I swear to God, how did Ubisoft make the Prince of Persia so damn gash?

Honestly, I’ve been ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’ about writing this review for the last week, but ‘defeating’ (if you can call it that) one of the ‘bosses’ in the game for the FIFTH TIME with perhaps gaming’s SHITEST combat system has driven me to my laptop.

I’m not going to start with the positives, because it doesn’t deserve it. I’m pretty sure I read an interview where the producer was annoyed that his game didn’t get more kudos for being original. Well, yeah, I suppose shipping a game with the single most disastrous fighting mechanism in history is ‘original’. I guess collecting 1001 stupid ‘light seeds’ with only the slimmest of reasoning is ‘original’. I figure that making you fight 20 boss battles with the SAME 4 ENEMIES is pretty original. In that vein, I might just go to work and take a dump on my manager’s desk. That’d be original. Somehow doubt that’s going to go down well in my mid-year review though, huh?

Seriously, it is a frankly appalling experience. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But at some point YOU HAVE TO PICK UP THE CONTROLLER AND PLAY THE GAME – incidentally, this is the exact point where the issues start. Let’s go from the top – the levels. There are 24 in total, and of those 20 are near enough identical. Yes Ubisoft you can call them Mystical Citadel and Sun V@gina or whatever the hell you feel, but ultimately they are dull and uncannily similar to each other. Anyway, main objective - ‘free run’ your way across a strictly-defined area of platforming mundanity to reach aforementioned boss. Kill boss (did I mention the combat system is utter gash?). Bring light prettiness colour healing or some other ridiculous nonsense back to land. Freerun to next land. Kill boss. Ad nauseum. What’s worse – you can pick the order you do stuff in! So guess what – NO DIFFICULTY CURVE! Level 1 == Level 24 kids, so for a mind-numbing 15 hours, look no further!

Just thinking about how boring and awful it is makes me angry. Why do combos never work? Why does blocking and stunning an enemy mean they still get 50x more hits in than you do? Why does the screen flash “HIT ‘B’”, then I hit B, and then the screen says “NO NOT THAT ‘B’ FOOL THE OTHER RED ‘B’” and I’m sitting there thinking FOR CHRIST SAKE JUST BLOCK HIS BLOODY ATTACK ARRRGGHGGHGH! I’m all for quick-time event sequences as long as the game isn’t as slow to move as JAM trickling down TREEBARK.

And what the hell is with ‘Elika’? Elika, your sidekick that you happen to run into who whilst looking for your donkey that happens to be running to some daft temple who has flashbacks who has a mental dad that just wants to save her then goes dark and tries to kill the prince. And you know how platforming is all about timing jumps and making sure you reach ledges and basically all the good stuff that Super Mario Galaxy did? ELIKA MAKES YOU NOT DIE. Missed a jump? Hereeeeeee’s Elika! Boss kicking you about the place like a dirty old hobo (unsurprising given the IDIOTIC COMBAT)? EL-I-KAAAAA! You can’t die. You just can’t die. Believe me, I’ve spent more time trying to kill the pair of them than I have trying to heal the land, bloody hippies.

Oh, and I almost forgot. THE GENERIC POWERS. Once you have collected enough of the absolutely non-generic original light seeds, you can unlock POWERS that aren’t ever really explained. ‘The light of Ormazd’... think about it for a second... what does it mean? I love suspension of disbelief – it’s how I make it through the day. But PoP just takes the p*ss.

So yeah, powers. They all basically do much the same thing. Inaccessible part of level seems in reach but actually isn’t? Chances are you need A POWER. Not to ruin the game (as if you’ll go in with high expectations now) but sample powers include THE STEP OF ORMAZD – which allows you to jump between set panels on walls. No branching routes. No adventure. Ledge jump jump jump ledge. Another cracker is the WINGS OF ORMAZDA RX8. It’s like THE STEP OF ORMAZDA RX8 except the WINGS OF ORMAZDA RX8 put you in an atrocious on rails flying minigame where you have to dodge obstacles by pushing the left stick in a given direction. Why exactly the pair would FLY INTO A BUILDING without your input is beyond me, but I guess by this point half the development team had finished their contracts and a good portion of the rest had hung themselves.

It’s the first game in a long time that has made me want to actually break the disc in half, it’s that annoying. The gameplay is so shockingly boring and linear that it makes those terrible movie tie-ins that THQ punts out seem like Braid or Gears quality-wise. The levels are dull and the freerunning opportunity, wasted. The special powers aren’t special, at least not in a positive sense. The characters are as about as charming as getting gobbed on at a young offender’s home. The bosses are only ever challenging because the battle system is crippled to the point that if it were human it might have leprosy.

Christ.