Through the Hourglass - A history of Prince of Persia

This awesome piece of art is from The Two Thrones

To say that I am a Prince of Persia fan would be a slight understatement. As someone who owns five copies of The Sands of Time and considers it one of the greatest games ever made, my attachment to the franchise is long and highly affectionate. So let's trek back in time and take a little look at how my favourite franchise has evolved over the years.  Bear in mind we're only covering the 'mainline' games here - there have been a ton of ports, alternative versions and handheld games, but they're too numerous for me to track here.

Prince of Persia (1989)

Believe it or not, this was once cutting edge.

The first game was originally a one man coded job created for the Apple II in 1989. Said one man was Jordan Mechner, the father of the franchise who has been a perennially recurring figure across its lifespan. After his first game Karateka had been a success, Mechner was moved in create a platform game in the wake of the massive impact of the Mario series.  His major breakthrough however, was the integration of fluid, lifelike animation to his main character. Famously, he achieved this by filming his younger brother jumping across gaps and animating over the negative frames, creating the idea of rotoscoping in videogames.  Combined with some neat level design and fiendish traps (it's generally considered a very tough game) it was a huge success, selling a ton of copies and being ported to many different platforms, including PC, Amiga, MegaDrive and a later, enhanced version for SNES.  The game was fully remade in 2007 into an 3D rendered HD version which took aesthetics from The Sands of Time and was released for Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. These days it's generally recognised as an important early evolution of the platformer and though it isn't held up as revolutionary in the same way a Mario or Sonic would be, it has the distinction of a minor classic.

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993)

A classic 16-bit scene

A steady, workmanlike sequel to the original released on PC, Macintosh and SNES. It keeps most of the design points of the original, although it updates the graphics and provides a longer, richer experience. Notably, it introduces the concept of a 'Dark Prince' an aspect that would later return (heavily modified) in The Two Thrones. Unfortunately, there's really not too much else to say about it. It's by no means a bad game, and is probably technically better than the original, but it's arguably the least remembered of all the POP games. After this, Mechner left the franchise to work on his under-appreciated adventure game gem The Last Express. The rights for the series passed on to Broderbund.

Prince of Persia 3D (1999)

Looks complicated right? Now imagine you're wrestling the camera at every second.

Oh dear. This is where it all went badly wrong for the franchise. Produced six years after the last game in an attempt to move in on the vibrant ground Tomb Raider had created for 3D platformers, it's a game even die-hard POP fans like myself prefer not to talk about. Developed by the unremarkable Red Orb Entertainment, whose only other product of note was a tangential involvement in Riven, this is a very bad game. What's even worse is that it's a bad game that had the potential to be quite good. There's some neat level design and the graphics were pretty for the time. But it controls like a drunk hippopotamus and some toddlers with ADHD appear to be in charge of the camera, which renders the final product near unplayable. It's also very buggy and it feels like corners were cut at every opportunity. These days it's mostly only referred to as an example of how not to translate a 2D character into 3D, and it's failure meant the franchise would lay dormant for a few more years.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003)

For the first time the Prince's combat was as acrobatic as his movement

For many modern fans, this is where the franchise really began. Ubisoft acquired the rights from the wreckage of POP3D. Seemingly determined to do right by their investment, they hired series creator Jordan Mechner to come back on as a creative consultant, and he was apparently integral in setting style, aesthetics and story. Ubisoft also put their up and coming Montreal studio, fresh off the success of Splinter Cell on to development, and the results speak for themselves.

Sands of Time was ecstatically received by fans and critics alike, and was showered with praise for its smooth platforming, excellent graphics, great level and puzzle design and charming story and characters.  Particularly approved of was the clever time-rewinding effect that removed much of the frustration inherent to the platforming genre.  The unique combat was more divisive (I like it a lot), but everyone agreed that the Prince's reinvention into a wisecracking adventurer and the interplay he shared with his female companion Farah were highlights of the game.  This is also the last time any of the games in the series would be even remotely 'Persian' as after this different aesthetics began to take over.  Commercially the game was a sucess, and revived the franchise's good name, but Ubisoft were mildly dissatisfied with sales relative to the outstanding review scores, and set about making a more marketable sequel.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (2004)

Imagine playing this while Godsmack is on the soundtrack. No, that's not a joke.

