Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Evidently Ubisoft decided that 2008′s Prince of Persia didn’t merit an immediate sequel, since they’ve decided to return to the first Prince and the first Prince of Persia games.  I can only imagine how difficult it’s going to be keeping one series distinct from the other; maybe that’s why the new Prince had such gaudy clothing.  Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a midquel taking place between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within.  Let’s see how it holds up.

Developer: Ubisoft (Montreal, Quebec, Casablanca, and Singapore Studios)
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Third person adventure
Console(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

The verdict: Forgotten Sands is decent fix on what makes Prince of Persia memorable, but it’s also a lesson in redundancy with the stale combat and overall repetition.

The Prince of Persia series really has had a fluctuating history, hasn’t it?  After the success of Sands of Time The Prince was briefly given an angsty emo makeover and a new series was tried out altogether back in 2008.  Ubisoft has come full circle to the roots of the series with Forgotten Sands, and while the formula is still memorable, it seems worn out after so much time has gone by, especially since the game seems intent on recapturing the essence of Sands of Time rather than being its own experience.

Forgotten Sands is a midquel, taking place between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within, although fans of the series may be relieved that at the time of Forgotten Sands, the Prince had not grown into the infamous emo phase of Warrior Within.  The Prince is on a journey to visit his brother Malik in order to learn about leadership from him.  Upon arrival the Prince finds his brother’s kingdom under siege.  The fight has gone against Malik, who proposes awakening the sealed Solomon’s Army to defeat their foes.  Over the Prince’s objections, Solomon’s Army is released, with devastating consequences.  The Prince receives the aid of Razia, a Djinn, who grants him powers and tasks him with re-sealing Solomon’s Army.

Veterans of this series will understandably experience déjà vu, since your introduction has you fighting and running through a war-torn castle attempting to stop a disaster from occurring.  In general the early areas of Forgotten Sands come across as trying to copy the memorable openings of Prince of Persia games past.  There’s a point where a game stops being homage, and Forgotten Sands seems to desperately want to channel the spirit of its excellent predecessors.  The parkour, atmosphere, and sense of adventure are still present, but the watered down tone sets the standard for most of the game.

Gameplay is a series of linear parkour paths, more reminiscent of the original trilogy than 2008’s Prince of Persia.  This brings back a strength that the original trilogy had over Prince of Persia 2008.  Being able to choose level progression meant the story and difficulty were somewhat wonky, while in Forgotten Sands each level builds on itself with new and interesting spins on the Prince’s abilities.  Again, this all winds up working well, but a sense of familiarity and a little too much repetition quickly sets in if you’re a series veteran.

Initially, all the basic abilities you’ve come to expect from Prince of Persia are here.  You can wall run, climb, leap acrobatically across beams on the ceiling, and use wall banners to smoothly glide down to safety on the ground.  The Sands of Time themselves also return, granting you the trademark ability to rewind time and instantly undo an irritating misstep or wrongly timed jump.  The Prince’s moves could have looked a little slicker or more stylish given the 2010 release date; you’d swear you were playing Two Thrones for how the Prince’s moves look.

The Prince later gains a few interesting time-related abilities that do a lot to mix things up and challenge the player.  The most memorable is the ability to freeze and unfreeze streams of water.  This has a number of clever applications, including turning narrow streams into climbable polls and wider waterfalls into walls that can be leapt off.  This makes for a lot of interesting scenarios that will test your reflexes and keep your attention; for example, you may need to wall jump across two solid waterfalls then instantly unfreeze them to pass through to solid ground.  This and other abilities, like being able to restore bits of the environment to guide your way, help do a lot to spruce up Forgotten Sands.

The problem is that a lot of these abilities are used separately, and there aren’t many challenging scenarios where you need to utilize everything you have until a good four or five hours in.  Certain levels almost feel like tutorials for how frequently you’ll be leaping across the same roof beams or freezing the same water spout to climb up.  It works fine on its own, but when you do it over and over again, it loses some of the charm.  The second half of the game really shines when the parkour paths mix everything up and you’ll need to swiftly employ every trick in your arsenal, but getting there takes a bit of time.

Attack…zzz…

I respect that using concepts that made a game like Sands of Time work can make for another good game, but remember to leave behind less desirable traits.  The snore-worthy combat from Sands of Time returns and it’s as unmemorable as it was in 2003.  You’ll be charged at by hordes of laughably weak minions of King Solomon and you’ll use your one attack button to swat at them while you occasionally dodge, jump, or kick them over as necessary.

There is some depth to the system in the form of experience points that are granted at the ends of fights.  In a grid system you can spend points to unlock new moves, increase your health or magic meter, and so forth.  It’s nice to have some availability in how you strategize, but it’s all for naught because there’s no reason to improve your combat capabilities.  You could get more health but you’ll quickly discover the lack of variation or challenge in battles negates any need for it.  One or two good spells will send any remaining difficulty out the window, making combat even more unnecessary than it was in Sands of Time.

Graphics and environments are rigidly unchanged from previous games in the trilogy.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this since environments and architecture have always been wondrous in the Prince of Persia games, but the game engine is starting to feel dated and for lack of a better word, everything seems to have a brown tint.  Music is fine; it’s textbook for Prince of Persia by now.

Conclusion

You can do worse than buying Forgotten Sands, but the color, variety, and charm of Sands of Time have all been watered down into a much more linear, predictable story.  We’ve seen this before, even if the new gameplay elements are surprisingly creative.  Prince of Persia fans will definitely get a fix from it, and it’s better than seeing that godawful movie, but the familiarity has sunken in.  Odds are you’ll play it once, then move on.
 
Disclaimer: This review was reposted from my blog at  http://redmage.gamerlimit.com/