It hasn't been that long between Xbox drinks for the Prince. Due to an exclusivity deal with Sony, the Xbox version of the Princes last outing was only released here last February, 3-4 months after the PS2 version. This would just about make Prince of Persia : Warrior Within (from now on PoP-WI) one of the fastest game sequels in history. Not that anyone should mind as reviewers across the globe absolutely loved the game and its average gamerankings.com score of 94% is certainly indicative of its quality. But for some reason it failed to burn up the sales charts, which is an absolute crime because Prince of Persia : The Sands of Time remains one of the finest platform titles available.

With the disappointing sales in mind it's perhaps this reason that has seen Ubisoft Montreal try and reinvent the prince. Sure the last game contained plenty of action but the Princes bright blue clothing, attitude, wit and boy band haircut helped lend a lighter air to the game that, for this sequel, has been absolutely turned on its head.

Firstly, the Prince is pissed off. The whole tone, script and look of PoP-WI is that of a darker, more serious nature than the last game and it's obvious that the game is being targeted towards mature gamers that may have overlooked Sands of Time. This more 'mature' look is unfortunately something of a paradox as while everything in the game is deliberately now not aimed at kids, the female costumes and script are something that only a 13 year old would probably get excited about. The first boss battle you encounter sees the Prince calling a barely clad female adversary, who looks like something out of a vampire film, a 'bitch' and while the script is definitely average, luckily the games incredible action and graphics manage to save the day and prevent the series from descending into immature obscurity.

I do guess that the Prince (does he even have a name?) can be excused if he is ticked off. Probably still a bit upset about losing his father he also has the small matter of being pursued by Dahaka, a demon seeking retribution for the Sands of Time being let loose upon the world. Yes, even though you succeeded in your quest in the last game, and paid a pretty heavy personal price, the Dahaka is mighty ticked off and holds you personally responsible. To avoid his own death and cheat fate the Prince must travel to the Empress of Time on a mysterious island, go back in time and stop her from creating the Sands of Time in the first place. Should be a breeze right!

If you played through the last game, the controls in PoP-WI will feel instantly familiar. You move around with the left stick, move the camera with the right stick, jump/roll with A, perform combo moves and attack with X and Y, block with the R trigger and in times of trouble, use the L trigger to rewind time. The Prince is still as nimble as ever and is able to run up walls, perform backflips and all sorts of smoothly animated acrobatics. One nifty addition is that the Prince can now 'duel wield', sorry, I mean carry two weapons at once. Even cooler is that at any time you can throw your second weapon and if timed properly, get treated to a snazzy slow-motion scene of your weapon slicing your foe in half or removing his head from his shoulders. Slicing up baddies with two swords is very cool and the combo moves you can pull off are helped by some ultra smooth animations that are a joy to watch. Another new addition is the special moves that you earn while you progress and these include being able to slow time, which helps a great deal in the 'always outnumbered' battles you find yourself in, or being able to send a small shockwave out to knock enemies on their backs. Also now if you find yourself taking too much damage (yes you can still rewind time) and you know where to go, you can simply run away and you aren't penalised for not killing all your foes in each area.

Overall the fighting system in the new game builds on an already great system and every fight in the game can be tackled differently if you choose. Even if you die and have to try a few battles a number of times, the combat system is fantastic and while it does still get repetitive it is more enjoyable than in Sands of Time. PoP-WI also contains a number of Boss battles that are a great challenge. You may get to a point early on where you get so used to the controls and blocking at the right time that you start getting through most of the fights with little health loss. Well the Boss battles will fix that as I found them all immensely challenging but also incredible to behold at the same time.

The A.I also ramps itself up as you pick up more powerful weapons and skills and it even seems to adjust on the fly if you use the same moves over and over! One complaint I have to make is that you are able to perform what appear to be 'finishing moves' where on a downed foe, the Prince will pull off a savage looking downward stab and while in Sands of Time you used this to finish enemies off, in this game they get straight back up!

In typical Ubisoft fashion the levels are outstanding and of the same high standard as Sands of Time. Quite often I found myself just rotating the camera round to take everything in. Sunlight creeps in through cracks in walls and as you are required to shift time between the past and present the levels change from being new to over run with vines and other plant growth. There are a number of puzzles you will be faced with but again the biggest puzzle is simply working out where to go next. There is a map but it's next to useless and quite often I found myself back tracking explored areas because I went the wrong way.

I'm against games that just totally hold your hand from start to finish but a little bit more direction and a better map would have certainly helped to save lots of wasted time. And here's another unfortunate paradox in the game because whilst the levels look amazing, due to all the backtracking and repetition that this brings, I found them less enjoyable this time around. The levels are still littered with loads of traps in the form of spiked poles, buzz saws that move up and down walls, spike traps, giant rotating blades but thankfully there are loads of save points.

Unfortunately while the levels are excellent and the combat system even better it's the new darker aspect that is the games biggest letdown. All the changes made to the Prince simply do nothing more than turn him into something bland and generic. The script is extremely poor and instead of the lame comments the Prince dishes out he would have benefited greatly from some better writing. All is not lost though as he doesn't really have a great deal to say throughout the game and it's best to rather let your sword do the talking anyway. To match the Prince's new demeanor the games music follows suit and instead of more great Middle Eastern themed tracks we get some generic wuss rock guitar riffs that just totally seem odd and out of place.

It's almost as if the developers were trying too hard to make the Prince seem darker but luckily it's easy to look past and enjoy the many good points of the game. The one part of the darker edge that I did enjoy is the combat moves. You are now able to lop the heads of your enemies, and there is now quite a bit of blood that goes with all the violence.

PoP-WI still features no multiplayer modes but it is Xbox Live Aware and also has 2 online modes. These feature no multiplayer at all and one is a time challenge mode and the other an arena challenge mode that are fun for a while. You can also upload your best times and scores to ranking ladders to compare with your friends. Apparently there is also some downloadable content coming but no mention has been made yet as to what this might contain. Personally I would have loved to see a full blown online co-operative mode with traps and puzzles that require teamwork but that's something we will have to keep wishing for.