This game has acquired a reputation as the black sheep of the trilogy, and it's a shame because there's a lot of good stuff here.  The dark, gothic design often blends nicely with some great environment puzzles, the new hack'n'slash combat system is a lot of fun and there's a neat plot twist that allows for some nice mind screwing.  But unfortunately, it's reputation as a black sheep is largely deserved, because of Ubisoft's effort to appeal more to the lucrative teenage boy market. And that of course that means...more blood! More cursing! More nudity! It's a textbook example of how making something 'darker and edgier' actually makes it less adult not more. There's also some unfortunate gameplay choices, mainly the introduction of boss battles, which simply do not work and aren't fun. The character derailment suffered by the Prince was another common complaint, with his playful charming personality replaced by, as Gabe from Penny Arcade put it, "a cookie cutter brooding tough guy with zero personality and a handful of poorly written and often repeated one liners." Jordan Mechner, who left Ubisoft after SOT was completed, went on record as being against the changes, and that was the general reaction from critics as well. Ubisoft Montreal has since apologised several times, but the damage was done. There's a good game in there, but you have to look beyond the rather ugly surface.


Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (2005)

The rooftops of Babylon were a welcome change after the moody darkness of Warrior Within 

This was essentially Ubisoft Montreal's mea culpa after the critical bashing the last game had recieved.  An attempt to explain the Prince's sudden personality shift, a return to the more open, outdoor environments of SOT and a neat capstone to the trilogy were the aims here and for the most part they're achieved. The Prince returns to being a somewhat likeable fellow, aided greatly by the return of his charming British accent and a partner to riff off of.  The 'Dark Prince' concept is a neat idea to explain the Prince's gradual change in character and provides a decent mixup to combat and platforming also. The combat from WW returns largely unchaged bar the addition of 'speed kills' which add a nice element of stealth. Unfortunately, boss battles also make another appearance, particularly unbearable this time.  Overall, the game is a fine effort, a good recovery from the mess of WW. But it's also clearly subject to the law of diminishing returns, and the concept was beginning to wear a little thing. A radical rethink was needed.

Prince of Persia (2008)

The one thing everyone agrees on is that it's incredibly pretty

Affectionately dubbed Fresh Prince of Persia by myself and others with poor taste in puns, this was the most radical rethink of the franchise in years.  Still in the hands of Ubisoft Montreal, they decided to go back to square one and rebuild the franchise from the ground up, as indicated by the title. The result was one of the most divisive games in recent memory.

Everything started again. Based on their stunning Anvil engine (developed for Assassin's Creed) the developers drew a brand new world in gorgeous pastel and watercolour shades, and with it a new Prince and a new mythology. Emphasising a super fluid style of movement, the platforming was reshaped to be simpler and more intuitive, and the world redesigned to be open, with backtracking and upgrades required to traverse its whole expanse. Out went group combat, to be replaced by one-on-one duels with recurring boss characters. And out went the time rewinding sand, replaced by new character Elika, a mystical magician who accompanies you on your journey and facilitates the greatest and most controversial change of all - you can't die. Literally, every time you die she'll save you.

