From childhood, the prince was taught the rules of personal hygiene. They said that if he did not wash and shave in the morning, then one fine day a terrible black uncle would come for him and take him with him. Years passed, the Prince matured and became the Adult Prince. From a slender young man, he turned into a brutal Persian with a tattoo and ... stubble instead of his former neat beard. So run now ... from your uncle.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
(in Russia the game was released under the name Prince of Persia: Warrior Within).

A wild-looking Prince of Persia and an angular Lady in a Red Dress with a Big Breast. SoT quality has given way to WW pop.​

At first, the Prince is unrecognizable. It feels like something is definitely not right here. Bright and rich colors from Sands of Time have given way to noir, although there is not so much black in the game. Scheherazade's tale overnight turned into a second-rate Hollywood story about the inevitability of fate and how it can, in the end, be changed. The difference between the two games is so great that it’s hard for me personally to understand what exactly the developers were guided by, so radically changing the appearance of the game, its atmosphere, and partly the gameplay.

One fine day, the Prince learned that those who flirt with time usually get a lifelong etsih with nails. A certain demon named Dahaka is responsible for the etsih - a very unpleasant and almost invincible creature. It is quite natural that, being a very cheerful person, the Prince decided that he was quite capable of correcting his future and cheating death. True, later we learn that we are not the only ones trying to deceive her, and it is quite possible that in the end only one will remain ... or maybe all.

So, having arrived at the ancient stronghold, the Prince discovers time portals that are able to move him to the past. If, for example, the passage is blocked in the present, then you can return to the past and go through a neat and clean corridor. However, in this case, all the traps that have failed over time will operate .. So we run - now in the past, now in the present, alternately solving pressing problems. For the first time, such a journey through time is breathtaking. The second time, it is taken for granted. But for the third time, you will realize that designers make you run along the same corridors several times a day. And no one gives you guarantees that having run through it a couple of times in the future, you will not have to go through it ten times right there in the past. And what did you think - you can’t put a portal in your pocket, but you need to somehow move in time ... so we run back and forth like stung.

The apartments presented in the game leave a very unpleasant feeling. After the flamboyant palace from SoT, the local levels feel like a journey through Europe's deepest mine. The prince rushes along the ugly gray walls, crawls along the eaves of uncomfortable halls and jumps from ledge to ledge in the damp corridors of the majestic stronghold. And although in fact all this has already happened, in practice it turns out that much less attention has been paid to acrobatics than before. On the other hand, the Prince learned to swing from a rope hanging on the wall (later this trick would be inherited by the "anniversary" edition of Tomb Raider ... almost three years after the release of WW) and to climb down the banners and flags attached to the walls. It looks extremely impressive: the Prince jumps onto the canvas and, sticking a sword into the fabric, quickly rushes down. Class. True, the traps, it seemed to me, have become simpler. Spikes crawl out of the pits with a noticeable delay - you can walk through the dangerous area almost on foot, there are solid gaps between some logs with blades, well, blades spinning in place are somehow quite easy ...

Well, what kind of *normal* action would do without a fight between two half-naked aunts?..​

But the battles paid much more attention. And although the monsters stopped appearing out of nowhere and directly in front of the Prince, the battles became noticeably more difficult. From now on, the enemies began to act much more skillfully, surrounding the hated Persian from all possible sides. The scoundrels deftly move, jump and jump on one leg - the leisurely under-zombies from SoT never dreamed of such a thing. However, the hardened Prince is also not a blunder. A huge number of fresh tricks, strikes and combos appeared in his arsenal. The prince fights like a lion - he jumps off the walls, backhanding his enemies with his sword, grabs the nearest freak (by the way, many enemies in the game are people ...) and hits the nearest enemy with all his might. This pleasant technique can be used, for example, when we need to fight a crowd of enemies on the edge of an abyss: I grabbed one bastard, threw him into the abyss, grabbed the next one ... However, it is impossible to capture if you have some type of weapon in each hand. Yes, from now on, the prince carries two swords with him at once (as an option - a sword and a hammer, a sword and a dagger ... in short, you will not part with a sword anyway) and uses them in a fight accordingly. Moreover, the "additional" weapon can always be thrown at the enemy. Particularly successful throws are shown to us on purpose, by moving the camera following the ax moving towards the target's head. The head of the monster flies in one direction, the body in the other, everyone is happy. For such scenes, the game can be put a solid five points. In general, the fights have become much tougher and we are talking not only and not so much about their severity. Blood flows in streams, unusual for monsters from SoT. The dagger pierces the guard, blood flows from the resulting wound, and the guard himself looks in shock at the new hole in his skin. At this moment, his comrade is cut in half. The third villain suddenly ends abruptly in the body where the head should have been, which now flies in the direction of the nearest wall. Opponents fight in agony, blood splatters everything in the area, and the Prince, perhaps, does not yell obscenities. If not for the quality of the local fight scenes, they could be called meat trash.

