Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

I did not like the original pop, it was wiked hard and didn't deliver anything grand to the table. But that is not even relevant in this amazing game. Pop: Sands of Time is a truly amazing platformer that you cannot put down. I had great fun playing this game from start-to-finish. While it is relatively short being that I finished it in 4 hours, it was still worth it.That being said, the other Prince of Persia games are dwarfed by this amazing game. Great graphics, great cutscenes, and a great story make up for a well-played game. 5 out of 5

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a great renewal of the classic POP franchise. Ubisoft created an instant classic by bringing us a rich game world, a very cool main character, and fun platforming. While the game is on the short side, it's a fun ride while it lasts.

The first thing that you'll notice about SOT is that it looks great. The Prince narrates the story in the past tense throughout the game. Following along with that theme, there's a sort of warm glow over everything that gives the game a storybook feel. Characters are animated nicely, and the creatures all look grotesque in their own way. You'll run through dank caves, waterfalls, towers, and gardens. Each looks unique and is wonderfully realized.

The Prince himself is also very well done as a character. He's generally noble, but he also carries himself with a lot of arrogance and pride. This is what you would expect from a crown prince. The Prince is also the most acrobatic character that you'll see in a game. He can run up or along walls, jump and swing across rooms, climb poles, and flip all over the place. There's a real fluidity to his movement. By the end of the game, you'll see sheer vertical walls and insanely hard jumps. However, you'll never doubt that the Prince can get through it without any difficulty.

Sometimes, though, you will miss a jump. This is where SOT's unique time powers come into play. Throughout the game, you gain powers over time that aid you in combat, platforming, and puzzle solving. This includes being able to slow time to get a jump on your enemies, speeding yourself up, or reversing time to retry a mistake. The rewind time power is invaluable and is more useful than any other power that you get. It's implemented really well, and hard to cheat with.

Over the course of the game, you'll rely on those powers more and more, as the platforming throughout the game becomes more and more difficult. You'll have to find your way through massive rooms by running on ledges, flipping over bars, and running along the walls. By the end of the game, these sequences become very hard. However, you'll always be shown exactly where you need to go and what you need to do, making it more of a problem of execution than planning. I would like it if I had to figure out where to go, instead of the game telling me.

While the Prince has a lot of moves to get around with, he doesn't have a lot of combat abilities. Fighting in this game is pretty simplistic and very repetitive. You have a basic slash combo, and can flip over your enemies to attack from behind. However, you'll find out which attacks work on which enemy and just use that repeatedly. It would've been nice to have a little more variety in this area. Also, the last boss is an absolute joke. This was a bit of a letdown, as getting to him was very difficult, but he was a total pushover.

Despite the simplicity of the combat, POP:SOT can be recommended without question. It is one of the best action games to come along in years, and combines a great visual presentation with an insanely cool main character and very satisfying gameplay.

Fans of the original series rejoiced when Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was released by UbiSoft. Until that point, not many people knew much about the series, and despite the influence it had over many later games like Tomb Raider, not many people had even heard of it. Unlike the original games, Sands of Time takes place in three dimensions, and the transition was a seamless and impressive one that took the games to new heights.

The story centers around the unnamed prince, who narrates the story as you go along, occasionally saying things like, "No, no, that's all wrong," or, "That's not not how it happened," when you die. As the story opens, we find the prince fighting his way through a fortress and killing soldiers along his way to obtain a treasure as a gift for his father. The prince's father's vizier coerces the prince into using an item he found, the dagger of time, to open a huge hourglass, and from there everything essentially goes to heck. The Sands of Time are unleashed, granting the vizier their power, transforming the prince's father and his army into hellish sand creatures, and just generally messing up the prince's day. He sets about searching for survivors and meets a young woman named Farah, who joins him in his efforts. Over the course of the game, the two will interact with one another and form a relationship that is one of the more plausible video game love stories amidst a sea of rather trite love plots.

