Allison 'gramyre' Reynolds masters her cutlass skills.
Looting and showing off is bad, or so my mum tells me. The Prince of Persia finds out just how bad after he vandalises an hourglass filled with the sands of time. The result? All who he loves are turned into sand zombies and they want his blood. Being a prince and all, he can't leave things like that, so off he goes to kill the baddies, rescue his father and catch the girl, all in one energetic adventure.
Prince of Persia - Sands of Time (SoT) comes almost 15 years after the groundbreaking Prince of Persia and has some large shoes to fill. SoT takes the original recipe of a rich storyline and great characters and makes full use of today's available technology to make a solid game. Does it catapult action/adventure gaming into the future, as the original did? Maybe not.
We enjoy games that give attention to detail, and SoT has detail to burn. Lighting gets top billing at every opportunity. Whether streaming down from decorative ceilings or seen through gauzy drapes, to playing in the folds of the Prince's pants, the light is true to nature and done very, very well.
The Prince has also had quality time spent on him. His movements are graceful and he keeps his toes neatly pointed at all times like nice boys should. Modelled with elite athletic musculature there is very little the Prince cannot do. Run along walls? Sure! Ascend and descend high columns? Just like a Greenpeace protester up a redgum! Back flip over foes? Can you say federal politician?
By pulling out his acrobatic fighting skills the Prince gains an advantage over the lumbering sand zombies and feral scarabs. But by sheer weight of zombie numbers combined with the need to freeze an opponent before dispatching them for good, this advantage is removed and some hectic battling is required to bury them.
While the feats to be performed may be moderately difficult, the controls to achieve them certainly aren't. I spent several hours playing SoT with my daughter and not once did we throw the controller at the screen, proof positive they're easily mastered. The revolutionary ability to turn back time (L1) makes it possible to re-do something you have royally mucked up, or re-fight a scene that got you killed. The other feature of slowing action to the ubiquitous 'bullet time' ensures slaying sand people is less a key mash and more a choreographed dance with a sharp implement.
There was one thing that made me cry more than falling on the spiky sharp things, and that was the camera view. More often than not it tracked about smoothly, then suddenly, and for no apparent reason, it would pull back to a view at least 300 metres away. Kinda fatal when it occurred during combat and definitely painful when jumping slashing blades. The camera would also occasionally become stuck in tight places causing an extra handicap to some tasks.
Prince of Persia - Sands of Time is a solid action/adventure console game that looks great, plays well and is quite a lot of fun. It doesn't exactly turn back time to the halcyon days of its predecessor, but who wants to live through the early 90's again anyway?
Issue: 133 | February, 2012