Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

The Good
As the sun arose, the Grand Vizier betrayed his Maharajah and signaled the forces of the King of Persia. They sprang upon the waking city which quickly fell before them and none was braver or bolder than the Persian Prince. Time and again, his blade found flesh, but his quest was not for blood but for glory. The Maharajah's Treasure Room was yet to be found, but the Prince would find its location and disarm its traps, bringing the Dagger of Time back to his father. Then, on the road home, laden with slaves, plunder, and an enchanted hourglass, the Persian Army stopped at a friendly Caliph's Palace. Here the Dagger of Time and the Hourglass of Time would come into contact, the Sands of Time spilling forth and swallowing all life. All but the Prince— was he protected by the Dagger of Time? But wait, there's one of the slave girls and where is the Vizier?

Such is the premise of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, an action/adventure game set within the huge environments of the Palace and its grounds. With aid from Farah, the slave girl with noble bearing, the Prince must find a way to undo what was been done. For, as the Prince tells us, "Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm."

The Prince faces two major obstacles in his quest: Sand Creatures and the Palace itself. The Sands of Time have made zombies of the Palace residents, from the Harem girls to the famed birds in the Caliph's aviary. The Prince can strike them down again and again, but there is no final death until the Prince uses the Dagger of Time to drain the Sands away from them. That isn't all the Dagger can do. As the Prince progresses in the game, the Dagger gains the power to bend Time—hasten or slow events, or rewind events up to ten seconds in the past.

As for the Palace, between the destructive nature of the Sands and the traps which have been enabled, it is a perilous place to visit. Luckily for the Prince, he has some fancy moves. In addition to running and jumping, he can run along a wall or run up a wall, swing from various bars and do all manners of flipping and tumbling. While all this should feel lifted from The Matrix or Hong Kong action movies, it seems more like a natural extension of the Prince's abilities from the 2D games. Although, in those games, if the Prince fell to his death, it was game over; in this one you can rewind (or reload). Also unlike those games, the path is not always clear. Much of the fun of this game (probably eighty percent of it) is looking around the huge environments and figuring out what must be done. Is there a button that can be pressed by running along a wall? Can you leap from a broken column to a rope? Is that chasm narrow enough to leap from side to side down? There is some help in the form of visions the Prince has when he encounters Sand Portals (which also serve as Save Points) these visions show what may, or may not, come to pass.

The other twenty percent is action. Prince of Persia has the most fluid, articulated combat I've seen. Collision detection is top notch—I've inched away from enemy blades and narrowly deflected blows. Apart from just pressing the attack button, there are many advanced attacks the Prince will have to use to defeat his enemies: flipping over them and attacking them from behind, launching his self off walls, and more. More challenging, there are some enemies immune to special attacks, they'll throw you down if you try to leap over them or knock you aside.

Prince of Persia has an excellent story narrated by the Prince which allows for great payoffs like him saying, "No no, that didn't happen," if he dies or promising to pick up the story from save points. There is more character development than I expected from an action platformer, chiefly related to the relationship between the Prince and Farah, but also in growth of the Prince's character.

Graphics are breathtaking, offering huge environments with stunning detail. Prison cells have graffiti, heat from torches creates a shimmering effect, and this game passes the beautiful waterfall test. The character models move believably and have a Disneyesque level of detail—actually the game kind of feels like Aladdin and Jasmine versus the Army of Darkness. Sound is also incredible. Voice work, music, and ambient effects are all tremendous. Every element combines to create an immersive gaming experience, making this a modern classic.

The Bad
My one major complaint about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has to do with combat. I mentioned above that creatures only die when drained by the Dagger of Time, but there are often many waves of creatures. And the Prince is always outnumbered, even with Farah's assistance (using her Bow of Friendly Fire—don't ask). So combat is slick, stylish, smooth, etc… and goes on for way too long. With the exception of a few boss battles, combat in this game only serves to lengthen game play.

Which is my second complaint. Or observation. You can beat this game in a weekend. And other than spotting a few secret areas, there aren't branching paths or multiple endings which add a replay value. Not that you wouldn't want to re-experience this masterpiece, but as DarkDove mentions, it's even shorter the second time around.

