Resurrecting a classic game on a modern console is a tricky proposition. Success is by no means guaranteed and failure is easy to accomplish. Take a look at games like Frogger, Pitfall, and Spy vs. Spy. All of which were classic games, none of which had any real success on present day consoles. So when Ubisoft had announced it was bringing the beloved Prince of Persiainto modern day, gamers held their breath, hoping they would do it right. Fortunately, they did, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was an excellent game, though it didn’t have much commercial success. Not more than a year later, Ubisoft released it follow-up, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Though it solved one of the problems Sands of Time had (combat being too tedious), Warrior Within lost a lot of the Arabian Nights feel of The Sand of Time. Still, Warrior Within was a commercial success, if not a critical success. Now a year has passed, and Ubisoft has attempted to meet both gamers and critics halfway with Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

The game apparently follows the alternate ending of Warrior Within, where the Prince had saved Kaileena and killed the Dahaka with her help. The terrible fear of death catching up to him is no longer an issue, so the Prince is looking forward to relaxing at home. Though Kaileena is at his side, they are not lovers. Upon seeing the shores of his homeland, however, he finds it is under attack by a mysterious army. Worse, during an attack on his boat, Kaileena is taken by this army and sentenced to die. The Prince attempts to save her, but is too late. Her death unleashes the sands, which also infect the Prince. Now on the run in his own city, Prince must find a way to free his people and deal with the creature he is becoming, the Dark Prince.

There are a lot of new additions to The Two Thrones, mostly involving the Prince himself. For starters, he has gained a series of new moves that make navigating through the streets of Babylon much more fun. He can chimney slide down or climb up to narrowly spaced walls, and use his dagger to stab into certain section of wall to get extra climb or run space. The Prince can also do a new forty-five degree angled jump at certain places, to make leaping forward much easier. By far though, the best addition to the Prince’s arsenal is the new Speed Kill system.

The new Speed Killsystem is a kind of psuedo-stealth system. If the Prince can catch his enemies unaware, he can initiate a timing based mini-game which quickly dispatches any enemy he comes across… Sometimes even two enemies at once. Miss your cue and the game reverts back to the Free-Form Fighting system that Warrior Within championed. It cannot be understated just how much the Speed Kill system adds to the game. If Warrior Within proved anything, its that a deep fighting system doesn’t necessarily make a fun game. All the tedious combat of Warrior Within ruined some of the amazing fun of that game, so the Speed Kill system is a welcome addition. Not to mention it makes the Prince look even more dangerous.

But the Prince is not alone. The Dark Prince has infected him, and is slowly taking him over. This happens at scripted times in the game, though it is usually when the prince is under some sort of great stress. The Dark Prince is a welcome addition to the game, and adds new moves all his own. His signature weapon is the DaggerTail, a chain wrapped around the Prince’s left arm that the prince can’t remove. This chain gives access to new abilities, such as using it to swing across chasms and grab items the Prince can’t usually reach. The Dark Prince’s best feature is his amazing combat ability. While the Prince may be a skillful warrior, he is nowhere near the melee master that the Dark Prince is. The Dark Prince can whip the DaggerTail around him like a shield and use it to whip his enemies into submission… As well as strangle them to death with the Dark Prince’s own version of a Speed Kill.