Prince of Persia Classic

Readers of British tabloids could be forgiven for thinking a prince's life is all nightclubs and ladies, but there was a time when the role involved something considerably more perilous. And worthy.

Take the Prince of Persia. Gaming's most famous royal has already light-footedly darted, swung and climbed his way through two mobile titles – Two Thrones and Warrior Within – but those are just two of his most recent adventures. The Prince has been around for far longer and now Gameloft is taking him back to his roots, in a game based on the classic 1989 original outing in which your goal is very simple: reach the princess within one real-time hour or she'll be executed and you might as well hang up your sandals in shame (an emotion seemingly missing in many a modern prince).

As a result of this back-to-basics approach, Prince of Persia Classic avoids the chariot races and other frills seen in the previous mobile games. Instead, levels are like mazes of platforms, spikes and frighteningly hard-to-judge drops and leaps, full of switches, timed gates and other puzzles. The end product, then, is a refreshingly pure platformer and one that'll have you stumped on more than one occasion. It's a tough game, but once you've learnt its rules you'll rarely find yourself blaming anything but your own mistiming or ill-judgement as you drop to your death.

The first thing Gameloft has got right is the control, which is remarkably fluid and seamless. The Prince clings to edges and springs off walls automatically, which gives a feeling that he's working with, rather than against you. It helps that his movement is convincing, of course. Graphically the game's side-on 3D visuals are full of depth and detail, but the Prince's animations in particular look amazing: he tip-toes, jumps, rolls and climbs with remarkable realism.

The only sections that caused us to utter a few profanities were ones that don't immediately make the hazard obvious. These can be walls that spring up unexpectedly or spikes that pop up too late for you to realise they're there. It doesn't happen often and you could argue that memorising these dangers is part of PoP's appeal – certainly, the original game was essentially a test of reflexes and memory. Besides, there are several thoughtfully placed checkpoints in each level, too, which makes dying less of an ordeal than it could have been.

Ultimately, replaying Prince of Persia and remembering its puzzles and jumping sections is what you'll need to do to finish all of the game's modes completely. As well as the main Story mission, which has the one-hour time limit and throws in 25 coins to collect in each level, there's a Classic alternative without the coins and a Time Attack option, in which you can keep playing levels to beat your previous times.

Of course, it's not just navigating and jumping; there's also sword fighting. This is handled quite simply by having '5' as an attack button and mapping blocks to the up and down buttons. That said, it's not quite as straightforward as it sounds and it's quite easy to die at the hands of one of the trickier enemies. That's not so much to do with the controls but more directly with the combat dynamic. Timing blocks, for instance, is absolutely necessary, while enemies such as skeletons can't be killed by whacking them alone and instead they need to be toppled off the edge of a platform.

It's a hardcore challenge but that's sure to add to the appeal for fans of the original adventure. Thankfully, there's been little dumbing it down for mobile – levels are tricky to find your way to the end of and many drops are a leap of faith. Okay, a mini-map element has been implemented, which helps massively by marking off areas you've visited and highlighting where objectives are positioned, but you have to find the map in the level first, and it's always well hidden.

Everything taken in account – the fluid, intuitive platforming and the clever puzzling – Prince of Persia Classic is a shining example to all mobile platform games out there. It doesn't have the same sort of modern action or thrills as Two Thrones, but its core gameplay is near flawless and is a wonderful reminder of the fact that good, solid concepts stand the test of time. Which is more than you can say of many of today's princes.