Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is a good example of what happens when evil marketing executives get their hands on a good game. It is terrific fun. It charms and satisfies the fingers and the thumbs. It is plainly and clearly the work of skilled, talented artists and coders.

But.

It is also plainly and clearly the work of people who regularly pepper their speech with words and phrases like "market share," "brand positioning," and "leverage." It stinks of pie charts and boardrooms and focus groups. And ultimately it is an embarrassment to its legacy.

Some background: more than a decade ago, a delightful computer game called Prince of Persia drew widespread affection (and considerable sales) with a jaunty adventure set in an imagined magical Middle East. We played as the Prince of the title; our job was to escape from a booby-trapped castle and rescue our true love, who was in the clutches of a diabolical madman.

The action was part environmental puzzle-solving (which required us to find clues to our escape route in the walls and the floors), and part swashbuckling combat. Prince of Persia was lusty fights and clanging swords, eerie quiet and head-scratching bafflement. It was sublime. It was blindingly good.

Last year at this time, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time came along, and everyone who had loved the original stood up and cheered. It was a modern update with 3D graphics and cinematic cut-scenes and an enormous development budget, but it was still undeniably Prince of Persia. Here was the same playful sense of humour. Here was the same jumping-and-slashing-and-looking-good-doing-it swordplay. Here was the same cheery, colourful art direction.

The Sands of Time was beautiful, and it was fun fun fun, and the Prince himself was a work of art. He could run up walls. He could leap from pillar to pillar to perilous ledge, without ever losing his balance or his sense of style. He was well dressed and acrobatic and he had a deft wit. He spoke with a hint of English accent. He set off everyone's gaydar. He was a bit like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, only tidier and fresher smelling.

Obviously that was enough of that. In the new game, the Prince is hardened. His voice is gruff. He needs a shave and a wash. He is angry. In the opening scene, when a sword-wielding assassin manages to cut him on the cheek, does he respond with one of the gentlemanly taunts we have come to expect from him ? No. Instead he grits his teeth and grunts:

"You bitch!"

Then the soundtrack roars to life, playing the kind of chuggy moronic instrumental hard rock you usually only get to hear in sports highlight shows. The guitars crunch and so do the drums. We consider banging our heads in time with the beat, but opt instead to simply wince and wonder where all the magic has gone.

Where The Sands of Time was bright and cheerful and wry and charming. Warrior Within is content merely to kick ass. Want to know how much ass it kicks? A lot. That's why it won't stop playing that stupid music at us. If we ever forget about the ass kicking, the Prince will growl and make a mean face to remind us.

All this would be funny if it weren't so sad. Obviously, somebody in marketing got the message that "dark" "edgy" games were all the rage, and then went on a rampage through the development studio, ordering re-versioning after re-versioning until the Prince himself was dark enough and edgy enough to play rough with Master Chief and the homeboys from San Andreas. Another generic idiot hypermasculine action hero was born. And a character died.