Prince of Persia: Rival Swords

It is a great feeling to come home from a long journey and find everything just the way you left it. Such is not the fate for the Prince of Persia. In Rival Swords, the third installment in Ubisoft's 3D take on the franchise, our Prince returns home having saved the Empress of Time and killed the evil Vizier, only to find his home of Babylon sacked and burning. To make matters worse, the Prince soon discovers that the same Vizier he killed, just one video game ago, is alive and well.

Confused? Join the club. Thanks to some nifty sci-fi, alternate-timeline shenanigans, none of the events in Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within actually happened.  The Prince's ship is promptly sunk by the conquerors, the Empress is captured, and away we go again.   Newcomers may feel lost due to missing much of the story that takes place before Rival Swords, as the game does little to bring new players up to speed. But, the context of the early events in the game do provide a general idea of what is going on.

The Prince pursues the Empress' captors into his city through one of the invader's siege towers while the fighting around him continues. If the destruction of Babylon were not enough of an obstacle, the Prince finds he must also navigate some extraordinary mazes and traps to catch up with the kidnappers. The Prince must find make-shift passages through the city by climbing and jumping to and from ledges, columns, and terraces.

Some of the challenges requires some Matrix-esque maneuvers such as running up or across walls. Once the Prince reaches the palace, the trials go from difficult to surreal. There are passages filled with spiked trap floors, revolving spiked walls, and moving spiked columns. Did I mention the spikes? For the sake of variety, a few gigantic, revolving round blades spin up occasionally.

Thankfully for both the Prince and player, fairly intuitive controls make executing all these maneuvers relatively easy. Movement is handled with the analog stick on the Nunchuck. In combination with the analog stick, jumping and rolling are handled with the A button while wall-traversing theatrics are performed with the B button. The D-Pad controls the angle of the camera as does tilting the Wii Remote left or right, but the camera movement with the motion sensors can be annoying as unintentional shifts in camera view can occur when not paying attention to the Wii Remote's position.

While the uses of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in Rival Swords are well conceived for movement, attacks are not quite as intuitive. The Prince has swords, knives and axes at his disposal initially, but the lifespans of the larger weapons are very short and have to be replaced with blades from fallen enemies. The constant rearming of these seemingly disposable weapons feels contrived and cumbersome as the reason they fall apart after so little use is never explained.

Attacking with these weapons involves rhythmically moving the Wii Remote or Nunchuk independently for each weapon in hand, but at times the actual motion feels as chaotic as boxing in Wii Sports. Although the frantic movements feel uncontrolled at times, the animation of the Prince rarely misses a beat. The Prince's motions are smooth and nearly dance-like despite the player's spasmatic fits with the controllers.

A more graceful approach to attacks come in the form of speed kills. Speed kills allow the prince to perform sneak attacks with his knife on unsuspecting enemies with a downward thrust of the Nunchuk followed by a correctly timed drumming with the Wii Remote. While this combo takes some practice to execute properly, the fluid depiction of the Prince attacking an enemy from behind and the killing blow that follows makes the experience very rewarding.

Not as rewarding, however, are the graphics. It seems obvious that little to no effort was made to take advantage of the power of Wii's graphical capabilities. That is not to say that the visuals are entirely bad. The animations of the Prince are fluid and detailed. The textures of the buildings, palaces, and other surroundings are not stunning, but serviceable. As is the case with most ports, the game looks like it was meant to be played on its original console - in this case the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube - rather than on Wii.

Fans of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones will feel a tinge of deja vu with the plot of Rival Swords. That is completely natural considering Rival Swords is the same game revamped with a new title and motion sensing controls. Unfortunately, Ubisoft saw fit to charge the same price as a brand new game for this rehashed title. Paying $50 for a game just for the sake of motion controllers is a stretch in my opinion. Those who have played The Two Thrones will probably feel like they have paid twice for the same game. Newcomers to the series may find the novelty of Wii's controllers to be worth the extra cash. Finding a cheap used copy of Rival Swords or renting the game may immunize gamers from buyer's remorse.

Hang around for Stage 2 for more details on the latest installment in this classic franchise.