Naturally, opinion on the game has been furiously divisive, and split almost entirely down the middle. Its sizeable force of critics claim it's dumbed down, insultingly easy and removes the intricate puzzles and assault courses of earlier games. Me, I think it's a masterpiece, a textbook example of how to reboot a franchise and focus on core strengths, and that the game rivals The Sands of Time. The debate rages to this day, but clearly Ubisoft were disappointed by what they saw. Though there have been many claims this iteration has not been abandoned, for the next game Ubisoft decided on a step back into familiar territory.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010)

The game starts in the midst of a full scale battle, another nod to Sands of Time

An 'interquel' that's set chronologically between SOT and WW, Forgotten Sands also reverts to those games's play style, reintroducing the time rewinding concept and the character of the Prince from SOT. It isn't related to the Sands of Time movie, although the timing is surely just a little too good to be true. Most likely Ubisoft were looking to take advantage of the added publicity swirling about. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this one, because I'll have a review up in the next couple of days.

So, that's the history of the mainline Prince of Persia games up to this point. What's next? Well, it's difficult to say. As critically and commercially successful as the Sands of Time games have been, surely this is as far as the story and concept can be taken. At the same time, given the mixed reaction that surrounded it, there's a undeniable reluctance by Ubisoft to embrace the continuity created by Prince of Persia (2008).  Whether they ultimately do decide to continue that story or go for another full-on reboot. I expect a gestation period of a few years as Ubisoft Montreal plans and works on the other projects it has on the go. No matter how long it takes though, I and many others will eagerly anticipate the Prince's next adventure.

P.S. I hope it's a bit like this

New Heaven, New Earth - Thoughts on Final Crisis

"There was a war in heaven...and Evil won."

The idea of the 'crisis crossover' is nothing new in comic books. To those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a threat emerges that's so huge that one hero alone can't handle it, so multiple heroes, often from across different books, will team up to take the bad guy down. This generally makes for an epic story, and helps drives sales across multiple titles as well, so everyone is happy.

At this point, a short history lesson is required.  DC practically invented the concept of the crisis crossover with the 1985 series Crisis On Infinite Earths (hence the term) but they did so for a very specific purpose. At the time, the DC Universe was in fact made up of an infinite number of parallel Earths, each one having it's own heroes and villains who regularly visited and battled each other. This started off as a cool idea, but it also meant that continuity soon spun wildly out of control, with parallel versions of everything and everyone. Thus, Crisis On Infinite Earths aimed to resolve this problem by destroying all the parallel universes, leaving only one 'true' DC universe. Unfortunately, this didn't exactly work and merely left a whole load of loose ends (check Hawkman's wikipedia page for an especially bad example). Subsequently, DC attempted further crossover events to try and resolve these issues. 1994's Zero Hour: Crisis In Time only succeeded in muddying the waters further and 2005's Infinite Crisis actually undid most of the first Crisis by restoring the multiverse, this time in the form of 52 parallel Earths.  As evidenced by its title, DC promised this Final Crisis would be the last of these huge event stories that attempted to reorder the continuity of their comic book world.

The three previous Crises

Got all that memorised? Good. Now ignore all of it.

OK, maybe not, but what is truly remarkable about Final Crisis is how little it cares about continuity, or indeed, about any plot at all. Crossovers have always paid fastidious detail to, and often employed as part of the story, the labyrinth timelines of comic books. Final Crisis on the other hand reads more like a drug trip - incredibly epic and awesome things happen all the time, you're just not exactly sure why.  This shouldn't be a surprise given the book is written by Grant Morrison, a DC veteran who has some all time classics to his name (Animal Man, JLA) but also has a reputation for some very weird and wonderful books (Arkham Asylum, Doom Patrol).  Morrison favours nonlinear narratives, rampant sybolism and the featuring of obscure and forgotten characters, all of which are present and correct within these pages.  This makes Final Crisis an extremely difficult read, even to someone like myself who is intimately familiar with the characters and concepts being discussed. Anyone whose knowledge of DC is not encyclopaedic will  really struggle to make headway.  It isn't helped by the fact that the two series meant to establish events leading up to this crisis, Death of the New Gods and Countdown to Final Crisis were both a) rubbish and b) written without Morrison's knowledge. This means that events in those comics are either ignored or actively contradicted, meaning that this is one story which actually makes less sense in context.

