Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Prince of Persia is one of those games that has imprinted itself forever upon the history of video gaming. Ask nearly any avid gamer what they were playing back in 1991 and 1992, and the odds are good that Prince of Persia will be in that list. So with such a rich heritage behind it, and with so many now adult gamers chomping at the bit to relive the "good old days", Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time had a pretty big task ahead of it. The good news is, it succeeds with flying colours.

The Sands of Time is a truly marvelous example of how a third person 3d adventure/action game should be made. Move over Max Payne and talk to the hand Lara Croft, because I only have eyes for the Prince. The story is definately one of the strong points of the game, and it goes a little something like this. You are (funnily enough) a Prince of Persia, in a time somewhere in the past, a time of war and bloodshed. Your father, the King of Persia, while on a little trip through India decides to attack and pillage the nearby palace of the local Maharajah. With the help of the Maharajah's traitorous vizier, the King launches a suprise attack and slaughters all who oppose him. In an effort to make his father proud, the Prince steals one of the Maharajah's greatest treasures, the Dagger of Time. The traitorous vizier has other plans for the dagger though, and after a bit of devious smooth talking, convinces the Prince to use the dagger to open up an odd looking giant hourglass. This unwittingly unleashes the Sands of Time, and that's when all hell breaks loose. The sands take over anybody nearby and turns them into a particularly nasty sand demon, and the only thing that can stop them and once again contain the sands of time is the Dagger of Time, now weilded by the Prince of Persia.

The narrative is told as if the Prince himself is reciting the story to the player. A number of cutscenes are featured throughout the game, most using the in-game engine, but these aren't the dodgy ingame cinematics you may be used to from the likes of Tome Raider. These ingame cinematics are smooth, well animated, awesomely voiced and genuinely entertaining. Often times there will also be small voice overs where the Prince adds a bit of a narrative flow to the events going on. For example, the first time you meet and kill a sand demon, the Prince stops to tell you that he really is not crazy, and this did in fact happen to him, and just give him a chance to explain (which is a subtle way of saying keep playing the game and you'll find out more). There is a lot of these subtle narrations throughout that really add a lot to the game. When you save the game, the Prince advises you "Ok, very well, I will start the story from here next time." And if you die he comes in with "No, No, that didn't happen, I didn't really die, this is what really happened..." and you restart. Its all very, very stylish, which is really a good way to describe this game as a whole; very very stylish.

The gameplay is generally what you'd expect from a 3d adventure/action game, but Prince of Persia: The Sands of time has perfected the genre. As you travel throughout the now infested palace you will face all sorts of dangers, from crumbling walls to bridges that fall as you run accross them to the obligatory pits of spikes and spinning buzzsaw traps. What makes the game so entertaining is navigating through all these areas. The architecture of the levels is amazing, and while it may look complex at first, each area can be completed with a bit of observation and a bit of logical thinking. The Prince possesses a dazzling array of moves that he can use to navigate these beautifully complex levels. As well as the general set of moves you would expect from a game like this (running, jumping, shimmying along ledges), the prince can run up walls, run along walls, jump off walls, tightrope walk accross thin beams, swing on ropes, and swing on beams, flagpoles or other objects sticking out of walls. All these moves can be combined to provide some great looking, death defying, acrobatic sequences that will just leave you wanting more. But the most important move of all, and what gives this game its unique hook, is the Prince's ability to rewind time. By collecting sand deposits scattered around the levels and by retrieveing the sand of the Sand Demons, you can use the Dagger of Time to rewind time itself. You can use this when you die for example, to rewind time to the point before you made that ill fated jump, or before you accidentally fell onto those nasty spikes. You can only rewind time to a certain extent (I think about 10 seconds backwards is the maximum), but this is generally more than enough to get you out of trouble. On top of all this, you can also drink from any source of water you find around the place (ponds, fountains, rivers, etc) to regain your health.

To give you a few hints about what to do in a each level, every time the Prince enters a save point, the Sands of Time trigger in him a premonition of the things he will do in the future. In these premonitions you see short glimpses of the Prince navigating the various parts of the next level, and you can replay these premonitions at will, as many times as you want. Often times if you get really stuck on a section, and have no idea what to do next, studying these premonitions can give you a nudge in the right direction.

As well as having a great set of moves, and wonderfully intricate levels, this game also has what may indeed be the best camera system EVER in a 3rd person adventure game. The camera generally sits behind and above the Prince, but on command you can switch to a first person view which lets you look in any direction you want, and you can also switch to a landscape camera which zooms right out and gives you an overall view of the level. The landscape camera is at times worth the price of admission alone. Dont you hate when you're playing a 3rd person game, and your character gets near a wall, and the camera ends up scrunched up behind you to the point where you can't see anything? This is where the landscape camera is a godsave. With this camera you can navigate the tightest passages or the highest ledges and still have a full view of your surroundings. As well as these different views, the standard camera will revolve and zoom in and out at certain times throughout the level to give you the best view of your surroundings. For example if you're swinging over a pit of spikes, the camera will zoom out and go into an overhead view, looking down on the action, so you can exactly gauge distances. It all works perfectly, and I can honestly say I have not had a single problem with the camera during the adventuring parts of the game; it is a work of art.

