Prince of Persia: Warrior Within [PS2]

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one cash-cow that Ubisoft wasn't about to have sit around to get tipped. Now Ubi's Montreal studio is busily cranking away on Prince of Persia 2 (insert your own looming subtitle here), and the pomegranate isn't looking to fall too far from the tree. And even if it did, we could just rewind time and rearrange the tree.

This time around, the Prince is visibly older, with more experience -- but as is so often the case, he isn't necessarily any wiser. He aims to defy his pre-ordained destiny, his predestined death, and to do it he'll journey to the subterranean bowels of a long-cursed island.

While Prince of Persia 2 still relies on the same essential flowing action/combat scheme, this follow-up title introduces a new system of melee combat that allows players to find the fighting style that best suits them. Wielding weapons that can be used alone or in combination, players can actually make custom attacks. Overall, the game has so far adopted a much tougher, darker look; our fair Prince now looks less like his baggy-pants wonderboy self and more like a seasoned warrior.

Combat has also been integrated much more into the flow of gameplay. In the original, a pattern emerged early that established the player would clear a room of enemies first, and then solve the environment puzzles. Now, enemies will appear at a less structured pace, and actually become part of the puzzle-solving process.

The mechanics of manipulating time have undergone changes, too. The Prince is now able to alter the flow of time in very strange and exclusive ways. The most extreme case of this -- at least, we sincerely hope it doesn't get any more extreme than this -- is embodied in the way time control can be "externalized" to affect only the player's surroundings. Don't think of reversing time a few scant seconds to fix some twitch-based mistake... think of reversing time so that the surrounding room reverts to its state in an entirely bygone era, un-eroded features and all!

Also, as if to underscore the inherently menacing problems of time travel, the game will force the player to face an entirely new bit of causal virtue. Rewind "local time" around you, and you can wind up restoring the enemies you already felled in the time frame in question! Anybody getting a headache yet? Good! We're making excellent progress.

Prince of Persia 2 seems squarely aimed at the, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought, altering only the aspects of the previous game that will increase the experience. Plus, it's always nice to see developers at least make nods to the perplexities of temporal issues, however fanciful. We'll be counting the hours until the game's release, and will bring you a full update as appropriate. All in good time.