The Bottom Line
I'm still amazed at the tremendous amount of thought that went into this game. If you pay attention, you can spot how Farah is able to make her way through the Palace when she isn't with the Prince. There are incredible puzzles equal to any in a traditional adventure game. And you have to love how carvings actually add to the story, rather than act as wallpaper. All that and off-hand references to obscure Persian heroes!

The Good
There are a lot of complimentary words in the English language. Of course, I'm not going to claim to know all of them. But I am going to claim that there isn't a doubt in my mind that every single one of them applies to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Unfortunately, the best I could come up with to describe this masterpiece was "absolutely brilliant," but believe me, I feel terribly guilty for my incompetence in finding a better suited description. So, due to my overwhelming feeling of guilt, I guess my only option is to tell you just why this game is "absolutely brilliant."

By far, the finest aspect of Sands of Time is the gameplay itself. There are two main parts to the gameplay: fighting battles and maneuvering obstacles. The true core of the game though lies in maneuvering obstacles. The main character, who we'll just refer to as "the Prince," as his true name is never actually revealed, has amazing acrobatic talents. He can run up and along walls, climb up and down polls, swing on bars, jump long distances, rebound between walls, and do whatever else the situation might require. The best thing about all of this is how realistically the Prince controls. His movements are the exact opposite of the usual jerky movements found in most other games. I could probably spend a good five or ten minutes just running around in a circle or zigzagging because of how fluidly the Prince moves.

But fluidity and grace aside, the real fun comes from applying the previously mentioned acrobatic abilities to the physical puzzles constantly encountered throughout the game. Let me give you an example. Say you come into a room high above the floor, and you want to get down to the bottom. So first, you have to drop down onto a ledge and scale across the wall. From the wall, you jump onto a broken column that is no longer connected to the floor, and from there jump onto a platform sticking out of the wall. From the platform, you run sideways across the wall, trigger a pressure plate, jump off the wall to a flagpole, and swing onto another platform summoned out by the pressure plate. And so on until you reach the bottom. The thing is, the situation I just explained (even if it was tough to follow...sorry) is an extremely simple one. Many of these puzzles can get quite complicated, especially when you start taking into account the varied traps that are placed throughout the palace you will be traversing.

Now, don't think that these physical puzzles are going to be the only brain-scratching situations you will encounter. Doing all those things are really quite exhilarating, and just plain fun to do. The real tough stuff comes in the few actual puzzles in the game. Those of you who have played "Ico" should have some idea of what these are like, although The Sands of Time's puzzles are exceptionally simple when compared to Ico's. The thought of these scared me at first, because puzzle solving isn't exactly my strong suit when it comes to video games. But these too are actually quite fun, and pretty rewarding when you finish them. For a quick example, there is one part in the game where you have to rearrange mirrors on the first and second floor of a library in order to hit a symbol on the wall with a thin stream of light and open a gate. For me, these puzzles certainly took a little while to figure out, but it also wasn't anything where I got bored because I didn't know what to do next (as it often happened in Ico.)

Well, enough with the adventure part of the game. Let's move on to the action. Like in the puzzles, the Prince's acrobatic abilities play an imperative role in successfully concluding a battle. The most helpful action in the game, for me anyway, was being able to vault over enemies. Yes, that's right...you jump onto an enemy, then jump over him. While in the air, you have the option of swinging your sword and knocking the enemy down. But not all enemies will let you vault over them. That is why you can jump off the wall and over the enemy, providing the same effect as the regular vault. You can also jump off the wall, but instead of jumping over the enemy, you'll dive directly in its direction, sword pointing straight out, again knocking him down. The option of blocking and counter-attacking are also present. In order to survive, all of these actions must be utilized to take advantage of each enemy's weakness.

Notice how I never said anything about actually killing an enemy in the last paragraph. That's because after the first five minutes of the game, it will be impossible. Due to the Prince's unintentional actions, every human being was turned into a sand creature. And, as we all know, you can't actually kill a sand creature, that's just foolish. But you can destroy it utterly by taking out its sand. Of course, that requires some sort of sand extracting weapon, something like the Dagger of Time maybe.

