Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Review

Everyone would like to be able to control time. How cool would it be to be able to rewind time as much as you’d like and correct mistakes you’ve made or to be able to relive some of the most extraordinary moments of your life. I know I’d do it all the time if I had the chance, but since I know it’ll never happen in real life, I guess I’ll have to do it in my videogames.

Based on the game of the same name released a long time ago, Prince of Persia brings back all of the death trap puzzle solving that was found in the original and brings it into a fully 3D environment. It features everything the original game had to offer, even the battle sequences and then some. It was one of the best games to be released in 2003 but didn’t achieve the commercial success Ubi Soft hoped it would have in the US. Fortunately for us though, European gamers were intelligent enough to buy it and we will be getting a sequel just in time for the holidays.

Ubisoft decided to make the game with the help of the creator of the original, mister Jordan Mechner. He helped supervise the game and tried to stay as true to the original as possible while adding a lot more stuff that is now possible with today’s consoles. He is also responsible in part of the story as it is, of course, his creation and only he should know what the prince will be facing in his adventures.

I remember playing the game on my NES back in the 1980s. I know the original was a PC game but I wasn’t a PC gamer at the time so most of my gaming was done on my TV set. The game was very simple but still you’d be hooked to it. You had to escape the dungeon in a set amount of time which already puts some pressure on you. The traps were everywhere and you’d often die and have to restart everything which was part of the challenge since you’d have to remember everything by heart in order to come back and do it correctly the next time. The game was very difficult and I never actually finished it, even though now I’m better at games so I guess I should play it again and experience it one more time.

Gone are the dungeons! Well, not entirely but there aren’t that many in the game. Instead, most of the game takes place in a huge palace. The story begins as you, the prince, are attacking the palace of an ennemy and steal the dagger of time from him. You don’t know yet though that the dagger holds powers beyond your wildest dreams and that a single mistake of yours will change your life forever. As you come back, the royal Vizier tricks you into opening the forbidden Hourglass which unleashes the Sands of Time on the earth and curses everyone by turning them into sand creatures. The Vizier now wants the Dagger of Time to become immortal and it is your job to stop him. But you don’t know that at first as what you want is escape this dangerous place and go back to your previous world. To do that, the prince will be aided on his quest by a young and gorgeous women named Farah.

The story is told very nicely through a few FMV cutscenes in the game as well as real-time cutscenes. The voice acting is really good and even though there aren’t many characters in the game you will still be very intrigued and will continue playing to know what’s going to happen even though this isn’t the game with the deepest story I’ve seen. It’s more of a backstory, a reason for the prince to fight and for this game to exist.

As you begin your quest you won’t have all of the abilities and attacks the prince can perform throughout the game. You will acquire those by absorbing sand clouds with your Dagger. Each time you’ve absorbed a certain amount of those you gain one more sand tank which means you will be able to perform more abilities. For example, the one you have at the beginning is the power to rewind time itself for a maximum of 10 seconds. So if you jump off a cliff by mistake you will be able to rewind time and still be alive. Another is the ability to slow down time in battle to kill ennemies more easily or accelerate time which is also very helpful. You can also freeze ennemies by using the dagger and then slice them in half with your sword which can really save your life in battles when you are fighting lots of ennemies at the same time.

The puzzles in the game are very well done as everything looks very natural and doesn’t look like it was put there just for fun. Most of the time you will be jumping from ledge to ledge or from rope to rope, wall jumping and pushing switches to open doors for a limited time. You can also wall run in this game which will be used quite often and really looks cool. At some point you will, for example, run up a wall and press a switch which will make a platform appear behind you. You have to then jump on it and perform the same thing over and over to get to the top. You will also be running sideways on walls and then jump to reach ladders or other platforms. There are lots of poles in that game and it is the combination of all those elements that make this game really cool. It might seem stupid in words but when you play the game and see every idea the developer has come up with and how you perform certain tasks you will understand why this game is so great.

One reason though why those puzzles are so great is that you have to perform all of those great moves in order to complete them and, sometimes, in a time limit which really puts some pressure on you. The prince’s moves are all very fluid and he also moves really quickly so everything is performed easily so it’s really the player’s fault if he misses something. There are places with rotating blades and it is possible for the prince to roll under them even though they move really quickly. You also need to walk really slowly on spike traps and it kind of reminded me of the slow walking in Splinter Cell. Walk too quickly and the spikes come out making you lose some of your precious health.