March 17, 2004

Title: Prince of Persia: The sands of Time
Genre: Action adventure
System: PS2, Gamecube, X-box, and PC
Producer: Ubisoft

By James
unrivaled.info

After Prince of Persia was released along time ago for Mac and IBM, and at the time was one of the most innovative games around. The combination of avoiding deathtraps and solving puzzles made the game a classic. Now move forward a few years to now and the latest Prince of Persia game, The Sands of Time. The game has everything that made the originals so much fun, as well as having many new twists. I'm usually quite skeptical of newer 3d versions of classic 2d games, as I feel the feel of the game changes when changed to 3d. I however found this game to be quite a bit of fun, though not perfect.


Graphics - 8/10: Pretty standard fare, here, and the games environments are beautifully drawn and colored. The involvement of the world is quite extensive, your clothes move in the wind, banners wave, and your clothes take on a worn look as you move throughout the game. Your character definitely won't look like he's just had a shower at the end of the adventure. There are some blemishes, in the form of graphical glitches that can cause you to get stuck.


Game play - 6/10: Here within lies the games strength, and its major weaknesses. As you'd come to expect with the game, there is lots of leaping climbing and puzzle solving. You can jump huge gaps, run along walls, run up corners to obtain greater height, swing on polls, just about anything you can think of doing, the game allows. You'll have to use all of these skills and your brain to navigate the many puzzles and traps of this game. The best part about the game however, is the time dagger, which can be used to rewind time if you screw up badly or put yourself in a fatal position. Falling into the abyss? Just rewind time a bit and try again. The dagger is limited to the amount of sand you supply it with however, but that can be replenished by defeating enemies. In my opinion however it makes the game far to easy, and seeing how difficult the previous games were, it was a slight let down to me.

The dagger isn't just used for rewinding time though, as when you aren't jumping around and racking your brain, you're fighting hordes of sand monsters. The combat system is where I feel the game is a bit lacking. You can do allot in the fights, as the time dagger allows you to slow down your enemies actions, or speed up yours, which can be quite handy, as fighting was quite frustrating at times. You have some interesting moves at your disposal, but the problem is many of the actions are assigned to one button, and the game seldom does the action you want. Also, your characters fighting animations take significantly longer than you opponents, allowing them to easily gang up on you while you dispatch a certain foe. In a game where you do allot of fighting, you only have about 6 moves at your disposal, and your enemies are pretty much the same. This leads to the fighting getting pretty monotonous after a while. Also the game leads pretty much a straight pattern of solve a puzzle fight monsters, solve a puzzle fight monsters etc.

Overall the game play is quite fun, but not perfect.


Sound - 10/10: The game shines quite brightly here, as the music is easy to listen to, and the tracks are long enough that they don't get old really fast, as has been a problem with other games I have played recently. The game integrates real voices into the mix, with the option of several different languages, something I've not seen much of. The sound effects in this game really add to the reality of the world you immerse yourself in. Your footsteps actually sound different depending on where and what you are walking on.


Story - 5/10: As expected of a platformer, there isn't much story to the game at all, in order to gain the respect of your father; you steal the dagger of time. You're then tricked into using it to release the sands of time, turning every one into sand zombies. Now you've got to set things right. That’s about it as far as the story goes.


Replay - 6/10: Not much in replay value for the actual game, as nothing really changes the second time through. Though after beating the game, you unlock the original prince of Persia, a whole game in itself. This is a nice bit of nostalgia, and will probably be the first time playing the game for many people. I feel the game that has as little replay value and as short as this one should have more extras than just one old game though.

Overall - 7/10: I was expecting a little more from a game billed as highly as this one. The major thing however is that I found this game fun despite the faults I found in it. Is it fun enough to warrant buying it? I think it would just gather dust on my shelf for the most part, but as with all games I'd recommend renting it first. If you like it enough to warrant playing it after you've beaten it once you'd probably be fine with buying it.

Full Metal Alchemist