Prince of Persia Revelations
Revel in its complete crappiness.
Published: January 31, 2006
Part of that comes from the fact that the game is dark. I'm not just talking about the tone, that much is a bit understandable given the direction they decided to take the story and the Prince character, I mean it's downright hard to see on the PSP. Even with the system plugged in and the brightness cranked up that extra notch you get when you're charging the battery, it takes a near pitch-black room to see the finer details like walls and pits.
It's impossible to overstate how hard it makes the game to play. When you can't see a giant crevasse or navigate a room because the two are just one big inky void, it tends to suck all the fun out of planning all those cool jumps and runs and swings. It's made doubly tough by the fact that the camera is more than a wee bit needy.
Without a right analog stick to constantly reposition it, everything from boss fights to setting up the next sequences of jumps becomes a chore. Locking in on an enemy -- especially the quick annoying ones -- becomes a game of stop and tap as you hit left on the d-pad to re-center things. Tapping right or up will allow you to zip into first-person or cinematic angles for a better view, but if you want to move the camera (and this works with the normal view too), you'll have to hold down the L shoulder button and use the analog nub. It's probably the best setup one could hope for save for a camera that has pre-picked angles for stuff, but it's still a problem given how much more open the level designs are this time around.
Of course, you'll still have to deal with the game randomly freezing, the Prince getting stuck in a wall, and some seriously hard crashes that require popping the battery out -- one of which happened during a savegame. Expletives poured from my office after that one. The game also loads constantly, and usually in some kind of sadistic pre-picked spot like a step or two before making a huge jump, roll through a death trap or right in the middle of a boss fight.
The music isn't much better, often cutting out or popping in at full bore at random times, or not chiming in at all. None of this, though, is worse than the problem of the audio being a good second or two out of sync on every cutscene. Save for the pre-rendered stuff, there isn't a single scene in the game where the audio matches up, and it absolutely ruins the storytelling part of the game.
Make no mistake, though, Revelations can certainly be pretty. It's clear that all the texture work (which is unmistakably low-res, just like the character models, which work to the game's detriment considering all the close-up cutscenes) and the complexity of the level designs themselves are top-notch, and ported part and parcel from the console versions. Of course, all that detail will cost ya, in the form of a framerate that starts out spotty and often ends up almost unplayable.
The audio almost ends up the same way, especially considering the lag during cutscenes. The agro-rock soundtrack is something I personally didn't mind at first, but it does start to grate on you after you hear it for the 30th or so time. The trademark footfalls and grunts just don't pop enough to support the soundtrack, and it's a shame.
Under no circumstances should you buy this game. Hell, don't even rent it. It's an abomination of a port with no redeeming qualities and belongs in the nearest bargain bin. The console version was at least tolerable, but when you can't even see the game under normal lighting conditions, it's not like you really have much choice on the PSP anyway. Still, stay far, far away, and make sure good friends do too, or better yet, just buy them a copy of The Two Thrones, now that is a proper Prince of Persia game.