You'll be doing a great deal of exploring in Sands of Time, which is great news, considering exploring usually consists of high-flying acrobatic moves through a series of Arabian locales, palaces and caves included. You'll do everything from the traditional running and jumping to spinning around poles and running up and along walls to climb ledges and cross gaps. And of course, there are a lot of traps as well; saw blades, darts, spikes, and pitfalls will be actively trying to keep our hero from reaching every one of his destinations, and this will result in a good deal of deaths or near deaths. It's a good thing the controls respond very well and only seem to slip up where human error is concerned. Even then, the interface is often very forgiving; if you fall over a ledge, the prince will automatically hang on, and if you press the release button, he'll automatically pull himself right back up unless there's a safe spot below.

Despite being a pretty challenging game, you shouldn't actually spend much time dying, because the Sands of Time give you the opportunity to go back several seconds in time to avoid a fall or death at the hands of a horrible monster. Using the Sands of Time obviously requires sand, and you start off with three sand tanks on your dagger of time, each one letting you skip back a few seconds. When you kill sand creatures, you can execute a finisher with the dagger to absorb their sand and refill tanks. Moreover, save points refill all of your tanks. And believe me when I say this: you'll be using the Sands of Time liberally, because the main reason they exist is to test your luck with an attempt at getting past a particularly tricky jumping segment. Of course, flash forwards at the beginning of each segment will also help to give you an idea of where to go and what to do before you even reach the areas in question, giving you a helpful nudge in the right direction with some of the trickier bits.

Another large part of Prince of Persia's various levels is puzzle solving. Most of the time, the puzzles are kept fairly simple, such as a block puzzle here and there, or something along those lines. Occasionally, you'll happen across a more complicated puzzle that involves more thought, such as moving a platform along a sort of maze and fitting several huge pegs into holes while following a specific path. (Yes, it's about as complicated as it sounds, but it's actually not too bad once you get moving.) Mostly, though, the puzzles themselves are the actual levels, and half the fun-and indeed half the challenge-is just getting through them to find out what'll happen next.

Prince of Persia's combat is pretty good most of the time, and you can execute a lot of really nice-looking moves, of course using the environment to leap off of things and brutally shove your weapons into just about any monster you encounter. Still, despite looking nice and having a nice flow to it, the combat never really seems to improve or change all too dramatically, and often times, you'll be oblivious as to how far into the game you are, simply because you only so often gain new abilities, and they're mostly just health and sand meter increases. Now, you'll occasionally meet new enemies as you advance, whose fighting tactics make them impervious to some of your own repertoire of moves and will require you to vault off of them or guard and counter, or occasionally kick off the wall, but it really doesn't always matter, because after a while, you'll be mobbed by a large number of enemies and the combat will eventually get repetitive. In fact, the idea that you only seldom gain a new ability or face a new sort of obstacle is arguably the only thing taking away from the game at all, despite how occasionally detrimental to the game it can be. Even with this taken into account, the combat is a lot of fun, and the controls are very responsive.

One of the most easily-noticed things about Prince of Persia is how undeniably pretty it is. The game opens with a gorgeous cinematic of an Arabian kingdom's skyline, translucent curtains fluttering in the cool night air, soft, warm light emanating from windows all around. After that, you're eased into the regular graphics of the game, which are quite nice as well. The sharp textures are among the most detailed any title on the platforms it was released for have to offer, and the color, though often limited to a few in select areas, lends itself perfectly to the atmosphere in every aspect. Courtyards at night are bathed in a warm orange glow, and ambient light from torches casts dynamic shadows onto the walls. There was attention to other minor details as well, such as leaving footprints behind after stepping in water, or small clouds of dust kicking up around the prince's feet as he walks. Even poles the prince uses to leap to distant areas move a bit with him as he swings around them.