But another element of the freshly created Prince claims to be trash. Running errands with Dahaka. The mighty uncle, who for some reason is more afraid of water than death (hehe), appears at the most inopportune moments and begins to pursue the nameless prince. At such moments, it remains only to revel in the overflowing blood of adrenaline. How else? In such scenes, the procrastination of death is similar, and the guardian of time does not like to waste this very time on trifles. One of his touches is enough to kill the Prince, but we won’t be able to hit him back (we can, but in very rare cases). Therefore, you have to perform the usual actions (run on collapsing platforms, jump on the crossbars ...), but many times faster. Considering the obstinate disposition of the local camera, the management that is chronically disliked by the gamer, and the fact that it is not clear where to run further, sometimes, even in a calm environment, one can only curse Ubisoft for the traditional lack of human saves.

The game has become more scary. Not only in terms of scarecrow Dahaki, but also in terms of direct graphics. Just look at the hair, and indeed at the whole appearance of the heroines from WW and compare them with Farah from SoT. The same goes for the prince himself. An absolutely dead expression, I'm sorry, faces with a poorly glued paper wig - this is how the potential passion of the Prince looks like (Farah is forgotten. Forgotten yet). All other characters are no better. The textures seem to have become clearer and more beautiful, but in any case, it seems that the Sultan's palace was many times more attractive to the player's eye. It should be noted that all graphical flaws almost completely disappear, as soon as we get carried away with another fight or a wall run. And thanks for that. In general, local fights leave an aftertaste similar to the feeling of battle scenes from God of War (not available to PC owners - PS2 only). And this is not good, because Sands of Time was a completely different game. A fairy tale, but not a stupid ruby.

The music completely spoils all the pleasant impression that all the previous elements of the game produced with sin in half. Pleasant “oriental” style overkill, a sweet melody that sounded while drinking water from another fountain (local springs are now not only “healers”, but also “saves” ... miracles in a sieve) ... all this gave way to a disgusting soundtrack from Godsmack. I know absolutely nothing about the work of this group, but Ubisoft clearly did not fail by inviting this team to create music for the game. The task of making a super-mega trash action movie is completed. Any scene from the game is more like an episode from a disgusting Hollywood action movie: as a rule, it is in such films that heavy, completely inappropriate music is played.

Due to the fact that a number of the advantages of the original disappeared in an unknown direction, other shortcomings of the game began to cut the eye, which did not cause much criticism in the last part of PoP. For example, a camera. Everything is the same: we run, the camera changes its location - hello, abyss. Add Dahaka, heels of quick-witted and smart enemies here - excessive adrenaline, priceless nerve cells ... Send Dahaka to the Ubisoft office.

How to distinguish really beautiful graphics from fake? Everything is very simple: the fake one sometimes looks just like the real one, but for some reason it does not bring joy.​

Prince of Persia 3D was a culture shock for me at the time. To make such a gray mediocrity, having ruined the good name of the Persian Prince, is a very (well, very, very) hard effort. WW is quite capable of causing a culture shock for you too, if, like me, it seems to you that there are a lot of grayish action/adventure without Warrior Within, but, alas, there are no more like Sands of Time. Even the alternate ending had a hard time convincing me to play this game again. SoT - please, WW - well, once, okay. I fully admit that there are many people in the world who liked the new Prince, but I don’t think that this is the merit of the Prince, and not, for example, the abundance of vulgarity in the game, tight-fitting ladies’ outfits, their own roundness (very angular) and cubic meters of blood. A year later, Ubisoft will release another sequel, but the mistakes of the past cannot be corrected. Dahaka is heading to Montreal, but we'll talk about Two Thrones some other time, because that's a completely different story.