As well as all this nimble adventuring, the Prince often gets into combat with the various Sand Demons he encounters. This is where the stylish perfection of the game falters just a little, and is probably the only ***** in its shiny polished armour. All of your attacks are done with one button, and your jump button is used for rolling and dodging out of the way. As well as this you can perform a couple of special attacks by using combinations of jump and attack. These special attacks, like the moves you can pull off in the adventuring portions of the game, are very stylish and look great. Once you have knocked the sand demons to the ground you can then press the button assigned to your Dagger, which will stab the Dagger of Time into the prone Sand Demon and suck the Sands of Time out of him. You can then use these sands to rewind time when you die during combat or during the adventuring portions of the game. The Dagger serves another purpose during combat also. If the Dagger is powered up enough (the Dagger slowly powers up each time you retrieve sands from a downed demon), you will be able to stab it into an enemy and stop time for them. What this amounts to is a frozen enemy that you can slaughter at your leisure. Generally a quick combo on a frozen demon will kill them outright.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking this all sounds great, and you would be right. And I'm sure you're all wondering why I started that last paragraph off with such a condemning statement. Well, the reason is that combat just doesn't flow well. After you've gotten over the novelty of the Prince's cool looking combos and such, combat becomes a very one dimensional affair. You will find yourself using the Prince's special moves all the time, as they knock down any Sand Demon (except for bosses) in a single hit and allow you to retrieve their sand. In later levels you could be fighting with up to 6 or 7 enemies at once so you will be looking for the quickest way to kill each one. This also causes another problem on the PS2 version, as when there are a lot of enemies onscreen, the framerate really starts to suffer. While it remains playable, it definately takes a sharp drop and starts to struggle. The beautifully perfect camera present in the adventuring portions of the game also seems absent from the combat sections. The camera during combat somtimes ends up stuck in walls, stuck behind chairs or other obstacles, or stuck at weird angles that completely obscure your view of your character. While there are some cool zoom-in camera effects whenever you take the sand of a demon, the general gameplay camera during combat is a bit sub-standard. If the camera during the adventuring sections wasn't so damn perfect, this probably wouldn't be an issue, but sadly it is.

The graphics in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time are, without exception, spectacular. The textures throughout the levels are beautifully detailed, water effects look great, the character and demon models look wonderful, and the particle effects just have to be seen to be believed. As you travel throughout the levels, you will see the sands of time slowly spreading throughout the palace, flowing and swirling through the air around your feet like some sort of alien tide. As well as this, the animations, especially on the Prince, could not be better. The actual fighting and acrobatic animations for the main characters were motion captured from real actors, and it shows. Everything the Prince does looks so amazingly natural and flows so well that you will sometimes marvel over the fact that you actually have full control over it all and it isn't some well scripted cutscene.

In the sound department, Prince of Persia also scores a victory. There is not a real lot of music during the game, but what there is is used very well and adds greatly to the atmosphere. Most of the music starts up when you begin combat and carries an urgent, almost panicked tone to it. This really makes combat feel like a fight for survival, especially when you're up against 6 or 7 opponents at once. The voice acting throughout the game is top quality and cannot be faulted. There was not a single line of dialogue that made me cringe through the game, and often times you'll even find yourself laughing. Yes, thats right, the dialogue manages to be genuinely funny and amusing! The Prince joins forces with a mysterious woman who knows about the Sands of Time, and the back and forth wordplay between these two characters is perfectly executed. These conversations, full of wisecracks and sharp verbal quips are as stylish and smooth as the rest of the game is.

Lastability could be a small issue with some people, considering the game can be finished within about 12 hours on the default difficulty. There are a number of higher difficulty levels though, and this really is a game that would be worth playing a couple of times, just to enjoy the sheer stylish coolness of it all. As well as this, once you complete the game, you will unlock the original Prince of Persia on the PS2 version.

Quick Summary:

• The Good


• Perfectly executed 3d adventure style gameplay. The levels are complex, but logically laid out, and lots of fun to navigate using the vast array of acrobatic moves the Prince has.


• Beautiful graphics, with many great effects such as the Sands of Time swirling around your feet.


• Great voice acting and stylishly amusing dialogue. The wordplay between the Prince and his sidekick is geuinely entertaining.


• Quite possibly the BEST camera system ever used in a 3rd person adventure game.





• The Bad


• Combat can get a bit repetitive as you will find you end up using only one or two of the most effective moves to get your enemies dispatched as quickly as possible.


• The great adventure mode camera falls apart during combat and starts to suffer from some of the problems that camera systems in 3rd person games often do.


• Slowdown is noticeable on the PS2 version when lots of enemies are onscreen at once.


• Lastability may be a small issue for some people, but the game really is worth playing a few times





• The Verdict
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is due to make history, much as its predecessor did 12 years ago. This is not only the best 3d adventure/action game to come out this year, it is probably the best to come out for many many years. While it does suffer from a few small problems, all to do with combat, do not let this dissuade you; the good far, far outweighs the bad. If you have any interest in cool 3d adventure games, then definately pick yourself up a copy of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.