In order to truly get rid of an enemy, you must knock it down and stab it with the Dagger of Time, thus taking its sand. And when the Dagger fills up with enough sand, the fun really starts happening. With the dagger, and with enough sand, you can temporarily stop time for one enemy, temporarily slow down all time, rewind time, and even temporarily stop time for everything except you, allowing you to destroy a number of enemies in the blink of an eye. The most helpful of all these time control abilities is the power to rewind, because not only can you rewind time if you get hit by an enemy or misjudge a landing, you can rewind time after you have died, thus reviving yourself.

Assisting the wonderful gameplay are absolutely superb graphics. The Sands of Time has some of the most beautiful surroundings I've ever seen in a video game. Even during nighttime segments, this game just looks stunning.

Alright, so the gameplay is great and the graphics are gorgeous, but what about the story? Well, at first I thought it was going to be another horribly average story with a boring presentation. The basics of the story are that the Prince is tricked into unleashing a horrible evil upon the world, and it is up to the Prince, with the help of the spunky Farah, to contain this evil before it spreads, and stop the one responsible for the trickery.

After having completed the game, I'm still obliged to say it was fairly average, but in a good way. One neat thing about how the story is presented is that most of it happens during gameplay. Conversations between the Prince and Farah happen in real time, as well as when the Prince is expressing his thoughts to the player. At key parts of the story though, the game will convert to an FMV, each of which couldn't have possibly been better. But the best part about the story is the little twist at the end, something that when you see it will make you say, "Ohhh...now I get it," even though you thought you understood in the first place. Even though I feel a little cheated because I feel like I should have picked up on this little surprise beforehand, I was extremely pleased with how everything unfolded. All in all, I got much more from the story than I had originally expected.

One more noteworthy part of The Sands of Time is the theme song. The music that plays during gameplay is fine, it suits the game well, but it really isn't a huge part of the experience. But the theme song itself is something worth mentioning. Hearing it for the first time during the ending credits, the song is a modern take on traditional mid-eastern melodies. The music is fairly simple, but accompanied with smooth vocals, the song itself holds a charming quality I don't often hear in most songs.

The Bad
I have said time and time again that no masterpiece is perfect. And staying true to this statement, there is a huge problem I had with The Sands of Time. I beat this game in a little over a day, approximately thirty hours from the time I first started it up until I was watching the ending credits. My total gameplay time was a little more than eight hours. Today, I started the game again for fun, and I got through fifty percent of the game in about two and a half hours. I mean, I realize that a lot of work went into this game, I really do, but it is still unbelievably short. This game was, for lack of a better word, absolutely brilliant, but I only got to experience that brilliance for a day. It just saddens me that the experience was over so quickly.

The Bottom Line
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the few games about which everything feels right. It's beautiful, it's challenging, it's humorous, and it's just plain fun. I beg of you, for your own sake, don't pass this game up, because you'd have to try real hard to dislike it.

The Good
As if we needed more proof that nostalgia sells more games than originality, here we have another next-generation revival of a classic game series: Prince of Persia, which everyone must remember from it's glory days of 2D platforming. However for the poor Prince, this isn't his first "resurrection" as he was brought to the brand new world of 3D adventure once before in a title that only brought embarrassment to anyone that came into contact with it. It is thanks to that title that my expectations for "Sands of Time" were pretty low, however Ubisoft proved with this title that they really have a midas touch lately, and thus they developed a game that is nothing short of genius.

Not concerned with following the original game's chronology, the game casts you as yet another "Prince of Persia" who (along with his father) gets tricked into invading a kingdom by an evil Vizier (who else?) in order for him to get his hands into the magical "Sands of Time" held there. The problem for the Vizier comes when our glory-seeking Prince goes beyond the call of duty and takes a dagger that holds the key to the sands as a trophy in the invasion. After a failed attempt by the Vizier to get the dagger, the Prince unleashes the sands by mistake and turns everyone in his castle to some kind of sand-zombies with only himself, the Vizier and a mysterious girl remaining alive. It's up to the Prince and his newly found ally to now make their way through the castle and face the Vizier with the hope to turn everything back to normal.