Character animation in Sands of Time is a sight to behold. All the prince's actions are agile and swift, and even as he's defying gravity, running along a wall for several feet at a time, you're never given the impression that such feats aren't at least plausible. His high-flying acrobatics and agility are impressive, without a doubt, but most of his actions-no matter how over-the-top-are animated so well that look like they could all be possible, even though a few of them are best left to people starring in "wire fu" films.

The voice acting and narration are both strong, and most every voice fits its respective character perfectly; prime examples of this are the game's two protagonists, the prince and Farah. Their exchanges are sometimes pretty funny to hear, and the dialog never seems to be overdone or melodramatic, which is an issue many games' otherwise decent voice talents are dragged down by. The sound effects are equally good; grinding stone, crackling fires, footsteps against various surfaces, weapons clashing, soft breezes blowing-Sands of Time has nary a sound effect that isn't masterful.

For how little you hear any music played over the course of the game, it's excellent. You'll hear some Middle Eastern-themed sounds, as well as orchestral scores and rock and roll beats, sometimes all at once. The three wildly different sounds almost always combine for an excellent and original sound that complements the fight sequences perfectly. Still, it's a shame that the rest of the game lacks any music to support it. Often, the lack of music, replaced only by the soft hum of the breeze, is somewhat refreshing, but there are times, particularly in the non-combat action situations, where it seems music would enhance the experience.

In the way of unlockable content, there isn't a ton to get, but you can gain the original Prince of Persia as an extra game to play, for those interested in utterly frustrating difficulty. Other than that, there isn't much motivation to actually replay the game, apart from the superb production values. Even if you do replay it right away, the outstanding gameplay and interesting story will captivate you just as much as the first time.

Prince of Persia: SoT was excellent from beginning to end. It's highly immersive with some excellent puzzles and platforming. The level design is extremely logical and fun to solve. The levels are challenging but it's not impossible like most other games of this type. I was able to beat it without a faq so that shows that anybody can figure out this game. The difficulty isn't high and the game is very forgiving. The save points are numerous enough that you won't be frustrated if you die and the unlimited retries makes the game easy to enjoy. The enemies were a bit tough and the battle system wasn't perfect but it's a minor complaint.

The graphics are lush and vibrant. The lighting effects are amazingly well done. The soft glow and various tones really heighten the mood and is just plain gorgeous to look at. The 3D models themselves aren't as detailed as other games but you won't notice it. The seamless transition from level to level is great. Very immersive because of this. The animations for the Prince is incredibly smooth. The enemies and other characters are pretty decent but the Prince is the star. Great acrobatic animations.

The sound and music is excellent too. The music is sparse but there's enough. It sounds great with the Indian-Middle Eastern-Rock style. But most of the time, you'll be listening to nothing but the ambient sounds of the environment. It sounds very good with the wind and water and other little various details. Very well executed. It's not everyday you find a game without background music interesting to listen to. This game managed to do it. The voice acting is top notch. Everyone is well cast and you'll grow to enjoy the banter between the Prince and the Princess. There's some humorous stuff that'll make you chuckle. They keep the game's story from getting too dull or serious. Good stuff.

The story is very good too. It's very satisfying once you reach the end. But I bet there are some, like me, who want to know more about the characters in the end. It left me wanting a whole lot more. A double-edged sword in some respects. But at least we have a sequel to look forward to. ^^ Btw, they managed to develop the characters quite well. There's not a lot of actual story but there's enough for this type of game.

Overall, it's an excellent game. Great levels/puzzles, characters and story. I beat it in just over 10 hours but it didn't feel short at all which I thought was interesting. Even though it's a relatively short game, it was very good nonetheless. Go check it out!

First of, I'd like to say that it's a rare treat to see such smooth and simple controls incorperated into a game. The ease at which you perform the dazzling moves, and death-defying leaps is incredible. Whether you're wall-running or fighting a hord of sand creatures, you'll never end up feeling like you have to twist your fingers in a knot to make it work. Ever wanted to play acrobat? Well, you'll be doing plenty of acrobatics in this game - and it's a whole lot saver to do too. If more developers out there took a hint from PoP:SoT, the frustration that comes with bad control schemes would be a thing of the - bad, ugly - past.

