Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

"The coolest game set in the middle east, to feature Zombies!"

Yeah, so I bought Prince of Persia. I heard it was a good and the whole time control thing kind of appealed to me. Actually I only planned on renting it first as I usually do with games, but after visit after visit to the video store and not having any in stock, I broke down and bought it.
Some people may not know this, but the PoP franchise is a pretty old one, dating back to the 80s, however, they weren't really a big hit then. So will this new adventure do justice to reviving the old series, or will it simply wither away like its predecessors?

*PLEASE KEEP IN MIND MY RATING SYSTEM IS EXTREMELY STEEP. SO EVEN THOUGH SOME SCORES SEEM LOWER THAN THEY SHOULD, I COUNT A (5/10) AS AVERAGE RATHER THAN THE APPARENTLY STANDARD (7/10)*

Gameplay: 7/10 (Great)
The gameplay of Prince of Persia is broken into two very different elements: combat and platforming/puzzle-solving. To fully explain to score of this section, I'm going to have to describe each one separately.
The combat in PoP is pretty much straightforward and simple, especially considering the immensely difficult acrobatic maneuvers the Prince will carry out. Once in combat mode (you've taken out your sword), you cannot do many of the things you can do in normal mode. For example, you cannot jump up a ledge without putting your sword away; this can get a bit annoying when you have to use your sword for something other than fighting, but we're not talking about that yet.
Once in combat there are tons of moves you can pull off: standard slashing with your sword, stabbing the Dagger of Time (more on that in a minute), vaulting over enemies, slashing them on the way down from a vault, vaulting over an enemy off a wall, diving into an enemy off a wall, plus a variety of special moves (more on that in a minute). This combat may seem pretty deep. Uh, yeah, um, it's not. You have one button for sword attack, one button for dagger attack, one button for vaulting/diving off walls, and one button to defend. This works great at the beginning of the game when the enemies can't counter any of your attacks, and you can do something like this:
Vault over an enemy and slash their back on the way down, then back flip once on the ground and nail another across the face, spin and whip them down onto the ground with the sword. Then you do a sort of barrel roll jump thing toward another enemy and hit them a few times, then a cartwheel to embed the dagger into each one, finishing them off.
Watching this never gets old, and is nothing short of spectacular, however, you enemies quickly begin to have longer weapons that they can bat you down with when you try to vault them, and others will have shields that will block everything you throw at them, and you end up waiting until they attack, and then sidestep and start hacking away. And, you cannot actually kill a sand demon (the enemies in the game) without stabbing them with the Dagger of Time. While this never gets to be a chore, it's a great relief when you get a sword at the end of the game that can kill any sand creature with one hit.
There are also special moves, like slowing down a single enemy or freezing the entire world for about ten seconds allowing you to kill all the enemies in the room. However, the former uses up a precious sand tank, which you might need to reverse time if you run out of health, and the latter requires all sand tanks full, and uses them all. You can only regain sand by finding sparse sand…refiller…thingies, and finding 8 of those gives you a new sand tank. You can also recover small amounts by killing enemies.
Overall, the combat could have been superb, but it just isn't. The platforming and puzzle solving (which makes up most of the game), thankfully, is awesome. Essentially each room turns into a giant puzzle, leaving you figure out how to get from one part to another in order to pull a switch or move an object that will essentially allow you to move to another part, et cetera. You'll do a lot of the same things, but that's not necessarily bad. In fact, it's great.
You can run on walls, run up walls, jump off walls to other walls, swing on poles jutting out of walls, swing on a pole, jump off into a wall, then jump off the wall onto a higher pole, swing on ropes, and it's all just so darn cool. Plus, if you screw up (which you will), you can reverse time with your dagger and try it again without the sucking.
Needless to say, the dagger makes it pretty easy to not die in any situation. Save points come in the form of small sand twister things, and when you save you see a premonition of what you have to do to get to the next save point. Not sure what to do next? Make your way back to the save point and watch the premonition again. Fall and die? Reverse time! These two elements make the game a lot easier than it could have been. Thankfully. Without the dagger this game would have been ridiculously frustrating.
All in all, the gameplay is made up of superb (9/10) platforming, and some awe-inspired, but only mediocre (4/10) fighting, and I give this section a seven since there's more platforming than fighting.