At the base level, the plot is relatively simple. Darkseid, the greatest and most evil of the 'New Gods' has finally discovered the 'Anti-Life Equation' that he's been searching for ever since he was introduced way back in the 70's. With this, he initiates a catastrophic war in heaven which destroys the 'Fourth World' in which the New Gods reside. Darkseid and his forces are victorious but are themselves badly wounded and fall from the Fourth World to New Earth, the primary Earth of the DC multiverse, where he and his minions are reborn in human bodies (Yes, this really does count as 'simple' in comic books). His fall shatters reality and causes Earth to become the centre of a singularity which threatens to consume all of existence.

Essentially then, this is an excuse to unleash apocalypse on an unprecedented scale, as every hero and villain in the universe and indeed, in every universe, battles the forces of Darkseid.  But Morrison, true to his roots, prefers to focus on some of the more minor characters. Superman is removed from the main narrative of the story early on and instead goes on an utterly mind bending trip through parallel universes and versions of himself, meets a bunch of universal guardians called the Monitors (who were established characters, but are portrayed completely differently here than in any previous appearance) and ultimately fights a vampire god and then ends up in the future. In 3D. It makes about as much sense as it sounds. Meanwhile, Batman is captured similarly early on and spends most of the series locked up, although he does have a major role to play near the end.  Wonder Woman is also captured early on, converted into one of Darkseid's warriors and spends most of the book as a faceless grunt.

Pictured - Frankenstein on fire riding an giant  alien wolf, Supergirl, alternate universe Supergirl, a giant robot and two superpowered teenagers. This is one of the less insane panels.

In their place, Morrison assembles an eclectic array of heroes, villains, and characters who may be both or neither.  Pride of place goes to the Super Young Team, an utterly insane group of Japanese teenage superhero wannabes who are very clearly a loving stew of comic and animé clichés.  Also notable are several characters from Morrison's previous series Seven Soldiers, especially the super escape artist Mister Miracle, who is a key plot point.  And Morrison pulls out old, obscure characters like they're going out of fashion - Sonny Sumo, Kamandi, Captain Carrot, Anthro...these are characters who even seasoned comic nerds would struggle to remember.

It sounds like a mess. And it is.  But curiously enough, that's what saves it. The story is so gloriously, ridiculously over the top, it so thoroughly embraces all of the comic book silliness that sometimes seems to have been surgically removed from modern books, that it can't help but be fun. Where else could you see Frankenstein riding a motorbike, sword in hand, decapitating soldiers while quoting Milton?  Where else could somebody commit a murder by firing a bullet backwards in time? An army of Supermen assembled from multiple universes cooking a vampire alive with heat vision? Running a race against Death and winning? All present and correct. It's so fantastically overblown that you want to be swept up in its silliness, to be part of a world where people can unironically say "I'LL DO WHAT I CAN TO PLUG THE HOLE IN FOREVER!"

And there's something else also. These crossovers have always been like this, they're always a mess of characters, concepts and side plots and spinoffs.  What Morrison has understood where many others don't is that sometimes the mythology of a story is far more important that what actually happens.  Take the idea of Darkseid falling from heaven and shattering reality upon landing on Earth. In practice, it's totally ludicrous and makes no sense from a 'scientific' point of view, but the imagery is fantastically powerful and thus works perfectly in a comic book.  Repeatedly, Final Crisis's symbolic power far outstrips the micro level of actual character interaction, really giving you the sense that this is a battle between good and evil that has raged throughout all of time and space and threatens all of reality. Early on, one character promises a "full on, no bull**** twilight of the Gods" and the book delivers in spades. Tales of vampire gods who devour reality itself, and the army of god descending for the final battle spark amazing ideas and legends inside the heads of readers. And when the plot and the mythology occasionally meet, the result is some of the most spine chilling moments ever printed in a comic.  Particularly notable is issue #5, where Darkseid unleashes the Anti-Life equation on Earth and makes half of the world's population avatars of himself, leading to this unstoppably awesome piece of scenery chewing...

