Jack Nilssen is

THE
HEALTHY
GAMER

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

• Publisher:  Ubisoft, 2003
• Lead Designer:  Jordan Michener
• System:  XBOX
• Genre:  Action/Puzzle

Synopsis

You, a prince, mess up and cause a huge catastrophe that only you can set to rights.

Nice dagger, Larry, but does it alter the flow of time itself?  Didn’t think so.

Features

• Robust combat system
• The ability to play with time itself
• Puzzles
• Gorgeous environments and music

No, no, not the god-king of Persia, we want the Prince.
Complaints

• The camera sometimes doesn’t point exactly where you want it
• The NPC audio often faded badly, making it hard to follow some of the storyline
• Boring combat and enemies that get in the way of the puzzles

Prepare to repeat this while waiting for the next puzzle to happen.
Praise

• Excellent story, with a satisfying ending

Control Command

• Moderately intuitive

Curse Factor

• Longshoreman

Cinematic Experience

• David Fincher

Time to Complete

•  8 hours, 6 minutes

Jack Says

Pretty nice little game.  As a puzzle fanatic, this one tickled my brain just enough to keep me going.  During these extended sessions that led to the game’s actual completion, I was reminded why I put it down, unfinished, back in ’96: the combat.

While the animations, movements, and variety of attacks are nice, the enemies are not.  They come in spawn waves of 3 to 4, and there are times when I had to defend a computer-controlled (read: stupid) character.  Prior to learning a little tricky workaround, I was constantly dying during the combat phases, or my little computer friend got her ass kicked.  There was one movement that I found that could kill 95% of the enemies, and once I mastered this the rest of the battles were a breeze.

If the game had an option where the opening cataclysm had simply killed all the temple inhabitants and left me alone to puzzle my way through the environment, I would have chosen it.

PoP has its moments, though, like when you fly off a wall and nail a monster, then back-flip over to finished off another baddie.  It’s pure cinematic action, and something that many action games since have tried to emulate.

The sense of satisfaction I felt at the end was palpable.  The story concludes very nicely, and a host of value-added videos and pictures unlocks.

I wonder if Ubisoft was trying to get more female gamers attracted by this title.  If you’ve played through more than 25% of the game, you’ll see what I mean as the Prince’s costume changes.

I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for an enjoyable “Arabian Nights” experience, and it scores well on my “Cinematic Experience” scale.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.