P.S.
The real "happy ending" is just an alternate ending. The fairy tale finally turned into a cynical action movie.

• A large arsenal, which includes eight swords, a fighting club, a glove, as well as a number of other secret items - from a hockey stick to a teddy bear;
• The ability to take weapons from enemies and use them as your own is very rare even in modern games, and a decade and a half ago it was a breakthrough;
• The powers of the Sands allow the hero to use additional abilities - Fury of Time, Return, Eye of the Storm and Breath of Doom to overcome all obstacles on the way;
• Health Boost Spots - By finding these hidden spots in the locations, the player can increase the maximum amount of life, which is very useful in battles with powerful or numerous opponents.

Great storyline

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within begins with the Prince realizing how much evil the Sands of Time and the artifacts created with their help have brought to the world. He decides to go to the distant, semi-fabulous Island of Time, where, according to legend, the Empress of Time, who created them, lived. The hero hopes that he will be able to go into the distant past and persuade the owner of the island so that she does not work on creating such powerful and dangerous artifacts. Unfortunately, on the way to the Isle of Time, the Prince's ship was attacked by sand demons. In a fierce battle, the ship was destroyed, and all the people who were on it died. Only the Prince survived.

With difficulty reaching the Island, he discovered a system of portals that allow time travel. Passing through them, the hero will act in two worlds at once. Firstly, it is the blooming Island of Time in its heyday - beautiful, green, filled with deadly traps. Secondly, the modern Island of time - with destroyed houses, covered with sands and, nevertheless, full of various dangerous places. In such difficult conditions, the Prince will have to survive and fight in order to achieve his goal.

Gameplay

Non-linearity can be called a huge advantage of the game. Yes, there are no additional tasks here. But it is not necessary to run from point A to point B along a pre-planned route. You can always get distracted, walk around the island, enjoy its beauty before embarking on new tasks.

The fights in the game are delivered simply luxuriously. Enemies here are very diverse, so you definitely won’t get bored. The hero has a huge selection of swords in his arsenal, as well as a fighting stick, a glove, a hockey stick and even a teddy bear - such a comical weapon is secret, so you will have to find hidden places to get it.

The first disadvantage Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was the reluctance of the public to buy it. Few people were in a hurry to feel like a Persian, dressed in white trousers and an exaggerated blue shirt. At Ubisoft, as soon as they didn’t go out of their way: they sold the game bundled with the PlayStation 2, sold it cheaply for a couple of Splinter Cell… Useless 1 . Users do not want to become the heroes of "A Thousand and One Nights", even if you crack. “Okay,” the managers rightly reasoned, “if the mountain does not go to Mohammed, Mohammed goes to the mountain.”

The sequel was made in such a way that the layman would surely like it. The image of the prince was changed: instead of a pale young man, an unshaven psycho looks at us. Monsters from magical creatures materialized into furious Mamelukes of flesh and blood, the heroines dressed in seductive outfits covering angular busts of extraordinary sizes, the fairy-tale castle turned into overgrown ruins. The “princess” paints her lips, the prince swears, and behind the scenes, a soundtrack “weighted” according to the latest fashion grinds. As a result - scandalous fame and rating "Mature". But a box with a gloomy swordsman and two blades diverges much better. Although from the point of view of pure art, the situation cannot be called rosy.

Green eyes

New " Prince"Motorizes" the familiar veteran Jade engine, which has entered the service in Beyond Good & Evil- another brilliant game that no one bought. In an interview with Western sites, the authors talk about how programmers accomplished a feat and squeezed another 25% of speed out of the old engine, they say, allowing them to draw larger maps and add new video effects.

Maybe everything is fine on consoles, but we have a paradox: Warrior Within looks worse SoT. Frames are quicker, textures are clearer, but here's the problem: the former beauty of the moonlit castle ... has evaporated. This is due not only to design "bells and whistles", but also to programmers' mistakes. Take a look at our screenshot gallery and find the two main characters, Farah and Kaileena, there. Feel the difference.

Keeping the engine, the creators Warrior Within the general gameplay scheme was left unchanged: the prince first jumps along the walls, ledges and columns, then crushes a portion of opponents into dust and again climbs onto the horizontal bars. True, there was a slight tilt towards fights: they are both longer and more common, and huge furious halls from first game now occupy no more than a third of the passage. As before, getting lost in them is a piece of cake. If you forget about the regulations and argue with the camera flying around the location, you can find yourself in a dead end.