As expected, the gameplay follows most of the 3D action-adventure rules, you have to jump and run around, crawl through ledges and slash at whatever comes your way. But Ubisoft added an innovative batch of gimmicks and refined the "classic" bits of the genre so as to make it an almost perfect game. The main flow of the game follows the classic design of the series, which has you sorting all sorts of traps and pitfalls through acrobatic stunts. These include jumping around, rolling, mantling, climbing ladders, bouncing off-walls, pole-swinging and in a cool Matrix-inspired addition, even running on walls! Combat uses a simple scheme of two-attack buttons plus a block one, which is easily one of the best combat systems ever implemented (so good in fact, that it became the focus of the sequel: Warrior Within) opponents are auto-locked as expected nowadays (meaning your movement automatically switches to circle-strafing around the closest enemy). As it often happens in these games however, you are easily surrounded by several opponents and anyone who's ever had a fight in these games is surely familiar with the uncomfortable feeling of having to maneuver what's essentially a giant cardboard box that can only strike in one direction and has to line up to every enemy accordingly... Well, not anymore thanks to Sands of Time! Since the game incorporates the ability to direct your attacks by just pressing the direction your desired opponent is in while you strike. This doesn't mean that your Prince jerks back and forth facing each direction you direct him to, but instead means that he actually twists his torso, kneels and leans towards each direction in a completely dynamic manner. If that alone sounds incredible just wait until you see the way the game works around it, as the added fluidity and adaptability of the combat scheme means your opponents can strike you faster and come in bigger numbers. The results are incredibly dynamic battles that for the first time make fighting in these kind of games a true joy, and that's without taking into account the pre-made yet varied and extremely well done animations that makes each blow and parry a different experience or the acrobatic stunts that allow you to vault over your opponents and bounce between them and strike from above, etc. Most impressive of all however, is how the folks at Ubisoft managed to keep it from getting a completely confusing frenzy by carefully judging the timing in the movements, animations and opponents. One can't help but feel that each fight has a distinct... I dunno... "tempo" as if it were music of some kind, with a rhythm of it's own. Just look at the way the prince holds it's stance after performing a strike as if waiting for the right cue for his next action, blocking and countering are even more obvious as you can distinctively feel the constant pauses between each movement. I don't know, maybe I've had too much of the funny smokes, but no other fighting scheme has ever made feel such things, (except for Virtua Fighter, of course).

Anyway, for as amazing as those gimmicks seem, they pale in comparison with the gimmick that initially sold the game, and which is the time-altering powers of the sands of time the Prince wields. Held in your dagger as a collection of sand tanks, you can use them in a variety of ways such as freezing your opponents in time, make you move at blinding speeds (by putting everything but yourself into slow-motion) and of course, reversing time. That's right, the game actually keeps a constant buffer of some kind of up to 10 seconds of playtime which you can always rewind back to should something go wrong. I cannot even begin to describe how much this revolutionizes the classic platformer gameplay, as it effectively kills the frustration of having to re-do entire game areas because you failed in a specific jump or trap or whatever, as you can cheat death by rewinding back to the point where you screwed up and try it again! Don't worry tough, as this feature is carefully managed and doesn't kill every surprise in the game as one might initially think. The level design alone makes sure the game always holds a nice surprise for you, and it's carefully designed layout makes them super-tight experiences which fail to fall to the classic pitfalls of the genre. This I believe, is thanks to the distinctive 2D logic behind them, which one can easily see whenever one activates the "landscape" view in the game which zooms the camera out to show the player the layout of the particular location he's in. This doesn't mean that the game is merely a 2D platformer done in a polygonal engine, but that the game follows the tight spacing rules and design basics that games like the original Prince of Persia pioneered, a concept more games of this ilk should keep in mind whenever they get lost in the pitfalls of their 3D gameworlds. The careful design means that even the few "puzzle-rooms" found in the game are intuitive and straight-forward, and the addition of "visions" that are just hints perfectly integrated into the context of the game help the player deal with the more challenging situations (and introduce story points every now and then).