"I. Am. The. New. God.
All is one in Darkseid. This mighty body is my church...
When I command your surrender, I speak with three billion voices...
When I make a fist to crush your resistance, it is with three billion hands! 
When I stare into your eyes, and shatter your dreams, and break your heart, it is with six billion eyes!
NOTHING LIKE DARKSEID HAS EVER COME AMONG YOU. NOTHING WILL AGAIN. 
I WILL TAKE YOU TO A HELL WITHOUT EXIT OR END, AND THERE I WILL MURDER YOUR SOULS!
AND MAKE YOU CRAWL AND BEG AND DIE!
DIE! DIE! FOR DARKSEID!"

Over the years, Darkseid had suffered severe decay in his powers and motivations. To see him restored to his postion as a God of Evil, killing whole universes just by existing was a fantastic moment for any DC fan.

Ultimately, it's not much of a surprise that the series ends by becoming almost entirely abstract, and, in a favourite trick of Morrison's, becoming a meta-narrative on the nature of stories themselves.  The final issue is told almost entirely in flashback by various characters, and as reality breaks down around them, the timeline skips all over the place and several incidents are left totally unexplained.  The plot relies on a literal Deus ex Machina (seriously, it's called the Miracle Machine and is capable of granting any wish) to resolve, and Morrison only introduces his true big bad within the final few pages. Said final big bad had only previously appeared or even been hinted at in one of the spinoffs, meaning that if you had only read the main series it was an even bigger WTF moment than usual. There's even a knowing comment by one of the characters at the end, where he notes that "our story has become toxic...out of control...we must end it."  Despite this, the Final Crisis ends on a wholly satisfying note by doing what it has done all along, ignoring the plot minutiae and instead focusing on a single moment in the chaos which encapsulates all it strives to represent.

That's Final Crisis in a nutshell. It's a very difficult book and very often it's not even very good. But it's also something much more interesting than merely competent. It's a brave book, willing to take risks and gamble that the reader is prepared to accept some things without explanation. In return, it delivers a fantastically powerful story that's also a wholly original spin on the mythology of superheroes and the DC universe, while at the same time being a love letter to all that is obscure, silly and awesome about comic books. No, you'd never call it literature, you'd never even call it coherent, but what I would call it is a comic for people who love comics.  And if you've read this far, that probably means you should go out and read Final Crisis too.

New Dawn

So yeah...it's been a while since I posted anything on this blog. More than a year in fact.  For that, I'm deeply sorry, but real life has this nasty habit of getting in the way of these things. It's been a busy and hectic time for me, but I've once again caught to the bug to start writing.  So let's start over, with a few changes around here. Firstly, I've given the blog a wash and brush up and hopefully made it a bit more clean, simple and easy on the eye. Secondly, whereas I used to write exclusively about videogames, I'll now document all of my nerdy misadventures, be they in videogames, comic books, TV, animé or anything else.  Here's a few things coming up in the immediate future.

• Comics - A huge review/analysis of DC's Final Crisis and how it's very different from every other 'event comic' that's ever been written
  
  
• TV - My first steps into the crazed and hilarious world of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and how terrible movies can be made brilliant. "HE TRIED TO KILL ME WITH A FORKLIFT!
  
  
• Anime - Reviews and thoughts on A Certain Magical Index and Evangelion 2.2: You Can (Not) Advance
  
  
• Videogames - I review Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the latest sequel in my all time favourite game series.
  
  
• Technology - My new phone, why Windows Mobile fails hard and the joys of impromptu code hacking.

Hopefully I can crank out these a little faster than I used to. I'll be aiming to post something at least every other day during the week, though no doubt there'll be some schedule slippage.  I hope people will stick around to read.