Page 1 of 1

Last generation, Ubisoft successfully resurrected the Prince of Persia franchise with the enormously successful Sands of Time and its two sequels. Rather then simply drag the story out, Ubisoft decided to completely reboot the whole series from scratch (again) for the next generation consoles. Also unlike last time, the portable companion title is not simply a downgraded retelling of its home console cousins, but serves as a sort of prequel to them. It also further tries to stand out by using a deformed character design and a unique touch screen only control method.

The music in the title is actually pretty good and of surprisingly high quality. It would definitely fit with the home console releases, and most of the time, it'd fit with this game, too; however, there are a couple drawbacks. For one, the music can tend to either repeat itself a lot over the stages, and sometimes the tracks just aren't long enough and loop constantly over the course of the level. The music isn't of the catchy or upbeat variety so you will be stuck hearing the same epic/dramatic music over and over again. This leads to the second problem, which is that the tone of the music doesn't always fit the mood of the game. The new artstyle and some of the more whimsical nature of the dialog can make the generally more somber music feel a tad out of place, or at worst, wasted.

The graphics are also of a particularly high caliber for the title. The game is a 2D sidescroller; however, the in-game world is rendered entirely in 3D. Just like New Super Mario Bros., the title is smooth and about as colorful as one can expect from a game that takes place mostly in the desert. There aren't too many framerate dips and the levels never get to confusing.

Where Prince of Persia: The Fallen King really loses its momentum is in its gameplay. It is a 2D side-scrolling platformer with minimal combat that is entirely stylus controlled. Everything from walking, running, jumping, wall climbing, rolling, and combat maneuvers are done with stylus input. To be fair, the system generally works, but once more advanced techniques are introduced and the levels become ever so slightly more challenging, problems arise. The DS is only capable of one input command at a time, leading to many instances where you will have to click and scribble over the screen in rapid succession to make it through a corridor. The touch screen controls are not perfect either -- it will make mistakes from time to time or misread the command. It also has a small amount of lag between commands leading to some missed jumps and the like. To compensate this, the puzzles in the game -- if you could call them that -- and general level design have been toned down in difficulty. That shows the real problem with The Fallen King: if it used a normal control scheme, the game would be far easier then it already is and the poor level design would be much more noticeable. The game world is set up right out of New Super Mario Bros. except missing much of the secret exits and item houses that dotted its landscape. The levels often use a copy-paste technique in their design, as well.

Looking at the game beyond the touch screen controls will reveal a bland and mediocre copy-cat of New Super Mario Bros. The other real problem is that the touch screen does not really add anything to the gameplay. There is nothing that couldn't be done in the game with the D-pad and buttons. It seems to use touch screen controls simply for the sake of being different.  The art style brings its own problems as well. The general storyline is much darker and dramatic than what matches the character designs. The game also shares a similar problem with its console releases in that the Prince's dialogue seems really out of place. In the Fallen King it feels much more like a Saturday morning cartoon rather than something in his time era and world. It's also hard to take many of the situations as seriously as the game makes them out to be when all the characters look like they sprang out of a children's book.  Overall, The Prince of Persia: The Fallen King fails to ignite the DS like its console counterparts have done for their respective systems.