Pros: Control scheme, fun to play, lush graphics, soundtrack
Cons: The difficulty system isn’t balanced, some camera issues, short
The Bottom Line: Not to be confused with: The singer Prince’s porn film, Prince of Persian Cats: The Hands of a Mime or the awful sequel to it Aliens Vs. Predator.
JiggyJay's Full Review: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for PlayStation 2
The original Prince of Persia came out on the Nintendo system ages ago and while it wasn’t the best game of all time, it did have it’s moments of pure ingenuity in level designs and puzzles. As the sequels slowly squeezed out through the years with the last one being on the Dreamcast, the franchise was forgotten by many gamers—until late last year when Ubisoft revamped the franchise for all consoles (plus PC) with the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for next generation gamers. There’s a new story, new gameplay, and it virtually doesn’t resemble anything about what the old games were about besides a few minor quips. Due to the success of a lot of refurbished franchises, there was no doubt in my mind that they would make another POP game since it was a total cult classic among gamers. Having spent some serious time playing the SNES version when I was a kid, it was great to pick this game up and play it through although I didn’t have a lot of expectations for it at first.
King Shahraman of Persia and his son conquer an Indian Maharajah and while looting the palace the prince (whose name is never revealed) comes across a dagger guarded by booby traps. Naturally the prince gets past them and steals the blade to bring back to his party. Along with the dagger, they find an ancient hourglass that holds The Sands of Time with the dagger being the Dagger of Time. The hourglass offers tons of good stuff like messing with time, but bad things happen as well—chaos and carnage; destruction of everything it touches. After some events, the prince is tricked into unlocking the hourglass and its contents spew out and thus the story begins. Now it’s your job, with the help of the Maharajah’s daughter and your trusty Dagger of Time, to restore peace by vanquishing enemies and loose sand clouds and retrieving the sand contents. But will you annihilate all of the evil in time?
Prince of Persia is a platformer—no doubt—but there are also so many other elements in there. Like the Legend of Zelda series you go through the game through dungeons and other areas and solve jumping puzzles, shifting pillar puzzles, and the like. In fact, some of the puzzles (a specific mirror puzzle is what I’m thinking of) directly take a page out of the LOZ book, but not in a bad way since this game is definitely one of the most original video games on the market. The whole game takes place in the Prince’s palace with your goal area being at the top of the tower at the top of the palace, but along the way you have to go through many rooms of the mansion including the prison, bath house, and zoo. There are many varieties of levels that you go to, but not in the way of Super Mario 64. You travel to them on foot. As your travel through the palace you’ll encounter these rooms after flipping switches to get doors open and stuff of the sort.
Similar to Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, the game focuses on scratch-your-head puzzles, but it also centers directly on combat and POP does a great job balancing both themes equally. The combat is pick-up-and-play. If you’ve played any action/fighting game then you’ll easily get accustomed to the controls since they are extremely simple. You carry a sword and your dagger. With your sword you can block attacks and attack yourself and with your dagger you can vacuum up the bad guys once they’ve been defeated. You can also parry Zelda-style in a lot of different types of moves and although at first you might think the fights aren’t complex as the game progresses you’ll find the system much deeper than you might have thought. The only thing that really sucked about fighting was how many enemies you face at one time. At one point I counted ten big guys with huge swords on screen wanting to make me their b*tch. I guarantee you that the odds will make you frustrated as hell, but once you handle the blocking and parrying moves, then the battles will be a snap. Until then you will be outnumbered and angry.
The most influential item in the game is the Dagger of Time, which is the most brilliant idea ever to be put in video game format. Here’s how it works: when you suck up enemies or find loose sand clouds you have slots (or sand tanks) that fill up; a gauge if you will. Well, when you press a shoulder button you can slow down time Matrix-style and blast away at enemies or you can stab an enemy with your dagger and make them slow down while you go normal speed. And if that wasn’t cool enough, you can also rewind the game a little. Think about platforming games. How many times do you mess up? Accidentally jump off the cliff? Oops, you fell into that vat of boiling cheese? I know I always make mistakes so this is the perfect tool for me. When you make a mistake you can press the shoulder button and it will rewind your mistake and you can learn from it and give it another chance. This is definitely one of the coolest things about the game. Some more cool feats are Prince’s awesome moves like jumping wall-to-wall Super Mario-style or the best trick on the face of the earth: running on walls better than Dante did in Devil May Cry 2.