Finally, the game is polished and pampered beyond belief thanks to Ubisoft's tremendous production values (which alone crowns them as the European equivalent of EA). The graphic design of the game is simply amazing, with a graphic engine that fully exploits the vertex and pixel shading capabilities of today's GPUs. The engine really falls under the Doom 3 category of "shading engines" which exploit lightning tricks, shading effects and assorted stuff instead of concerning itself with pushing more polygons, in fact the models in Sands of Time aren't impressive at all, but due to the impressive bloom and lighting effects you really couldn't care less about it. Noting down all the kickass effects in the game is really pointless as the game is filled with the now popular distortion effects and motion blurring, but for as good as those are one can't help but feel that it's the small details that really steal the show. Just as an example consider that the game includes caustic reflections for the water! Well, it's obviously a texturing trick as an engine that could make real-time caustics would require a SGI machine at the very least, but it's so well made you'll hardly notice it! Also, a hazy blooming effect is applied to the entire screen, giving it a dream-like soft-focus quality (think of movies like Excalibur) that not only fits the game like a glove by helping the game get that "1001 Nights" motif, but also comes in handy as an additional anti-aliaser as another reviewer mentioned. I can go on and on but you can understand the concept by just taking a look at any screenshot and seeing how this game looks like nothing else. What you can't understand by looking at a screenshot is the incredible character animation, which blends motion captured stuff with character studio-like animation to deliver amazingly lifelike animations (a must for the game really, as the original POP is so fondly remembered among other things, by it's character animation). As an animator myself, I often cringe at the animations in most videogames because they often forget about the anticipation, release and reaction that follows each movement, and which more often than not are the things that sells the idea of a credible, organic movement. This concept is not ignored in Sands of Time and the results are some of the most amazing character animations seen in recent days, and makes each of the many acrobatics and movements made in the game a true pleasure to watch. The camera work also deserves praise as one of the best ever made, not only does it find a way to always position itself in non-intrusive positions, but also goes into slow-motion and switches to "dramatic" positions with a remarkable sense of style that the competition to shame (see? This is how you do slow-mo Max Payne!).

To further complement the game, the sound department received the same care and attention than the graphics, with spot-on sfx, stellar voice acting that permeates every aspect of the game (with the Prince recounting his experiences and adding comments whenever you die, for instance, as if he was telling a tale [which is actually what he is doing] and made a mistake or lost his train of thought ["Wait... No, That's not how it happened" :D]). But most impressive of all, the game has a uniquely and extremely well-designed dynamic soundtrack that mingles Arabic and oriental orchestrations using cittaras and similar instruments with well placed guitar riffs and bass lines that move the entire soundscape from moody oriental tunes to a bitching heavy Arabian-rock mix whenever the action heats up. Oh, and lest I forget, the pre-rendered cutscenes that move the story along are simply amazing in it's quality, not to mention very entertaining, including a particular one that has to be among the most erotic cutscenes I've seen in a videogame (meaning erotic in the good sense of the word, tapping into atmosphere and seduction instead of just plain sleaze as most games [including Warrior Within] often do).

This (the cutscenes, not the eroticism!) brings me to the story of the game which is another jewel in this game's crown, telling a wonderfully entertaining story of love and adventure that not only keeps the player hooked to the end (and what an end that is!) but also charms the player with well-defined characters that follow a classic adventure story but which manage to never feel forced or fall "out of character" while they pursue their quest to undo the damage caused by the Sands of Time. And as I said, the ending alone deserves praise for being one of the most fantastic endings I've played in recent memory, a true beauty of simplicity that nonetheless is incredibly smart and charming as it lets the story and characters come full-circle, and which leaves the player with an incredible sense of gratification and delight after playing it. I can obviously see how this can seem as blind praise, as I can't really tell you why the ending is so great, but trust me, it kicks ass.

