| Prince
of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
By Jay Wiliiams
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands takes place
in the seven year gap between The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia:
Warrior Within.
The game sees the Prince sent on a quest to see
his brother, Malik, and learn about leadership from him. However, when
the Prince arrives, he finds Malik's kingdom under siege by an army who
will stop at nothing to get its hands on a treasure buried deep within.
The Prince manages to infiltrate Malik's kingdom,
and meets up with his brother in the treasure vault. Here,
Malik declares that he is fighting a losing battle, and needs to rely
on a last resort or be forced to retreat.
The Prince strongly objects, but Malik releases
Solomon's Army using a magical medallion. Solomon's Army is an
assortment of different creatures, all made of sand, supposedly enough
to outnumber the grains of sand in the desert – that's a whole lot of
creatures.
The Prince and Malik both manage to attain
seperate halves of the medallion used to unleash the army, protecting
them from being turned into sand statues - which was the grim fate of
the rest of the kingdom's inhabitants.
The medallion also allow them to absorb the power of
the enemies they defeat. Malik is separated from the Prince, who finds
a portal to the domain of Razia, a Djinn. Razia tells the Prince that
the only way to send Solomon's Army back from which they came, is to
reunite both halves of the medallion used to bind them. Razia gives the
Prince special powers, and has him set out to find Malik, and the other
half of the medallion.
Forgotten Sands has a few nostalgic memories for
fans of the series. Right from the get go you have the ability to
rewind time which lets you correct all those times when you got sliced
up or shouldn't have jumped when you did.
The rewind feature means you can take more risks
as you jump from wall to pole and so forth. Knowing you can go back a
step gives the game a sense of freedom which sees you getting into what
I like to call 'the zone'.
The combat system is pretty much a "mash
any button and see what happens" situation, as there isn't a great
depth of detail involved.
Holding attack delivers a more powerful slash, and
now and then you'll go into a close combat move jumping on the heads of
enemies or knocking them against walls. It's okay for some shits and
giggles, but that's pretty much it, as the powers you gain over the
course of the game, whilst pretty effective, aren't that much fun to
use.
Having said that, the game does do a good job of
teaching you how to use all the special abilities you unlock.
Aside from the power to turn back time, you can freeze water, blink
into enemies to jump long distances, and reveal 'memory platforms'. As
you progress, all of these devices get piled on top of each other until
you get some areas that require you to do some thinking on how to best
use your abilities to get from point A to point B.
This is primarily a jumping puzzle game - and the
platforming is interesting for the most part, but it tends to get a
little repetitive after awhile.
The camera control in game felt weird at
first as it often won't let you look up or around enough, but you soon
realise it's always pointing you in the direction you need to go. So,
in essence, it works which is the most important thing.
The gameplay in general works, and the slick cut
scenes look brilliant. There is even the odd puzzle that keeps you
guessing, but I felt that Forgotten Sands could have been better.
If you put it against action adventure games like Assassins Creed and
God of War 3 it simply doesn't stack up, so it's hard to recommend this
over the far superior competition.
Game: Prince of
Persia: The Forgotten Sands
System: Playstation 3
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Distributor: Ubisoft
Rating: 55%
(Ratings Key/Explanation)
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