KMGR of "Prince of Persia 3D"

Image via WikipediaPrince of Persia 3D is mobile adaptation of the most recent Prince of Persia (2008), the one with the Prince before he was the Prince, and with Elika as his sidekick/companion. So is the game any good? It looks great, but is very painful to play due to lack of responsiveness.

Basically, PoP3D is a 2D platformer disguised as a 3D game. Think of the most recent "Transformers 3D", and you're not too far off. All of your fights, jumps, and so on occur in 2D, even though the enemies, as well as the levels and yourself are rendered in 3D. Thus, the levels look great. And the "hero" (who's not yet the prince) is already an athletic fellow... He can wall-walk, forward and backward leaps, somersaults, sword-play, and more. It's the same moves that Lara Croft pulls off in Tomb Raider Underworld, except PoP3D portrays all that in 2D movement, not first-person 3D.

Fighting is pretty much single-button mashing, except there is block, but again, the commands are NOT mapped for the QWERTY-keyboard users, as "action/attack" is mapped to OK, but block is mapped to 0 (zero)... OK for keypad users, bad for QWERTY users.

And the game isn't that responsive. You can't go forward AND attack at the same time. There's a bit of a lag between commands. Most of the jump moves are pretty much self-explanatory, but some places makes them EXTREMELY difficult, and checkpoints are few and far in between, forcing you to repeat sections again and again as you try to make your way past ONE frustrating section after another, fighting the unresponsive controls. Right now I'm stuck on Chapter 4. I got to top of a level, move left, fought a blue monster, jumped up a little, wallwalk my way past a flame barrier, except there's no place to stop as I'm on a collapsible level. Before I can figure out how to keep moving, the level collapsed under me. The checkpoint was just at top of level, so I have to fight the blue monster AGAIN, just to die again as I try to figure out the unresponsive controls. You simply want stop playing after N'th time of frustration.

Chapter 3 was a 3D 'dragon riding' sequence that has you flying a dragon through some levels, shoot enemy dragon riders that appears ahead, and fly through some narrow portions. Extremely easy, much easier than the regular levels.

There are some portions where you take control of Elika instead, who is a caster that can "levitate", among other magic attacks. She can often find and access buttons that will open up the rest of the level for the "hero" (who would be Prince), but so far her story is incomplete except she seems to be related to ruler of the underworld. And with only text descriptions, there isn't much to make us care about the characters.

All in all, Prince of Persia 3D looks great, but plays rather horribly. I really tried to like it, but frustration sat in after repeated attempts to get past one silly section proved more than I can take.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: looks great, keeps flavor of game intact
Cons: doesn't PLAY smooth, not really 3D