More Articles on Prince of Persia Revelations
Prince of Persia: RevelationsPrince of Persia PSP - First DetailsUbi Confirms PSP Second Wave TitlesLatest Mini Reviews
Guitar Hero: On TourSecret Agent ClankWe Love Golf!Ferrari Challenge Buzz! Quiz TVUser Reviews
There are currently 0 User Reviews for Prince of Persia RevelationsWrite your own review for this game today and you will receive 100 Gamer Points.
Click here to register
Prince of Persia: Revelations Mini Review
Jon Wilcox
19/12/2005
With the Prince's PSP debut Warrior Within Plus, TVG asks: what's the revelation...
Having provided gamers with the final instalment of the Sands of Time trilogy, The Two Thrones, on home consoles earlier in the month Ubisoft has taken the opportunity to launch the franchise onto PSP. Rather surprising however is the decision to begin with the second title (Warrior Within) and not the first episode (Sands of Time.) Re-christened Prince of Persia: Revelations, developers PipeWorks have worked to bring the story of the Prince's battle with the Dahaka and the Empress of Time with additional maps and environments not seen in the original version. But how has the team worked around the restrictions of the PSP (such as the single set of shoulder buttons) to bring the essence of Persia to the Sony handheld?
Set a few years after the events of Sands of Time, the Prince finds himself being chased by a nightmarish creature known as the Dahaka, a guardian of the timeline, with the sole motivation of killing the Prince. Now on his way to a distant island with a mission to destroy the sands of time before they were even created (cue lots of time travelling), the Prince finds himself tracking down the Empress of Time herself in order to free himself from destiny.
Let's make this a bit clearer, Prince of Persia: Revelations is not a new game in the Sands of Time series, it's Warrior Within with extra levels (around twenty or so) thrown in for good measure. Further to that all of the elements that appeared in the original home console title are here on the PSP including the gothic visual style, rock soundtrack and Free-Form Fighting. Granted the prospect of playing an additional twenty levels of action will be something that will attract fans of the series even if they've played through Warrior Within the first time.
Visually Revelations is as you'd expect from a PSP port with the character models and environments closely matching those on the PlayStation2. There are occasions where the textures of the locations aren't quite up to scratch but they're forgivable. One of the key components that has always been a trademark of the Prince of Persia franchise is the fluid animation and gameplay. From running along walls and deftly cutting down enemies to aerial acrobatic rarely seen outside of the Olympics, Prince of Persia's flowing style has enabled it to stand out from other third person action/adventure titles.
Being a port, Revelations of course has that same level of fluidity in its animation, however the constant breaks to stream new sections of the level destroys the fluidity in gameplay. There doesn't even seem to be a level of consistency with such streaming issues, they seem to appear almost randomly regardless of whether the Prince is entering a new room or in the middle of running through death-inducing gauntlet of blades and spikes - all of a sudden the action will stop suddenly as if crashed whilst an icon spins in the bottom of the screen. It truly is a flaw of either the conversion team or the restrictions of the PSP in that such an element occurs at all let alone with the frequency that it does.
With a lack of secondary shoulder buttons and a pair of analogue sticks, camera control reverts to the d-pad, which although has the same level of functionality as the missing buttons, never feels quite as intuitive as should. Also, Revelations suffers from the transition to the relatively small screen of the PSP, especially when players use the wide angle landscape camera. Whereas in the home console versions the function allows players to see the room's puzzle as a whole, executing the same function on the PSP merely miniaturizes everything to the extent that it's actually quite difficult to put things into perspective. Camera controls aside it does take a bit of time to get use to controlling the Prince via the PSP nipple, which can seem a little over-sensitive at times, like a lot of other PSP ports. In short Revelations suffers from the sort of flaws that most ports suffer from, especially on PSP, thanks to the lack of a second shoulder button/analogue stick and annoying loading times.
Though Ubisoft are hardly the first culprits, the fact that Prince of Persia: Revelations is a port of a year old title will hardly inspire PSP owners to rush out and spend £30 on it - even it does have an extra '20 levels'. If you've already completed Warrior Within, there's very little to motivate playing through the game again, especially when it has more than its fair share of gameplay flaws.
Once again the PSP finds itself bogged down in another PlayStation2 port that fails to transfix gamers as it should. The two flaws in the gameplay (camera and recurring streaming issues) really affect the level of enjoyment and betray the Prince of Persia franchise - at least Battles of Prince of Persia on Nintendo DS tried to bring the series onto a handheld within the boundaries of the system.
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 16th Jul 2008 19:23
Anonymous
Date Added:Wed 23rd Apr 2008 04:22
revelations
Anonymous
Date Added:Sun 16th Dec 2007 10:16
Anonymous
Date Added:Mon 18th Jun 2007 20:29
Anonymous
Date Added:Sun 13th May 2007 00:00
Anonymous
Date Added:Tue 13th Mar 2007 16:05
Anonymous
Date Added:Thu 8th Feb 2007 15:28
Anonymous
Date Added:Sun 21st Jan 2007 14:45