Unless I wasn’t paying attention in history class, which is probably correct since English is my favorite, Persia used to be the present day Iran so you can expect a lot of middle-eastern themes in the game. I consider Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time a cross between an Indiana Jones adventure with Tomb Raider and a little bit of a Mario zest. In the game you play an explorer, as you know, and the theme of adventure and mystery is totally there and I love the feeling of wandering further into the unknown the farther you head into the palace. The difficulty curve is pretty much way too unbalanced though, which is a drag. There will be some parts of the game early on that are really frustrating like puzzles that you can’t figure out and then later in the game you will encounter puzzles and enemies that are a total pushover including the final battle of the game, which was way to easy even by my standards. But besides those things novice through intermediate gamers will surely have a good time with The Sands of Time.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is available on PC, Xbox, and Gamecube, but I chose to play this on PS2 because a majority of the games that come to PS2 have a very easy learning curve and they’re usually really responsive. I was not disappointed with the controls of this game. You will know the Prince so well that you’ll play the game without even thinking about what you’re doing because you’ll feel like you’re walking and fighting through the palace yourself. The controls are air tight and very fast to learn. You pretty much parry and jump with the X button while fighting with the square button, which is pretty run-of-the-mill so you’ll be a sword-wielding maniac in no time at all. Something that I just have to point out, though, is that the camera angles had some problems with me as I advanced in the game. You can manually control the camera with the right analog stick, which is helpful while fighting, and you can also see first person with one of the shoulder buttons, but in some places the camera was fixed in a very inconvenient place making jumping from pillar to pillar totally difficult because you couldn’t see where you were leaping to.
I brought up the middle-eastern themes in the game a while ago, right? Well, among the visuals there are plenty of other things for your senses to enjoy. The music in The Sands of Time is hands down one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard on any game this year thus far. They have a middle-eastern ting to them with local instruments and the music is ear candy. You will definitely fancy it because it’s so calm and it’s gentle and relaxing. There were a couple moments in the game where the music wasn’t playing during puzzles so I spent a whole lot of time just wandering around and only hearing the Prince’s footsteps only and that was a drag. Besides the calm and cultural melodies, they also added in some rock music to the middle-eastern tunes. In fact the music was totally kicking and it was the perfect music to play while beating up evil scum zombies. You want to be surprised? Check out the voice acting in the game! Instead of horrid vocals and stuff that really get on your nerves with the corny lines and nonsense like that, The Sands of Time has many great voiceovers. The lines are all well written and the dialogue between the characters works exceedingly well. The Maharajah’s daughter joins you in the game and the discussions between her and the prince are funny since they have a love-hate relationship a majority of the game.
As far as Playstation 2 games go, Prince of Persia’s graphics are very superior to some of the other games of the genre available to date. They are mystical and very well put together. Although some had the cloudy and dreamy effect that was a little bit blurry, I think it was to add to the game’s theme. There are full motion videos in the game that are basically supped up versions of the regular graphics that take place during major events and they are exceptionally gorgeous, but I also have a soft spot for the in-game visuals. The story moves along in cut scenes and they are lush, full of detail and color, and are major eye candy. The game moves along at a super fast rate and surprisingly never slows down despite of how many enemies can sometimes be onscreen at a time. The level designs are surely some of the best of the genre and offer high resolution surroundings that really pop out as well as great rag-doll effects as you fight. There are a lot of disposable objects that can be smashed as the fighting begins and the particle effects are just about some of the best I’ve seen in a while. I’m talking about the sand effects. You should see ‘em.
I beat the game in almost ten hours and received a hundred percent on my save. You can unlock the original Prince of Persia game, but it quickly gets old because of how outdated it is. You’re best bet is to rent this masterpiece because at ten hours long it’s unquestionably a game that isn’t worth thirty or forty bucks. Sure I might rent this game in a couple years and play it through again, but it’s really not worth it to play it more than once. If there were more bonus features and even some more story elements and longer puzzles then the game would have been a total classic—although it still is in my eyes. The second Prince of Persia is on its way and will be released at the end of this year and I can guarantee you that I will be the first one to check that out. In the end, I was completely surprised by how good Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was and it’s truly an Easter egg that not that many people have played (much like another Ubisoft title, Beyond Good & Evil). I got the game expecting a second rate adaptation of the classic game, but when I popped the disc out of the player at the end of the game I was flustered by just how awesome the game was. It’s without a shadow of doubt one of the best games of all time. Try it.
Video Games. One of computer gaming's biggest titles makes its return with the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The classic story, whic...More at DeepDiscount.com
Embody a legendary hero with gravity-defying acrobatics, fercious fighting combos, and the ability to bend time to fulfill his bidding. Wield the powe...More at HotMovieSale.com
Prince of Persia The Sands of Time takes place in a mystical Middle Eastern setting, all bathed in soft, warm light and looking like something straigh...More at eBay
restore order to ancient Persia the complete original Prince of Persia game as well as a level from the original game redesigned in 3D Wield several d...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.