Imagine you made a game that was beautiful, fluid, well-designed, charming -- even witty at times. It has a few problems, notably combat, but most games do. Imagine further that this game of yours, upon release, doesn't sell quite as fast as expected. It does well enough in the end, but ... you think it could do better. You just need that killer angle, the hook that'll snare those fickle 18-24 year-old males. After some thought, you come up with a plan. Your sequel will be darker, which mostly means the colors will be expunged. It will have embarrassingly juvenile T&A. And it will jettison nearly every vestige of the last game's charm. Is this a winning plan? Back in the real world we'll soon find out, because I've just described Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

Warrior Within takes place a few years after The Sands of Time, and the titular prince (is he really a prince?) is quite literally having a bad time. Though he successfully used the Sands to undo the damage wrought in the first game, this has created a flaw in the timeline, raising the ire of a pretty scary time-demon thingy. It'll kill him sooner rather than later, and our resourceful royal is nearly out of ideas. Except ... perhaps he could find answers from the Empress of Time, the creator of the Sands that sparked this mess in the first place. So, amid storm-tossed seas, he sets out for her spookily monochromatic island.

She catches a lot of colds.

The More Things Change

Warrior Within features most of the solid gameplay mechanics of the first game, and brings in a few new ones. With a little controller coaxing, the Prince can be made to scurry up ledges, swing like an acrobat, jump between walls and even run along walls. New moves include sliding down cloth banners (that saves the ol' legs from nasty falls) and rope-assisted wall-running. For the most part, the "platforming" aspects feel very much like the first game's, which is good.

Being the most widely-criticized component of The Sands of Time, combat is somewhat changed. There's now a throw / grapple button, which lets the Prince fly behind his foe or even throw them. There's also a dual-wielding feature, which lets him pick up discarded weapons, with which he can execute special attack sequences. The new acrobatics do add a bit to the combat, but the overall feel is not very different from that of The Sands of Time. The combat is still kinda boring. The enemies' patterns are uninteresting to deal with, and the basic three-hit combo still rules the day. However, big kudos go to the throw move, which can be used to toss foes into the oblivion of pits. If you don't like the combat, immediately end it! That's an improvement over the first game, certainly.