carl_lazarevic's Full Review: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for PlayStation 2
I've been told that Prince Of Persia was one of the most revolutionary platform games ever made, personally wouldn't know as I never got a chance to play it, but it is said that if there had been no Prince Of Persia then Tomb Raider would likely not have existed. Well over the years things seem to have gone quiet on the old Persian front, until recently a new POP title was announced, entitled Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time.
Whereas most of the sequels released now are really attempts at a cinematic story with a few minor game-play sections intermittent, Sands Of Time takes the opposite approach. It tells a nice simple story about a young Persian Prince who discovers the mysterious dagger of time, and is tricked into using it on an equally mysterious hour glass. This event causes a massive explosion that sends the Sands Of Time flying throughout the kingdom, turning all of it's inhabitants into hideous monsters. Only the young Prince, and Farah, the daughter of a rival Sultan, remain as they must fight their way through the kingdom in an attempt to return the dagger to the hour glass, fixing everything that has happened.
That story is never so complex that it requires a lot of needless animated sequences interrupting the game, but rather it develops as a little romance between the 2 characters and you observe it through their banter during the actual game-play moments.
Those game-play levels are pretty sweet though, and even though I've never played any of the previous titles, I feel pretty confident in saying that fans will not be disappointed. At it's Core it's like the next stage of the Tomb Raider engine, but it really is the next stage as the level of control it gives you over the main character is unmatched. You have the standard moves such as running, jumping and grabbing a ledge after making that perfectly timed leap, but that takes up a relatively small amount of the games puzzles. More often than not you'll need to make a combination of about 5 or 6 of his abilities before you will have done a puzzle, and this will just leave you with another bunch of puzzles before you reach the end of a level. Examples of his abilities include running along walls, both horizontally and vertically, swinging on vertical bars, swinging on/climbing ropes, climbing ladders, crawling along ledges and anything else you can imagine. So you could find yourself with a puzzle requiring you to gain access to a switch, high up a wall on the other side of the room. After looking around you find that you need to run along the wall next to you, leaping at the last second to grab a parallel bar, which you swing on and leap off, landing you on a ladder which you climb to reach a ledge, which has a rope to swing on, taking you to another ladder, which you slide down onto the final ledge, running up the wall and pressing the switch, simple really.
My personal favorite ability though, (not for being anything overly spectacular, but purely for the fact that it was satisfying to pull off every time) was the ability to leap between walls. This can be used whenever 2 walls are in close proximity, and how close they are decides whether you use it to reach a very high ledge, or get down from a similarly high ledge. All you do is run up one wall then jump at the last minute, hit jump again the second you hit the opposite wall, then do the same again for each wall until you have achieved your goal. The problem is that each of these multiple jumps requires perfect timing, hit the jump button either a second early or a second late and the Prince falls from the wall, often to his death.
Thankfully, with all these pixel perfect jumps required, death is by no means certain. The games biggest advantage is the dagger of time that our hero carries. Mis time a jump, or find any of the other many ways of losing and a quick tap of the R1 button reverses time by up to about 60 seconds. This can only be done a few times, depending on how much sand you have in your dagger, but it can be refilled by drawing sand from an enemy, or one of the games many sand clouds, so death is rarely the cause of a long backtrack to the start of a level.
Though this is not going to be necessary to often as the control system is excellent. Normally when you have as many abilities as you do in this game the control system becomes a pain, but in Sands Of Time there are no abilities too difficult to pull off. Hit R1 as you run toward a wall and you'll run along it, grabbing ledges, ropes and things is automatically handled by the game and once you get the hang of leaping between walls it becomes second nature. This, combined with the fact that the camera is at the perfect angle for 90% of the game, means that you can focus on your timing and enjoy the fruits of your labour.
The only other game-play area that is worth mentioning is in the battles, and they work really well within the game. On the first level you are fighting palace guards, and this allows you to practice the various moves in the game. After that though you come across the sand creatures which are much harder to kill. You have to knock them down, then use your dagger to draw out their sand. Early creatures are easy, a quick tap of R1 while moving toward them and you leap over and knock them down. However later monsters wont be knocked down the first time, and can hit back when you try this. Against these you need to find other tactics for victory, which is simple enough one on one, but against multiple opponents and they will take advantage of any moment you hit an enemy. Thankfully you can also hit them with your dagger to freeze them in time, which enables you to destroy them with a super move, which still leaves you vulnerable to the attacks of other enemies. Unfortunately I have to admit, during the later levels these battle scenes would contain more and more enemies, and inevitably began to feel a little repetitive.
Graphically the game is very good. It doesn't look super realistic, but then I don't think it was meant to. Nevertheless character models are looking very smooth, and moving with some amazing animations. Unfortunately I didn't feel that the little details, hair and clothing movement, were up to the standard left by other games. It's just a small thing, and barely noticeable in the heat of combat, but it is a little more noticeable during the slow motion sections.
Though in the area of sound the game is perfect. It has some very good voice acting, particularly the prince's frustrated sarcasm, and the background tunes were great at giving the game it's Arabian nights atmosphere.
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