The Bad
I'm really hard pressed to find any flaws in this game, but if I had to think about it I would say that it can get pretty easy and short. Particularly easy, as fighting can be a no-brainer at times and the final showdown with the Vizier is a joke.

However there is one thing that totally sucks ass and that is that for the PC version of Sands of Time the developers ditched all the extras found in the console versions (and for those of you that don't know, those include full versions of POP1&2 as well as a reworked version of the first level of POP1 made with the Sands of Time 3D engine). This isn't the first time developers pull this kind of shit on us PC users, and quite frankly I'm getting really annoyed at this.

The Bottom Line
A fantastic game of high adventure that blends stellar and innovative gameplay, a fantastically entertaining storyline and enough production values to put most Star Wars games to shame. Prince of Persia is that rare case where the individual parts of the game are executed with incredible care and talent and the end result, thanks to stellar gaming design manages to be even better than the sum of it's parts. It's meager length and challenge can be somewhat puzzling to some players, but that only means you can play it again sooner!

Now all I need to do is find the idiot that is taking revenge on the PCs superior gaming power by cutting down on our supply of extra features when it comes to porting games.

The Good

“Most people think of time as a river, flowing swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you they are wrong: Time is an ocean in a storm. Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard.”

The persian king Shahraman and his army return home after a great victory over the indian maharajah, with bags full of treasures and new women for the king's harem. In the way they stop to visit the rajah's palace. As a sign of friendship, king Shahraman gives the rajah an enormous and beautiful hourglass. The rajah approaches it with wondering eyes. “Why are the sands glowing?”, he asks.

The former maharajah's vizier, now at king Shahraman's service, steps forward and explains: “These are the Sands Of Time. Inside this hourglass there lies a marvel like none ever seen by any man. But alas, only the Dagger of Time can unlock the hourglass...”

The vizier stares at king Shahraman's son. The Dagger is the treasure the young prince claimed as his own.

Farah, daughter of the maharajah and now a prisoner of the persian king, makes an attempt at a warning: “Don't do it!” --but it's too late. The prince of Persia already sank the dagger in a key-lock mechanism on the hourglass.

As the hourglass opens, something is released with the sands. Whatever it is has certainly never been seen by any man... but it isn't any kind of marvel either.

Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time (from now on we'll just call it PoP, shall we? there's a 20KB limitation for reviews at this website... which I'm now closer to clash with, thanks to this pointless observation) takes the flag of an old side-scrolling platformer created by a wiz called Jordan Mechner, which made history with its incredibly realistic character animation, imaginative platform puzzles, and complex sword-based battle system. In 1989 Prince of Persia would set a standard in platform games, being in time followed by the likes of Another World and Flashback. Even though there have been one or two official sequels to Prince of Persia in the past, none of them managed to cause the shock the first one did.

Now, in this era of floating-point calculated 3D environments, massive poly-count motion-captured character models, and multiple programmable per-pixel shading effects, Ubisoft Montreal comes up with another heir to the legend, trying to set new standards.

THE VISUALS: The mandatory DX9 bells & whistles

Talking about good looking graphics is almost a waste of time nowadays. Even in those rare cases in which the character models don't sport mind-bendingly huge amounts of polygons, the programmable pixel and vertex shaders allow a fairly easy implementation of a sheer amount of special effects.

PoP is a good example of the above sentence. The models actually have a VERY low amount of polygons (more on this in a minute); but the textures, the shadows, the lighting, the special effects, the design of the environments, the details in the decorations --they are all impressive enough as to divert your attention and even make you think: “Wow, this game looks amazing!”, not noticing that the maharajah's daughter doesn't even have fingers in her hands.

There's an option to apply a lighting effect called "bloom", which gives graphics some sort of misty quality and works as a surprisingly effective inhibitor for the infamous jaggies, and at the same time adds nicely to the general Arabian Nights' Tales theme.

Furthermore, there's the treat of watching it all in motion. It's simply amazing. The camera makes all these crazy zooms and pans and whatnot, transforming each jumping puzzle in a small action movie. In this regard, the cutscenes show a brilliant direction and sport all those effects we are so used to see in modern action movies: Odd camera takes, slow-motion movement, physics-defying acrobatics, et cetera. There are a few pre-rendered cutscenes (at the beginning and near the ending), but the ones with in-game graphics have little to envy from them anyway.

