Prince of Persia (2009) – great design, bad port

Recently Steam had an Ubisoft discount week. Even with Ubisoft is one of the publishers I rather not support, I had to buy the pack of 5 Prince of Persia games for 13 €. Just one has stupid copy-protection, which I will thus not install.

I played Prince of Persia (2009) a bit, and it is really well made – for consoles. Don’t get me wrong. I was astonished of the design quality and the polish of everything other than everything having to do with PC. Yes, they polished the game but forgot that they were also releasing for PC. As one can expect from Ubisoft. Really sad they dropped that huge potential and a great game to being a bad port.

Key-press events are bullshit, as it will display you colored icons, and you don’t know which key to press. At least if you’re not playing with gamepad.

The game design is super-awesome. You can not die as in your avatar is dead, and the introduction to gameplay mechanics is in the story-game and bit for bit. Well done there!

The game is really linear though. But that’s to be expected in such a 3d platformer. The story itself is not so linear though, as you can choose which parts to do next.

The characters (prince and princess) are really sympathetic and a bit humorous. Graphics style is unique, artistic and I love it.

In the end, I won’t recommend you the game, but give a big thumbs up to the developer and publisher for the great mechanics of the game – but send a middle finger with my other hand for the utterly bad port. No focus on PC, no changes for PC. Nothing of the great polish and good design decisions can be seen with focus to PC. Really sad. Great potential given away there, for nothing. And in the end, we know why Ubisoft games should not be bought again. Mainstream, DRM infested bullshit with no focus on PC whatsoever.