Warrior Within does not give the hero a smooth road to the final, but places him in a spacious castle. Therefore, the conditioned reflex “to go where they say” develops quickly and easily, and fewer nerve cells are spent on “jumping” puzzles. Many riddles generally fit in the corridors, where you can not get lost. New tricks help to cope with them. You can, for example, swing on ropes, and especially bloodthirsty traps can be bypassed in "slo-mo". Forgiving design is back with us, and the player doesn't need sniping accuracy. Just press the right buttons.

Flirting with time travel is no longer limited to an emergency rewind, replacing the "Load Game". The Castle of the Empress of Time exists in two dimensions, past and present, the transitions between which are installed on special altars. It happens that some kind of puzzle is not given to the prince, and then the solution should be sought in another era. For example, the cyclopean mechanism inside the Clockwork Tower in the past briskly moves brand new gears; in the present, the layout is the same, but the machines are destroyed, something is broken and overgrown with grass, and something else works with sin in half.

Of course, the passage from this did not cease to be direct, like a sleeper. The vaunted non-linearity Warrior Within only powders the player's brains, forcing them to rush from altar to altar and run along pretty boring corridors. Stock up on "saves" and valocordin - they will come in handy.

Prince of dispersion

Combat system PoP: WW lives in symbiosis with the "pumping" system. The prince can increase the band (or rather, the circle) of health with the help of nine optional upgrades (affecting, however, the likelihood of obtaining an alternative ending), and at the behest of the writers, he acquires new blades and devouring the “sand of time” super blows.

The nameless heir to the throne learned to carry with him additional weapons found or left over from dead enemies. The main piercing and cutting object is laid out according to the plot, with it the prince moves more freely in battle, makes captures and throws. The second allows you to carry out powerful attacks and tap out previously inaccessible combos, but takes up space in your hand: you can’t grab anyone by the neck. Not much depends on the type and weight of what the prince picked up from the floor. The combinations are standard, except that the club brings down the Mameluke from the hooves, and the dagger shreds him. Additional weapons can be thrown away or thrown at the insolent at any time, and if overused, most examples crumble to dust.

Stronger than the new combat system, the course of the fight is affected by the artificial intelligence of opponents. They do not stand around if the prince has chosen an opponent for himself, but pile up in a heap, forcing him to actively maneuver. The battles have become tougher: it will not be possible to overcome the next bunch on the first try, even on low difficulty. Monsters got rid of the bad habit of teleporting behind the prince, but constantly get stuck in the folds of the landscape.

Finally, there are stylish bosses. Skirmishes with them, as a rule, consist of several stages. After completing one winning sequence of tricks, you need to change tactics. Brawls, flavored with bombastic dialogues and relevant mini-rollers, look like a bang.

Music for pop

Another bold innovation is a simple acrobatic wrestling with a stopwatch. Having played with the magic sand, the Prince came to the attention of the keeper of time, a black thug named Dahaka. In order to restore the natural course of events, the guard seriously set out to take the guy's life. Fighting a monster is more expensive for yourself, all that remains is to run without looking back.

In the chase scenes, another flaw is especially evident. WW: shrew camera. In a calm environment, you can use the landscape view (in this case, it is sometimes very difficult to see the hero), or put it in a suitable position with your own hands. While running, there is no time for this, so death due to the fault of a virtual operator entangled in the walls is a common thing. Fortunately, before encounters with monsters, we often come across save fountains. Do not miss.

The lyrical melodies have given way to goofy "rubilov" from the band Godsmack; the voice acting is gray, despite the active participation Monica Bellucci; the plot with two endings is predictable, stupid and more like nonsense, but accelerates towards the finale. Keyboard control is convenient, although it is more pleasant to play with a gamepad. However, not everything is going smoothly with him either: as in SoT, the prince is inertial. On the run, he still turns slowly, along a decent circle, at the far point of which he most often falls into the abyss.

