Prince of Persia – Great Looking, Combat Lacking
// January 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gaming
Have you ever seen a piece of concept art for a game or film, only to be disappointed by the final product? Many a time I’ve seen some amazing pieces of art by people like Doug Chiang, Ryan Church, or Feng Zhu, but seen a radically different imagining of their work. The latest incarnation of the Prince of Persia franchise, however, uses the Scimitar Engine (previously used by Assassin’s Creed) to full effect and produces arguably one of the best looking games of the year.
Despite having less-than-stellar combat controls, the parkour-esque free-running around these incredible looking environments has sapped away several hours of my time. Some criticism has been placed on the Elika-save mechanism, where you effectively cannot die. However, it’s effectively a checkpoint mechanism that saves on load times and frustration. I find it works.
The only details I can find on one of the artists involves a mysterious Patrick, who can been seen demonstrating his talents in three speed drawings of the main characters. Here’s hoping to a sequel that sticks to the same style, but improves on the combat.
