This is the conclusion to UBI Soft's successful Prince Of Persia series. I've not played the previous two games because I mistook them for games based on Disney's Aladdin cartoon. Yeah, I know, silly me indeed. I pick this game up because I'm intrigued by the "For Mature Gamers Only" label on the package (the previous two games bear labels saying that those games are suitable for teens).

The storyline is very confusing, which is understandable given that it's a continuation of the story that spanned two games already in the past, but Googling the storyline fails to yield any concrete information that will help me understand the whole picture better. All I know is that the hero, Prince of Persia, is fresh from his victory in the previous game, Warrior Within, when he returns home to his kingdom of Babylon to find that all kinds of trouble had taken place while he was away. His Kaileena is kidnapped by the bad guys and now the Prince has to save her. The Prince has the Sands of Time which allows him to turn back time, a fact that comes in useful when I've mastered that skill and want to get myself out of a jam.

But this game is billed as an action game when it's more appropriately a platform game. Think Super Mario Bros which is all about jumping over chasms and climbing up walls. There are very few enemies in this game and even so, these enemies can be despatched with a single kill if done right. The battle system involves button mashing but the button-mashing formula for combos can be frustratingly complicated and since there are so few enemies in each stage, it's not as if I can familiarize myself with the button orders through constant practice!

At the end of the day, I'm just not a fan of platform games because I always find them boring. All that jumping around doesn't make me feel like I'm having a good time. In this game, it becomes ridiculous how the Prince can't enter a single door, instead he has to jump up a few hundred feet up the wall to climb in through a window. And if he falls, it's game over time, woo-hoo.

Perhaps fans of the previous instalments will love this game better? I'm just not into games with heavy platforming features and this game is pretty much all that and not much else.

Rating: 70

This game at Amazon.com

This game at Amazon UK

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