Unfortunately, though, there are some flaws with the gameplay. Most of them are minor, and therefore easily overlooked; but some of them are a little more obviously present. A good example of this would be the camera: You can move it around freely, but it has a tendency of doing its own thing when you need control of it the most. This flaw is mostly present during fights in which the camera, at times, gets stuck behind an object making it nigh-impossible to see a sand creature's incoming blade. Luckily, this issue doesn't arise too often, and is ussualy easily remedied by moving the prince, or by manually adjusting the camera angle a bit.

The fighting, likewise, has its good and bad points. The ease at which you perform your attacks, wall-jumps, blocks, etc. is mind-boggling. If there's an enemy about to attack you from behind, simpy leap over him with the press of a button, and drive your sword down its back with another press of the same button. It's so simple, you could probably perform most moves with your big toe. And what's even better, is that this simplicity doesn't make the game a boring trial; instead, it seems to fit in so nicely into the overall game, that it makes it all the more fun.

However, as fun as it might be to do some sand-whoopin' in PoP:SoT, the fighting does become tedious after a while. Most enemies you face don't have any real variety, and they all seem to fight according to a certain pattern. After a couple of fights, you'll know almost everyone's weak points, and, as such, will dispatch of your foes all too easily. Sure, certain moves won't work on certain enemies; but this small challenge is somewhat easily overcome by simply performing another move that does always work against that type of enemy. It would have been nice to see if Ubisoft had added some more variation, and made the fights less predictable.

And then there's the acrobatics. Those death-defying, heart-stopping, stunts that make you go 'oooh' and 'aaah' more than once. This is absolutely the best feature in the entire game. And again, the simplicity of it all makes it all the more enjoyable. There's been a few games before which incorperated wall-running, but none of them have done it so elegantly as PoP:SoT does. The only - possible - flaw here might, again, be the camera, which sometimes is sitting at angle that makes it just a bit too hard to properly judge distance or the direction you need to jump to. But I have to admit that I can count the ammount of times that that's been an actual problem on one hand (even if that hand was missing three fingers due to some freak fire-cracker accident).

Overall, the gameplay is extremely well done. There are a few minor issues (or flaws, whatever you want to call it), here and there, but none of those take away the awe-inspiring simplicity of it all.

Both the graphics and the sound are extremely well done. Throughout the entire game you never get a feeling of ‘been-there-done-that’. Each level is incredibly detailed – from the rippling in the water, to the puff of dust when you kill an enemy. It’s all done in such a way that you really feel as if you’re in an Arabian-like place, only heard of in legends and old tales.

Sound, too, manages to pull you in the way the graphics do. The music is absolutely gorgeous and fits the whole PoP:SoT theme perfectly, while still managing to get you adrenaline pumping thanks its great mix of different styles of music. Never, in any way, does the music get tedious or annoying; instead it does exactly what it’s supposed to do: make you believe the world around you even more.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the voices. Don’t get me wrong, the voice acting is great, and each emotion is conveyed perfectly in the dialog. However, as you play the game, you’ll notice that at times the voice of your partner is barely audible, as if she’s whispering from a great distance. This will, at times, be reason for some serious frustration as it can sometimes be near-impossible to hear what she’s saying. Of course, turning up the volume remedies this problem, but it also increases the volume of all other effects, which, in turn, is not what one would want in most cases.

PoP:SoT is an very well thought-out game, and it’s obvious that the developers have gone all-out to preserve what made the original such a great hit. And, despite it’s minor flaws, it even manages to transcend it in many ways – especially by perfectly adding a whole new dimension of 3d to it.

Story-wise the game will leave you wanting more with each step, pulling you further in with each minute, and it won’t let go of you until you reach the end. And even then, it will still linger in your mind for days after.