk into a battle, jump over someone, break his neck, jump over somone else and slice his head off. The camera goes into slo-mo, and blood squirts everywhere. Your left thinking, "this isnt POP?"
Because, apart from his acrobatic skills, and convenintly placed bars, there is little to distinguish this from the original POP:TSOT
There are also lots of bosses, some which can make you quite jumpy, as they blast through a wall, like a time keeper, in which you have to run for your life from. The original POP was a pleasure to play, no frightning parts at all. This has exploding dogs flying at you, and great troll creatures.
Another thing, as the developers attempted to make the game less linear, they have implemented time travel, to take you back to the past. It is brilliant in theory, but extremly confusing in pratical, with a crap map given to you, which is like navigating a B road in English country with nothing but a map of the UK.
All-in all though, not an extremly bad game...just...i would have expected better, following the amazing prequel.


Pleasently surprised!   December 10, 2004
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

Right before I get into anything else, I'm not usually someone who goes for games that look like simple platformers that have button bashing combos, mainly because I find them boring and repetitive. Having said this I saw the reviews of PoP2 (obviously not having played the first one) and thought I'd stop being critical and give a platformer a try.

When I started the game it was obvious that there was at least some thourght put into the story, something quite often missed from this sort of game.

If you look through the manual you will find that there seem to be countless different moves that can be performed, however the tutorials (which can be turned off if you want to learn the hard way) give the game a very good learning curve. Some people will play this game and button bash, which I think can be done and the game could possibly be completed doing this, however, there is something satisfying about learning the moves and being able to pull them off when you really need too. The controls are mainly good which after a while feel instinctive, however, I do think that the Y and X bottons should be the other way round, making them more accessable when you need them.

The only thing about the early parts of the game that I have found a bit annoying is that the save points seem to be very close together, however I hope this will change further in the game. I know I have only played this for a while and the rating could well go up or down by a star by the time I finish it, but first impressions are that this is a very well made game that if it is all like the first parts is an amzing intelligent platformer.


More of the same... PLUS MUCH MUCH MORE!!!   December 8, 2004
 5 out of 7 found this review helpful

I just bought Prince of Persia Warrior Within and at first was a little disappointed due to the first Level (Intro Level). It instantly felt like the whole format of the game had been changed to a slash'em'up and was no longer the same Prince of Persia as the first. Then you realize that the intro level is there to help you get used to the new combat system that have been added since the original game, no longer do you have to always kill the enemies with a final blow from the dagger of time (you can just strangle them instead... or throw their own weapons at them... or slice their throats... or sweep a few legs... or throw them over edge of... well... everywhere!). Add this to the new enemies that seem to have smarter A.I. (sometime it is scary how much they seem to dodge your attacks but slowing down time helps with that, hehe take that!), much darker levels that see you back to the acrobatic puzzling greatness (new acrobatic moves too) that made the first Prince of Persia a classic, and you will not be disappointed... (runs off to play Warrior Within)

Oh... and the graphics are not too shabby either. Put simply, if you like the first Prince of Persia you will love Warrior Within.