* * *

The new elements of the sequel are too ambiguous to be considered successful, design changes have exposed fresh holes, and no one has fixed known flaws. According to the Hamburg account, Warrior Within worse than its predecessor. Sales will undoubtedly increase, cheap popularity is guaranteed ... Alas, the barely perceptible spirit of the Arabian fairy tale that made a name The Sands of Time, weathered. There was a platformer, daring and aggressive, high-quality and smart. But - consumer goods. He may be a prince, but no longer of Persia.

1 The total circulation of the game on all four platforms (PC, PS2, Xbox, GameCube) amounted to 2.4 million copies. These figures are given taking into account the price reduction to the “budget” mark of $19.99 that followed shortly after the release. To put it bluntly, not a lot for a super blockbuster.

Triptych: three oriental paintings.
One story.

It's time to continue the unfinished story. The next story is no less exciting than the first, but it is somewhat different ... This is a story where other things take precedence, and they are the reason for the authors to think. However, first things first.

"The Moor has done his job - the Moor can go" - the famous phrase of the Moor from Schiller's play "The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa" best describes how Ubisoft did with Jordan Mechner after the release and unexpected success of the first part of the revived story - Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Perhaps the author will be objected: the Master voluntarily left the project in order to come to grips with cinematography and start shooting a short film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story, stories about the sad fate of Mexican emigrants in America. Yes. This "masterpiece", of course, is worth the loss of one of the most talented game designers in the gaming industry.

One way or another, but the departure of Mechner provoked a split in the camp of fans of the series: someone, wailing, ran around the forums: “the series will not be the same, everything is gone,” to which he received a response from more balanced ones: “wait for the details.” And they soon followed: the sequel was announced at E3 2004. Amid the hubbub and noise of the exhibition, players and journalists from all over the world looked at the first screenshots and wondered: “What happened? Where is the blue-eyed Prince? Where is the Eastern Palace? Where is the sunlight after all, why is everything so gloomy? Traditionally polite PR managers, folding their legs in Turkish on the carpet, calmly explained: “Everything is in order. Here he is the Prince, just take a closer look. Yes, yes, this is him - unshaven and covered with scars. The palace is with us again, only it is a little different. And there is no light! It's just that the game has become more serious, more mature."
Of course, after such a radical change in the image of the series, the players were waiting for Warrior Within with bated breath: is it really a failure again like with Prince of Persia 3D? And then the "prince's day" came: on December 2, thousands of players returned from stores with a box in trembling hands. They install... They launch... And they see...

Stinky, unshaven and hairy...
... And they see a gloomy "man" sailing on a ship in the midst of a raging sea. The waves toss the ship like a piece of wood, and then a majestic warship appears on the horizon. Pirates? Not at all: some evil Mamelukes in red trousers, led by a lady in a black, almost latex suit, and with swords, the size of which makes one recall Freud's grandfather. These adversaries smash the team to smithereens, and the ship itself is sent to the bottom. The "man" finds himself on the shore of a rocky island, and the player suddenly recognizes in him the same Prince.
Yes, the game has such a plot. Yes, it is suspiciously similar to the beginning of a cruel trash, where the action is performed for the sake of the action itself and the bill goes to hundreds of corpses. But, keep in mind right away, it’s not at all like that. For starters, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within has a solid storyline, the changes in the concept of the game are logically explained and even plot-related to the original. If you remember, then the hero changed the course of time by killing the Vizier, so the epochal escape of the "Sands of Time" did not exist. “Everything is back to normal,” thought the Prince. Not here - it was - a carefree game with the fourth dimension angered the Keeper of Time - Dahaka. The horned monster argues as follows: The prince should have died then, in the palace of Azad, but did not die, which is a disorder. The disorder must be eliminated in the most logical way - to kill the prince. Our hero fundamentally disagrees with this logic and goes on the run. In his wanderings, he learns the art of sword fighting, reaching perfection in it.
So they would have played cat and mouse with Dahaka, if it were not for the old prophet, who hinted to the fugitive on a certain island, from where the Maharaja had brought the Clock and the dagger. There, they say, is the key to solving your problem ...
As you can see, the plot is not bad for an arcade in which half-naked girls with giant breasts are shown to the player in every second video. Moreover, the story is slightly non-linear and even “loaded” with some higher meaning… There is something about the danger of violating the space-time continuum.
Everything that has been said so far about the plot is like anything but a good oriental fairy tale. And here lies its main drawback: the plot outline is not the same as in the original, not at all the same. For many fans of Master Mechner and the first part, this can become a reason to hate the project fiercely and even call it "heresy". Maybe you will do the same ... Or maybe you will evaluate the plot in isolation from the canon, perceive it as an absolutely independent work and get great satisfaction from contemplating the local "drama".