Graphics: 10/10 (Perfect)
This is the most beautiful game I have ever played across any console. And I played the Gamecube version. But the graphics are more than just a pretty face, they've got skills. How so, you ask? Read on.
Think of an average action game. Can't the camera get frustrating? Especially if the camera decides to move on its own. The designers of this game managed to eliminate that problem completely. If you're in a fight, usually against many enemies, the camera will intelligently know when it needs to change to a different position. The game will freeze, and the camera will quickly swoop to where it knows it should be, and usually where you want it to be, in a kind of cool, blurred, almost Matrix-like movement. Not only does this look cool, but also it may show you an enemy behind you that you were unaware of, while still giving you the best angle on an enemy you're dispatching at the moment. Towards the beginning of the game, I would sometimes prolong battles just to see this happen an extra time or two.
If you watch the special features (specifically the Making Of movie), you can stumble across the random trivia factoid that The Prince has over 750 animations. Now, as they say, that's not to say he has 750 moves. Most of the animations are simply transferring from one animation to another. When I first heard this (I watched the Making Of before playing the actual game), I sort of thought, “yeah, whatever you say.” But after playing the game, I'm surprised they only owned up to the 750 animations. The Prince's movements are so fluid it's ridiculous. After clearing a room of enemies, I remembered them saying the bit about 750 animations, so I decided to test it. I would go into a move, and right in the middle switch to another, then another, and another. Not a single skip of animation.
Another nice touch is that when you go into time reverse, the whole game turns into a light sepia tone, which looks suitably like you're in control of everything. Also, if you freeze a single enemy as mentioned earlier, then the one enemy will become sepia toned.
A score of ten means perfect, and when I say “perfect,” I MEAN perfect. As far as I'm concerned, that's just what the graphics in this game are. There are lots of nice details, and the developers spent a lot of time to make this world a beautiful place to play in.

Sound: 8/10 (Excellent)
There's not much to say about this part. Every sound in the game is perfect, but the only reason I'm not giving it a ten is because it doesn't just strike you as much as the graphics do. However, I do want to mention the soundtrack. It's one of the coolest I've heard in a game. It's a mixture of Arabian melodies with hard-rocking guitars, and it really fits perfectly with the fighting. But that's the problem. You only hear it during the fighting. This is understandable because it would sound out of place anywhere else, but it's too bad you can't hear this more often.

Value: 5/10 (Average)
This game's pretty short. I was able to dispose of it over a four-day weekend, totaling about 12 total hours of gameplay. There's also not much replay value once you finish, because the game is pretty much linear, and you can't go back and beat it a different way than before. However, depending on which console you buy it for, or the PC, you can unlock one of the original PoP games. I like it when they include older versions of a game, but you don't unlock it by beating the game. You have to find it. And unless you know exactly where it is because you looked it up or some one told you, you're likely not going to find it unless by complete accident (you accidentally swipe at an unbreakable wall with your sword, more than two times).

Subtotal: 7.4/10 (Great)

Bonuses:

+ 0.25 for Farah: I didn't mention her at all during the review, so I will here. You find her early in the game and she accompanies you on your quest to reverse turning everyone into sand creatures. She's armed with a bow and arrow, and can help you dispatch of enemies by shooting them, however she will occasionally “miss” and hit you. She can also pull the occasional switch that you can't reach, by sliding through small cracks in the wall. It's a nice variation from the standard running around, and offers some company instead of feeling so alone in the game.

+ 0.5 for being funny: There were some moments in this game that I thought were absolutely hysterical, most of which some from the verbal exchanges of the Prince and Farah.

- 0.25 for being short: I know platformers usually aren't very long, but this is short even by that standard.

- 0.2 for being too linear: There is never more than one way to do something. Period.

- 0.1 for the Prince being a wuss: If you fall from pretty much any height above 10 feet, you'll die. This is ridiculous! I'd take off more, but sometimes it's absolutely necessary in some of the rooms so that it's not too easy to get from one part to another.

Final total: 7.6/10 (Great) (I know it says I gave this an eight, but since you can't have decimals...)

This is a great game, and if you're watching some one play that is really good at the combat, it's almost like watching an action seen in a movie. However, unless you're a die-hard fan of action/adventure games, I recommend you rent this one, because you can likely beat it in one rental. And if you can't beat it in only one rental, then just rent it again for the next week. It will still be much cheaper than a purchase.
As for reviving an old series, you can be sure I'll be playing the sequel, which is in development.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/04