Prince of Persia: Rival Swords review

Are Wii controls enough to make an old game new again?

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Combat, on the other hand, is kind of tedious. The new control scheme helps a lot - somehow, it's just more fun to swing your arms around than to mash buttons - but eventually, you'll start to realize you're just busting out the same slash combos over and over again. It's far more satisfying to just bust out stealthy "speed kills" whenever possible, which let you sneak up on enemies and hack them to death through a series of timed swings. (These are also instrumental to winning the handful of boss battles, so you know.)

Fighting gets a hell of a lot more interesting when the Dark Prince shows up. A by-product of the internal struggle between the original charming, naive Princeand the "battle-hardened outcast"he became in Warrior Within, the Dark Prince is a shock-hairedwraith with a razor-sharp whip imbedded in his forearm. Most of the time, he's just a sneering voice in the Prince's head, but he takes over when the story calls for it.

The problem with the Dark Prince is that he loses health constantly, and can only heal with magical sand - which, conveniently, is stored in enemy torsos and random bits of scenery. So if the Prince's segments aren't frantic enough for you, turning into the Dark Prince gives the game more urgency and a sharper focus on combat as you plow ahead as fast as possible, looking for the next enemy to get your sand fix from. It's not all bad, though; the Dark Prince's chain whip makes fighting (and death-from-above speed kills) a lot more interesting, especially now that you get to swing it around with the Nunchuk.

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionThe best Prince of Persia since Sands of Time returns with cool motion controls and not much else
Platform"Wii","PSP"
US censor rating"Teen","Teen"
UK censor rating"",""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.