Walking Monster Cutter
The prince was not against chopping up a hostile population in the original, and even having learned dozens of deadly tricks ... "Dance of Death" - a hackneyed phrase characterizes the combat system in action in the best possible way. Sketch for readers with a rich imagination. The hero is walking along a small hall, suddenly: a detachment of enemies runs out from around the corner, threateningly brandishing swords. The prince takes out his SWORDS (yes, two are better than one) and… then the mamyulyuks don’t remember anything anymore, and the player doesn’t have time to realize what is happening: a blow, a sweep, a finishing blow, someone’s head flies to the side, blood, a blow, a blow with a rebound from the wall, someone flies squealing into the abyss, blood, blood, a lot of blood… And you know you press on the keyboard buttons, since the control is not at all complicated and intuitive . Only a recalcitrant camera, apparently bribed by enemies, will cause a little trouble in battle ... But, in principle, the latter would have coped on their own, because they are not deprived of intelligence, albeit artificial, they skillfully maneuver and evade blows. It's sparse, but that's enough.
There is a pumping system in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the beginnings of which appeared to us back in the original: over time, we increase the health bar and get new weapons from the caring hands of the scriptwriters. An alternative ending is associated with the “role component”, but it’s simple: the “cooler” you pump, the more “alternative” you get the ending.
Bosses. Here's something really new to the series. Firstly, the "level heads" are diverse and are being destroyed in stages. Of course, the sophistication of the fantasies of Japanese minds does not smell here. But at least something. Big progress.

I'm going to this city that doesn't exist...
the world has expanded significantly in size, but has not become more diverse since the original. You can freely run around the Island of Time. But it’s worth considering right away that everything is thought out in advance by the scriptwriters, there are no “short tracks”. You travel along pre-created routes and fight script creations. At the behest of the plot, you periodically have to return to the passed locations and see the Island in the past.
Of course, you will be blocked by all sorts of traps, systems of traps, systems of traps with the moral and sometimes physical support of the Mujahideen, systems of traps that need to be overcome for a while, and so on ... The heir to the throne did not forget all the old tricks and learned a new one: clinging to curtains with a knife when falling. However, this is good: there are enough opportunities, all of them are actively used - the balance is on the face.
The good old "trick number 1" - the Prince still has time rewind, only the prince has no dagger, which benefited the gameplay: remember the annoying duty to poke the Dagger at each defeated monster to get the coveted Sand. IN Warrior Within there is nothing like that anymore: the precious substance itself “flies” into your hands. Convenient - no words!

Hard Prince
The most controversial point is the choice of musical accompaniment for the game. Calm, lyrical melodies have given way to rock from the popular band Godsmack. The title tracks are good, but nothing more. It turned out very much for an amateur, because if the music of the original could appeal to representatives of any musical direction, then the sound Warrior Within collected extremely conflicting reviews: from "divine", "a chic soundtrack", to - "horror: squeals and screams, it would be better to play without sound at all."

The graphic design was done by the well-deserved veteran "Jade", who worked back in . The old man is doing well: he produces a technologically advanced picture with low system requirements. You can only complain about low-detailed models and fuzzy textures.

Conclusion: a great, but controversial game, which is recommended to be taken in isolation from the context of the original. That's when you get real pleasure.

Gameplay: 9.5
Graphics: 9.0
Sound and Music: 9.0
Interface and control: 9.0

Minimum system requirements:

• 1000 MHz Pentium III, AMD Athlon or equivalent
• 256MB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 3 or higher, ATI Radeon 7500 or higher, Intel 915G
• 1.5 GB of disk space for minimal installation

Recommended system requirements:

• 1.5 GHz Pentium 4, AMD Athlon or equivalent
• 256MB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon 9500
• 2.2 GB disk space for full installation (CD)
• 3.5 GB disk space for full installation (DVD)

An important criterion for evaluating a game for me has always been its originality and ability to keep the player until the end credits. And if at first a very exciting and promising game gets boring by the end, then its assessment will be appropriate.

