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Classic, 2D style Prince of Persia.
Prince of Persia was released oh so many years ago and captured the hearts of those who played the game. Prince of Persia 3D tried to bring the franchise to new gamers but found itself unable to do so. Besides the titular 3D graphics (which weren’t all that great), the game wasn’t good, at all. Luckily, this improved with Ubisoft’s latest console entry, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It’s handheld adventure of the same name also provides a solid adventure.
As the Prince, you’ll need to stop an evil plot using the Dagger of Time and the Hourglass. The bulk of the gameplay involves platforming action to move onto the next section. You’ll need to think to get to keep going since the route isn’t always clear. Every once in a while, you’ll get across a puzzle needed to keep going. Boss battles break up the platforming and puzzles.
Aiding you along the way is Farah. You can switch between both characters but not always at will. You’ll need to be in specific points and then move the second character there. It can become quite bothersome at times.
The titular Sands of Time are a major point in the game. Using the game’s Rewind feature, you can go back and fix a mistake you made. Fall from a height? Use the Rewind feature and go back before you did so. Getting destroyed by an enemy? Go back a bit to the start of the battle. Be careful when you use it though, since supply of magical sand is limited. You’ll also use the rewind feature to beat most of the bosses and solve some of the puzzles.
The one thing that may annoy some gamers is the difficulty of the game. Trust me, the game is hard. Often the puzzles are of the guess and check variety, taking a few tries before you finally get it. Another bitsy problem is that you can die quite easily from simply falling. It doesn’t take too high of a fall to make you die, either. Fortunately, you get used to this rather easily and are more careful in the latter segments of the game.
The Prince of Persia franchise is notorious for great animation. The original games set the standard when they were released. The console versions of Sands of Time set a new standard for 3D games. This handheld version of the game does a great job, as well. Prince can do tons of things and the number of animations for him is staggering. The animation for Farah is great also. The character models of them and the enemies are also great. The game’s backgrounds are wonderfully detailed and the Rewind feature looks great. Isn’t it funny how Blinx’s developers were talking about how that could only be done on Xbox?
The audio in the game isn’t quite as good. Sound effects are sparse and only the most basic are included. The game’s soundtrack sounds pretty good and does fit the game rather well.
Like Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu (GBA), Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for the GBA unlocks bonus material for the Gamecube version. Since the Gamecube version has yet to be released, I can’t say what it will be.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a great handheld experience. The game looks simply fantastic and the gameplay is very strong. The difficulty may annoy some at first, but there are ways to chicken out if you can’t handle it. Definitely recommended for handheld gamers. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 18, 2003
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