Ever since we first heard about the Wii and its ambitious motion-sensitive control scheme, our minds have been swirling with visions of all the awesome things we'd be able to act out in our living rooms. And since we live in a culture with violence-saturated mainstream media (totally not our fault), some of those visions were a bit, shall we say, dark. Yes, we want to shotgun someone or something by pointing at its face and pulling the trigger. Yes, we want to beat people (read: videogame characters) up with our fists and assorted blunt instruments. And yes, we want to stab, slice, slash, and every other action verb associated with swordplay.

Enter Prince of Persia: Rival Swords. When it was announced back in December, we dreamed of throat-slashing swipes and spine-severing jabs performed gracefully with Remote and Nunchuk in hand. Now we've gotten our hands on a video that demonstrates some of the ways that you'll be able to execute your favorite Prince-ly manuevers on the Wii. Hit the Movies tab above, and click on "Prince of Persia: Rival Swords - Wii controls 01-24-07" to give it a look-see.

Above: This Xbox Two Thrones screen shows one of the moves we wouldn't mind performing with Wii controls

Our impressions are mixed. The video covers a wide sample of the prince's repertoire, but doesn't feature much in the way of diverse control movements. The most dramatic motions are accomplished largely by jerking the controllers up and down. Though this repetition is interrupted by a tilt here and a pull there, the dominant movements seem to evoke more of a petulant child, banging his fists on the table and demanding more ice cream, than a warrior prince.

The Wii is still a young system, and we don't really expect that developers will be giving us the chance to determine which ribs we stick our dagger between, but some more lively slashery would be nice. We're also wary because Rival Swords is a port of the prince's 2005 adventure, The Two Thrones. That game was excellent, but is publisher Ubisoft just slapping a half-assed new control system on its old material to capitalize on the Wii novelty factor?

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords is set for a March release, so we'll know soon enough.

January 24, 2007