McMurphy
Apostate Against the Eloi
Our hero, the youngest son of King Sharaman, has royally messed up.
The Prince of Persia is eager to impress upon his father that he, like his brothers, can be a great attribute in their current war with Maharajah. After the Prince stumbles across an ancient and mystical dagger known as the Dagger of Time, he is tricked by the Vizier, who reveals he is a traitor employed by Maharajah by doing so, to unleash the weapon's evil powers. Sultan's kingdom is cursed by the corrupting and crumbling effect of the Sands of Time, and the kingdom's residents are turned into Sand Creatures (in other words, zombies) as a result. The Prince of Persia resigns himself to defeating the cursed palace and restoring time back to its proper order. Whether the Prince likes it or not, he will not be alone in his quest for redemption. Farah, the daughter of Maharajah, wants the Dagger of Time. They both find out that they will need to work together to survive the traps, cliff ruins, and monsters of the palace.
And so opens the Playstation 2 game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (released by the Canadian game maker Ubisoft in 2003), but players aren't picking this game up for the storyline. Fans of the original '80s computer game want to see how their favorite Persian hero looks when treated with the 21st century 3D animation. They want to see if the new installment can keep up the ever evolving gamers world while retaining the more simple pleasures of smashing priceless vases, jumping gaps, hanging from palace cliffs, and the ever necessary sword fighting. Can Ubisoft do it? Can the company give PS2 owners a reminder of an old favorite much like done for Pitfall on the first Playstation?
Yes. The game isn't perfect, but it is certainly a fun game.
There is much to be proud of in regards to adhering to the franchise's original, popular formula. Not only do players get to jump and hang the Prince from ruins, but they get to with a better sense of exactly how high these cliffs are. If one chooses unwisely, he/she can see tensely the Prince fall and fall and fall. The young athlete has more than hanging and jumping up his sleeve now. Wielding incredible upper body strength, the character can now leap backwards from pillars, rebound from wall to wall much in the fashion that Ninja Gaiden made famous, and flip from hanging pipework. The sword fighting has really taken a completely new life. No longer is it dedicated solely to a jousting style. The newly prepared Prince can flip over enemies while striking, push off walls to vault himself into a fray, and even counter attack with a flick of the wrist. The improvements are not only for the offensive end, however. He can flip, roll, and guard most attacks. In fact, the eight various types of Sand Creatures demand different approaches to adequately defeat them. The Prince of Persia has apparently been practicing over the decades.
The enemies, much like the original series, get a bit repetitive. It is not long into the game that players will see most types of Sand Creatures thrown at them. Aside from the eight Creatures (which also includes women from a harem), there are three Animal Sand Creatures, although they act as more of an annoyance than any real danger. The only time a player needs to worry about the latter is when a bird or bat is trying to knock the Prince off of a slim beam. The beetles will remind players of what they had already grown to dread in the Turok series. The criticism does not necessarily mean that the fighting will get boring to most gamers. Because it soon becomes apparent that players will need to execute different battle techniques for different villains AND for the fact that these villains surround the Prince at the same time, the battles stay hard and in demand of gamers' full attention.
The Dagger of Time plays an important role in the battles. Aside from the Animal Sand Creatures, a player must stab a fallen monster for the kill to officially counter and add magic to your weapon.
The Prince is not on this quest alone as mentioned before. Farah takes part in the puzzle solving and battles. When she is not crawling through cracks in the wall (she is skinny to the point of being sickly, really) and pulling levers or shooting off enemies with her trusty bow and arrow, she is most often supplying banter and accidently shooting the Prince. Farah will without doubt get players yelling at her for an untimely death a few times. It is also important to note that she adds an additional frustration to the battles by making sure she does not get killed. If she dies, the game is over. Her real role, however, is supplying a love interest for the Prince. Will he fall in love with his enemy's daughter? Is her banter hiding her real feelings for him? Will she betray him in the end to get at that dagger? Although the love interest angle is executed pretty badly, there is an "interesting" cinema clip at near the end of the game between the two characters.
The Prince of Persia has a health line that can be refilled by pools of palace water and increased by finding hidden passages. There is also an additional meter centered around the Dagger of Time's powers. Let's say a player makes a miscalculation in jumping and plummets the character to his death. By pressing the L1 button, a player can rewind time and correct the mistake. Depending on how many balls a player has filled in the meter determines how many times he/she can correct mistakes. This meter can be replenished by stabbing the dagger into bright patches of white light hidden throughout the palace. A player can freeze characters by stabbing an enemy with the dagger instead of the Prince's paramount choice of a weapon (a sword that is given a few upgrades in strength as the game progresses), and she/he can slow down time to better stage the Prince's attacks. These elements are quite easy to master, and players will get a bit disappointed with the lack of more hidden areas and weapons by the end of the game.
The controls are fairly standard. A player uses the left analog stick to move the character around in the environment, and the right analog stick to rotate the camera around the character (or to have the character look around the room if one chooses to press the R1 button to give a first-person glimpse). The directional pad is not used in this game.
The camera is also fairly standard, which includes the typical camera errors. The player will not always get to see within the palace at the ideal angles. During battles, unsurely camera work can become more than a little frustrating. For example, the Prince may flip over a monster to strike it in the back only to have the player blinded by the camera attempting to show the scene from behind a wall. The camera work needs tweaking, and hopefully the sequel will get it right.
The Prince goes through a few appearance changes, but nothing too significant. He starts out in the game in full garb, but, to demonstrate how he is becoming less and less virginal in his experiences, he ends the game wearing no shirt and tattooed with scars.
The voice acting is well done, overall. There is no preset subtitles so be sure to have your television volume up at a decent level. The voices, for some reason, play at a far lower level than the sound effects or other sounds from the game, so one may wish to keep that in mind when settling on the volume level.
In the end, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time gets a solid "B" rating. The action and problem solving become a repetitive or uninspired chore at times, but it does provide a telling and gripping experience overall. The graphics already seem a bit dated, and the game could use more high-res cinema clips (most storyline clips are done with in-game graphics). The price tag of under $20.00 (United States) makes this game a great deal or even present for someone (perhaps yourself, Oh Selfish One) during the Holiday Season. The game is rated "T" (The violence contains very little blood and the romantic themes are not overtly sexual), making it suitable for most players one may decide to buy for.
Grade: B
Strengths: Successful revamping of classic elements of the original game, 3D graphics, solid voice acting, decent premise, a good fighting system, decent and nonintrusive music score, and a fulfilling ending.
Weaknesses: Graphics getting a bit dated, spotty camera work, repetitive types of problems to solve, poorly executed romance storyline between the Prince and Farah, and the game is a bit short (it can be beat with comfort in ten hours of gameplay).
The Prince of Persia said:
No, I haven't published the review anywhere else. I almost timed out on my internet connection when writing it within Chronicles' message box. *L* I blame my slow typing skills and the fact that LOTR was on television.
