Hands on with Prince of Persia: Warrior Within on iPhone

There's long been a fascination with squeezing big console games onto portable devices.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is an unlikely candidate for such a conversion - iPhone and iPod touch aren't the first devices that spring to mind when it comes to such difficult work.

Beyond the challenges of working with a touchscreen, Gameloft is grappling with portables that have less power than the PlayStation 2 that ran the original game. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is clearly a technical achievement, yet more polishing and tweaking of the controls are needed for it to feel completely solid.

A direct port of the console original, Warrior Within sticks to the story with the same voice acting, cutscenes, and sequences. Condemned for having unleashed the Sands of Time, the Prince journeys to the Island of Time to prevent the sands from ever being created. What occurs, however, is a paradox of time in which the Prince must battle gods and guardians in an effort to save himself from death.

While the story remains consistent, it's clear from the opening battle against antagonist Shahdee that the manner by which you control the action has changed considerably. A virtual analogue stick moves the Prince, while buttons for attacking, defending, and jumping are situated in the lower-right corner of the screen.

Swiping anywhere on the screen adjusts the camera. This is crucial when lining up jumps - something that occurs frequently through the course of the game.

Warrior Within is as much an action game as platformer and its the latter that is cause for concern.

The controls are appropriately designed (virtual analogue stick with buttons), yet the manner in which they function is clunky. It's not the result of any one flaw, but several factors that need to be addressed before release: performance stability, loading times, and the stiffness of the analogue stick.

Unsurprisingly, the game doesn't run as smoothly as the console original. It's unfair to complain about this from an aesthetic perspective, though it does impact how you play the game. There's a tension that exists because the game doesn't run quite as fast as desired.

To be fair, I didn't experience any game-killing slowdown, yet it never felt fluid enough for me to feel entirely at ease.

Frequent pauses for loading within levels contributes to this sensation. Again, it's less about the presentation and more how it affects gameplay. Prepping for a jump and having the game stop for to load for a moment is jarring. Some of this hopefully is a result of the game's unfinished state and won't make it into the final release.

Of course, the biggest issue lies in the functionality of the analogue stick. In an effort to cull realism, there's a notable heft to the controls that reflect the Prince's mass and momentum as you move about. It's certainly realistic, but with the passable technical speed of the game it contributes the aforementioned tension.

Eliminating that edge will be essential to making Prince of Persia: Warrior Within an ideal adaptation. It's obviously technically possible to squeeze the game onto iPhone and iPod touch, yet the ultimate question is whether it can be polished to such a degree that playing it is enjoyable without reservation.