Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Let me be Dr. Gamer for a minute and prescribe a cure for your repetitive gaming disease.  It's called "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time."

Side effects include:

§         The use of brain over bronze

§         An uncontrollable urge to play

§         Dilated pupils (from the gorgeous graphics)

§         Increased excitability in children, teens, and adults

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a cornucopia of gameplay goodness.  Most subtly, the game uses a control scheme that is very different from its top competitor – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – yet is just as lovable and effective as Nintendo's masterpiece.  The key to a great control scheme is seamlessness.  Prince of Persia is the epitome of that.  It introduces so many new moves and refines so many others that gamers will be in awe of the developers' ambition.

Without batting an eye gamers will be able to run on walls, swing across bars, and jump from tall poles to reach their destination.  The controls are flawless but do take some time to get used to (about 30-45 minutes).  There's a lot involved; it might seem easy to run on walls at first, but then the game creates an interesting scenario for you to conquer.  The wall is on the left, a ledge (which you must reach) is on the right.  The only way to reach it is to run across the wall and take a literal leap of faith toward the ledge.  In most cases the Prince will push himself off of the wall and jump toward the ledge, arriving safely at his destination.  There are several aspects like that.  Prince of Persia includes a lot of running, jumping and climbing, and it takes patience (and a little bit of brain power) to succeed.  Every level is like one giant puzzle.  Finding your way in and around and eventually out of each level will take more concentration than you'd expect.  But every minute of it is a joy.

In a move that could be described as brilliant and ingenious, Prince of Persia's combat system is a single-player version of Soul Calibur.  It's simpler, and includes fewer moves (PoP has a few dozen, SC has several hundred), but is executed in a way that revolutionizes multi-character combat.

In most games, even the beloved Zelda, fighting multiple goons simultaneously is not always the most fluid experience.  At best, you could switch targets and attack a different foe by pressing a button.

Prince of Persia changes that.  When a group of enemies attack, the game automatically changes the controls for combat.  You can circle your opponents and the game will always stay locked-on to them.  That's where the revolution begins.  The game does not single out one particular enemy and stick to it like glue.  You can attack any foe at any time simply by pressing the analog stick and one of the attack buttons (X or Y) in the direction of the enemy.  If done right, the Prince can quickly slash an enemy, strike another and continue until they've all been hit at least once.  This would keep them at bay.  (Enemies will not wait for their friends to finish before attacking – they'll gang up and attack together.)  With this simple, brilliant combat system, you can mess around with the enemies and eliminate them in a variety of exciting ways.  Pre-release footage left me a little skeptical, but these developers knew exactly what they were doing.

When Mr. Death comes knocking at your door, Prince of Persia's most frequently talked about feature will save the day.  I'm not going to get into the story behind it, but there's a dagger in this game that controls time.  Time can be slowed, frozen, reversed or sped up.  Individual enemies can be frozen for easier kills.

Most rewarding is the reverse time feature.  Prince of Persia gives players only one life.  There are no extra lives to be had; no bonus continues to be earned.  You can continue as much as you want from each save point, but those are few and far between.  In most circumstances, death can be reversed by rewinding the situation.  Your actions – as well as your opponent's actions – will be rewound.  There doesn't seem to be a specific amount of time that can be rewound.  The limit depends on how quickly you choose to rewind the situation after death.  Although the Prince can take a beating in combat, he is far from being impervious to hitting the ground after dropping 50 feet (a common occurrence in this game).  He is also vulnerable to spikes, which seemed to be placed in the most inconvenient places.  Without being able to rewind your mistakes, most gamers would need to have patience of steel (not to mention impeccable skills) to make it through.

The world has not seen a game with an artistic style this beautiful since the release of ICO.  The whole game is like a painting; a visual work of art that begs to be stared at.  There are more "oh my gosh!" moments than I can count.  The cinematic camera effects are superior to all other games.  In one seamless move, the camera zooms in and out with a slight motion blur.  The standard and landscape views are vastly different from each other.  Landscape takes the camera so far out that you can barely see the characters!  It has a purpose though: some of the game's trickier areas are not completely visible in the standard view.  By switching to landscape the camera will shift to reveal all that is hidden.

You won't want to play in landscape too often, but won't be able to resist switching between the two views to see all of the graphical beauty that the artists have created.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an unquestionable masterpiece.  It's rare to find an adventure game on this level.  It's even rarer to find one that differs so greatly from The Legend of Zelda and is available on all three game consoles.  The Xbox version is the most beautiful of the bunch, so I would definitely recommend this as the version you get.  But if the Xbox is not your console of choice then get this game for whatever platform you love.  Its scope is so grand that I'm amazed every time I think about it.  The game feels more like the beginning of an all-new series than an update or a remake.  This is the pinnacle of the genre.  You can find an experience that is different, but you can't find one that's better.

Gameplay: 9.7
Another game that involves time altering.  Has the world gone mad?  You might think so, but after an hour with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, you'll see that the game's developers are some of the sanest people of all.

Every man and woman who worked on this game deserves an endless amount of praise.  They've proven that you can go further and create a game that seemed impossible.  The battle system is simple, innovative and fun.  The levels are designed in the most clever way.  You'll have to "think" your way through them, and upon doing so successfully Prince of Persia will leave you breathless.

Graphics: 9.6
Ubi Soft infuriated game artists last year with Splinter Cell, and now they're going to increase the anger with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.  What in the world am I talking about?  The graphics!  Splinter Cell had the best graphics of any game released last year.  In terms of realism, Prince of Persia has the best graphics of any game I've played in 2003 thus far.  Take a look at your calendar.  Not that much time is left.  It's very unlikely that anyone is going to come out of the shadows and trump this game's graphical beauty.

Sound: 9
After hearing Prince of Persia’s music, your ears will conclude that this is one of the year’s best soundtracks.  Its musical style is so unique – you rarely hear it in games or movies, and will never hear it on a local radio station.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard

Concept: 9
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time plays like a console launch title should play.  It's not a launch title for any console, but it's rare that a game this far into the consoles' lifespan demonstrates so many unique and refined things.  Most launch titles stink, but if you think back there were a few games (Virtua Fighter, WipeOut and Mario 64) that made the purchase of a new console worth it.  They were a step up from everything else and refined the genre in a way that no other had.  Prince of Persia does that.  It went in an entirely different direction from Zelda and still comes out shining bright.

Overall: 9.6
Prince of Persia's exquisite levels, adventurous gameplay, deep music, and technology-defying graphics make it a must-own for every adventure-loving gamer.  The thought-provoking puzzles are only a miniscule of the thought that must have been put into this game.  It's so vast that you'll wonder how the developers ever got it off the drawing board.  How can anyone begin to develop a game that's this deep?  I doubt I'll ever know.