From the first moment of playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time For me, this game has become almost ideal. And just like Prince of Persia - Warrior Within is its continuation, then I will compare it with the original game. Comparing some new game with the ideal is always incorrect. The ideal is almost always in a winning position, and only extremely high-quality games are capable of throwing the ideal off the top. Well, even today the ideal has remained out of reach for me. Which, however, does not mean that the game to which this review is devoted is bad. On the contrary, it is made soundly and qualitatively, very thoughtfully and beautifully.

So, the game begins with the fact that our hero, who has noticeably matured and, one might say, matured, is sailing on a ship that is under attack. After a little beaten prince is thrown overboard, he finds himself on some godforsaken island, on which there is a certain castle, where the game will unfold.

In the course of the first few minutes of the game, we will learn how to interact with the world in this game. Basically, the world is represented by evil Mamelukes (and not only Mamelukes), who need to be turned into sand, as well as simple acrobatic actions. I must say right away that the developers have focused specifically on the fights, so be prepared in advance for the fact that you will have to fight a lot, long and often. And, unfortunately, very difficult. And the acrobatics has been noticeably simplified compared to the original game, which cannot please. No, it is still calibrated to the last movement, but now all acrobatic stunts are just a way to deliver the prince to the next brawl.

But, what can not be taken away, the battles have become much more dynamic and interesting than in the "Sands of Time". And, as I said above, much more difficult. Now the prince is simply forced to use all his skills in order to survive. Otherwise they'll drown. In the hero's arsenal of tricks, there are both old skills, such as jumping over the enemy's head, repulsion from the wall, and others, as well as new ones. How do you, for example, be able to grab an opponent from behind and, with a wide swing, separate half of his torso from his legs? Or throw him off the court into the abyss (by the way, a very good and often used ability)?

Another interesting possibility is the use of columns. Very effective if the hero is surrounded by a flock of enemies. The prince circles around the column, clasping it with one arm and giving blows to the adversaries.

The developers went to meet the players and added a fight with two weapons. In my opinion, it's redundant. In fact, the second weapon is very flimsy and falls apart literally after 4-5 hits, so it is mainly used as a throwing one. Indeed, it is often much easier to throw a saber at a half-dead enemy than to kill him yourself - they usually do not die from ordinary blows and you need to carry out combos.

The quantitative diversity of enemies, to be honest, is not amazing. Fifteen to two dozen, including bosses. But the enemies are really diverse. There are only 7 types of ordinary enemies, half of which are represented by several varieties. So, for example, there are 3 varieties of standard Mamelukes, differing in their skills and survivability. And if the first variety is killed through the sleeves, then the third will need to sweat. The most interesting and new kind of enemy are huge monsters, I would even say golems. The prince who gets under the feet of a monster is really a pity. After shredding the monster's legs, the hero climbs onto the enemy's back and begins to beat with his knife, which seems to be a toothpick for the monster, on the head, and he, in turn, tries to reach him with his hand. And if the monster succeeds, then the prince, like a toy in the hands of the enemy, goes on a long flight. But if the hero manages to stick his pick into the neck of the monster, then the fountain of blood and the monster heavily settling to the ground will be a sufficient reward for the player.

Interestingly enough, some enemies have learned to run on walls. Now it looks like something like samurai duels. The prince and his opponent rush towards each other, and a single blow decides who will run further and who will fall into the abyss.

There are, however, some flaws. For example, if you throw an enemy on a pillar, then he, colliding with it, will disappear and appear on the floor. The situation is similar with rolls for destructible items - weapon racks and household utensils.

The bosses in the game are really bosses. They are strong and thoughtful. From the queen of time to some kind of griffin zombie. Each of them is made carefully, if not with love. Often you can just run through simple monsters, this will not work with bosses - each boss is required to be killed, which, however, is not surprising.

Perhaps, a separate word is worth mentioning the demon of time - Dahaka. After the prince changed his fate in the original game, Dahaka woke up and thought that he shouldn't change his fate at will. And I decided to fix it by eliminating the offender. Since they won’t let us fight with Dahak, then, accordingly, we have to run away. And run away quickly, using all sorts of improvised items - ropes, tapestries, crossbeams, and so on. Fortunately, arcade moments like this don't happen often and don't last long.

