Prince of Persia: The Sands of TimeDeveloper: UbiSoft MontrealSystem: Sony Playstation 2 Publisher: Ubi Soft Released: 2003 |
A Review by Mike Bracken
12/13/2005
When UbiSoft unveiled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time at this year's E3, gaming journalists went crazy—at long last, the Prince had what looked like a sequel worthy of his historic lineage. So, now that the game is out on all three platforms, does it live up to the hype and expectations? Read on and see for yourself.
Generally speaking, taking classic 2D games and revamping them to 3D is a daunting task. For every success, there seem to be at least two failures. At least part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that what makes a game work in the 2D medium doesn't always translate to third dimension. Giving characters that existed in the 2D plane a whole world to explore and interact with opens the door for a myriad of problems—cameras don't always work right, wonky physics weren't an issue in the older version, and a need for more in-depth gameplay. Some titles, like Super Mario 64 have made the transition seamlessly—but this is an exception.
The Sands of Time makes the wise decision to not try and reinvent the wheel. What made the original Prince of Persia so engaging was it was a well-designed platformer with a few puzzle elements and a little combat thrown in to keep things interesting. This newest incarnation sticks with the gameplan, and the end result is a game that makes a strong case for itself as a Game of the Year contender.
Players will take control of the Prince, a young Persian royal on a mission of conquest with his father. Discovering the rank-and-file soldier life isn't for him, the Prince sets off to raid a rival king's treasure tomb in order to present his father with a gift. What he discovers is the Dagger of Time, a mystical artifact that serves as the key to a large hourglass. When an evil Vizier tricks the Prince into opening the hourglass, the sands of time are unleashed and everyone in the kingdom is turned into a hideous sand creature.
Angered, the young Prince sets out to destroy the sand creatures and put the sand of time back into the hourglass. Doing so will require that he and his companion Farah (daughter of the king who possessed the dagger originally) traverse the crumbling castle while solving puzzles, take part in some mind-bending platform situations, and fight the hideous sand creatures.
Like the original, The Sands of Time is essentially a platformer. The Prince is amazingly agile, able to run across walls, perform incredible jumps, shimmy across ledges, and vault from one pole to another with the greatest of ease. Even with these superhuman skills, players will be working overtime to get through the game's numerous areas—this game is tough.
To help players along, the Dagger of Time serves not only as a weapon, but also a valuable tool for controlling the flow of time itself. As the Prince uses the dagger to suck the sands of time from vanquished foes, he can also use the dagger to do things like rewind time, slow down enemies, or speed up his own attacks. The rewind feature, in particular, is especially useful—make a bad jump and it leads to instant death? Just rewind. Take too much damage in battle? Rewind and try again…without this feature, most gamers would never see the end credits of this title.
Yet, even with this nifty little tool, the game is tough. The environments are huge, and the number of ledges, overhangs, switches and whatnot can have players constantly stopping to figure out what to do next. This is a game for people who like puzzles, trial-and-error gameplay, and thinking…it's not a fast-paced action-fest.
Even combat, which is the one place where players would assume the game would pick up in pace, is relatively restrained. Running into battle and hacking away is a good way to die—the Prince needs to block and pick his spots for attack, a fact that adds even a strategic element to the fighting engine.
It's not all slow, though—because when the Prince finds an opening, he's a thing of beauty. Vaulting attacks, jumping off walls, parries and counters, etc. are all implemented into the game's fighting engine in a way that makes pulling off even the most complicated maneuvers seem like second nature. The thrill of vaulting over the top of an enemy, stabbing him while in the air, then stabbing him again upon landing is something that never gets old.
And the reason it never gets old is because The Sands of Time is one of the few games in recent memory to remember the old showbiz mantra of “leave them wanting more”. Traversing the castle and defeating the Vizier can be accomplished in around 10 hours, making this game just long enough to justify the full purchase price, but not so long that players lose interest before reaching the end. Other developers would be well served to look at this game and learn not every title needs to last 50 hours to be good. The Sands of Time crams more fun, thrills, and awe-inspiring moments into 10 hours than most games do in 30.
Still, for as good as the game is, it's not without a few minor problems. The PlayStation 2 version's graphics are arguably the weakest of the three consoles. They're still nice, but they're not nearly as sharp as the ones on the Xbox or the GameCube. The framerate stutters a bit at times, and the camera is occasionally an issue as well (although, not a major one, fortunately). Clipping shows up from time to time (with the Prince swinging his sword through solid walls in a few spots), but again, it's all pretty minor.
Back on the plus side of things, the game's voice acting and music are excellent. The voice actor for the Prince has a great delivery that makes many of the game's wry and sardonic lines work surprisingly well. While the quality of voice acting in games has improved dramatically in the past two years (wherein more games have utilized voice actors), this is still a standout performance.
A lot of gamers wondered if all the buzz around Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was just another example of the game press' hype machine going into overdrive. After spending 10 hours with the game, I can safely say it is not. The Sands of Time is an excellent game that reminds me of why I play games to begin with. It's fun, it's challenging, and it's never dull. It may borrow elements from other games (most notably Ico and Blinx: The Time Sweeper), but it melds them into something uniquely original. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time may not win Game of the Year honors, but it certainly deserves to be amongst the finalists.
© Copyright ToxicUniverse.com 12/13/2005