If in the original game the sand of time was mined with a dagger from beaten enemies, here it simply spills out from defeated adversaries. True, it doesn’t just get enough sleep, but only from those enemies who were killed in a particularly cruel way - with the help of a combo, for example, after separating the enemy’s head from his body.

The developers have also gifted us with several special powers that require the sands of time to activate. For example, how do you like the ability to scatter surrounded enemies with a semblance of a sandstorm? The power that turns the prince into a berserker looks especially chic - the screen is filled with dark red, and the hero simply shreds enemies like cabbage. In addition to the standard “windback” of time, the prince also received a slow-motion mode, which often helps a lot in battles and passing traps.

The plot, at first completely slurred, twists rather dashingly towards the end, which is facilitated by frequent non-interactive scenes on the engine and, occasionally, pre-rendered videos. In the course of the story, the prince will change his weapon to a more powerful one, and he will start with a wooden stick altogether.

All the action of the game takes place in two time dimensions - "present" and "past", between which our hero runs. The transition between times is carried out with the help of special rooms, where, after pressing special buttons, a fountain of dust begins to beat from the floor. A whole and well-groomed castle in the past appears before us dilapidated in the present. The creators of the castle approached the matter very creatively, so it is replete with all sorts of traps and puzzles. The puzzles are quite simple and no special thought is required to complete them. But over some traps you will have to sweat, although in slow-motion mode they can be passed without much difficulty. The architecture of the castle is also very intricate and, I would say, original. Designers obviously don't eat their bread in vain.

The developers have moved away from the linearity of the original game, now you are free to choose your own path to the goal, although, in the end, these beautiful words come down to just spending time finding the right path. By the way, from time to time, branches appear on the hero's path, leading to places that increase the prince's health bar. In the same way, chests occasionally come across, with the breaking of which different concept arts of characters and the castle appear in the Extras menu.

The save system has remained the same - as the game progresses, you will encounter drinking fountains, when drinking from which you are given the opportunity to save. Unfortunately, the developers placed them very unevenly, and if they are very common in the center of the castle, then on the periphery, where they are most needed, it is a great success to meet a fountain. So players often have to go through the same part of the game several times. Fortunately, developers often provide us with some intermediate saves - that is, if the prince fails on his way, then you can play not from the location of the last fountain, but from some closer place.

It is also worth adding that the developers have prepared for us 2 different endings of the game.

The game took its engine from the original game and, having sprinkled it all with a ton of shaders, hit the table for gamers. Although the original game did not shy away from beautiful shader effects, in "The Warrior Within" the use of shaders has reached the absolute. Now even a swing of the prince's sword generates a shader wave. It's not bad, it's even good that the developers have implemented such support for shaders in their game. Unfortunately, although everything is fine with the shaders, the same cannot be said about the quality of the textures. No wonder the developers set only 256 megabytes of RAM in the recommended requirements - the game simply does not need more due to the low texture resolution. For some reason, the hero's sword looks especially disgusting when approaching in scripted scenes.

The engine showed decent performance, although it is not overly optimized. So, when working with particle systems, fps fell by one and a half to two times, which cannot please. In general, on my system ( [email protected]/640Mb/ [email protected]) at maximum settings and a screen resolution of 1024x768, it showed 30-40 frames per second in normal scenes, while performance dropped to 15-20 frames per second in scenes with dust and other particle systems.

In principle, disabling effects in the corresponding menu gives a significant increase in fps. However, I do not advise doing this, since the charm of the game disappears completely. Other options of the graphical menu affect the speed insignificantly.

The soundtrack deserves all the praise. The actors' voices are impeccable. Music, for the sake of fashion, has ceased to be melodic, now it beats with the tocsin of rock in the player's ears. I won't say that I liked it, but, what can not be taken away, it is rock that suits fierce battles.

Outcome.

An extremely interesting mixture of pop solutions and honest hardcore. It's up to you to play or not to play this game, I'll just say that the game is worth at least watching it. And isn't it interesting to know who impresses you more: a harsh and cruel warrior or a romantic boy from Persia?

P.S. When spending time with this game, I strongly recommend that all persons with a fragile psyche be removed from the premises. The number of enthusiastic epithets addressed to the developers as they pass through particularly difficult sections almost reaches the level of Flat Out.

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