SOUND & MUSIC: Iran Rocks!

I don't usually pay much attention to music in games, since only in a few, rare occasions I found a soundtrack I considered worth of mention. Well, PoP is one of those rare examples.

As I said many times before, I suck at describing music, so I'll go through the heresy of calling these "some sort of mixture between typical arabian music and rock n' roll guitars".

That might very well not tell you anything, but just stay on me: The music is great, it matches the action perfectly, and it's so good you might consider hunting down the soundtrack. After you beat the game the credits roll with a beautiful vocal song that alone makes the whole experience worth it.

Finally, I played the spanish version of PoP, which is fully dubbed. Whoever played the spanish version of any game knows how awful the dubbing actors usually are, and if you can compare, it's heart-grindingly painful to hear how badly they butcher the original acting --well for the first time ever I don't have a single complaint about the voices.

I ignore who did the spanish dubbing in this game, but they did a solid work.

GAMEPLAY: Define "smooth"

Simply put, PoP offers the smoothest gameplay system ever --EVER.

Oddly enough, you get to perform a lot of combat movements with one single attack button, depending on contextual circumstances such as the direction you move while attacking, or the position of the enemies around you: Slash one enemy in front of you, and move the stick back pressing attack again, and our good prince will perform an elegant counter strike manoeuvre against whoever was lurking behind him. Move towards an enemy and press jump, and the prince will vault over him and land right behind, blades shining, ready to give some soup. Run towards a wall and press jump twice, and the prince will rebound-jump off the wall, vaulting over the nearest enemy. Press the attack button repeatedly while pointing towards each enemy around you and, as long as there are targets at hand, the prince will engage in a deadly and elegant ballet of hack & slash combos, taking down everything in his path. Block an enemy blow in the exact moment the blades clash and press the attack button, and the prince will kick the enemy and take him down with his sword.

At times, you get to pull so many different moves in a single fight that you might wonder whether you're actually playing or just pointlessly shaking the sticks and hitting buttons to an awesome cutscene.

For the better part of the game you'll enjoy the company of Farah, the maharajah's daughter. She will help you solving some puzzles, and as she has a bow and arrows she'll also help in the fights. Farah happens to be a fairly good fighter, so this is one of those extremely rare games in which your sidekick not only is far from a burden, but she's actually useful! Oh the shock!

All the fantastic combat moves I just talked about are nothing when it comes to the prince's abilities to face the platform puzzles.

This agile lad can walk, run, jump, hang from ledges, climb up / slide down ladders and columns, walk across tightropes, swing on ropes, swing on flagpoles, shimmy across ledges, rebound-jump off walls, and my favourite: Run up and along walls.

Yep, our man in Persia can actually walk on walls. Neo was a fag.

As you might have guessed, all these movements can be combined in order to come up with some outstanding acrobatic combos, and in fact you will be required to do so, as the game focuses heavily in progressively harder platform puzzles.

For example, let's say you come doing the merry shimmy across a ledge, until you a see another ledge above you. Jump, grab, pull yourself up. Solid ground, phew. But then walk a few steps and, crap, a large chasm, across which you can see a flagpole. So you take a deep breath, start running along the wall (while running you come across a few hanging banners, which will nicely wave as you run by them), and once you're in the right spot you rebound-jump off the wall and grab the flagpole. Swing on it, and jump off towards the nearby wall, off of which you'll rebound-jump and grab a ledge above the flagpole. Turns out this ledge is right at the bottom of a narrow chimney-like vertical space, so you'll jump forward, rebound-jump off the wall, and you'll start a rebound-jumping-spree between enclosed walls until you climbed high enough as to grab another ledge. Pull yourself up. Phew, solid ground again...

The design of these platform puzzles is simply brilliant, basically requiring you to solve them in two stages: First figuring out the course you'll have to take, and second actually running through that course.

As you progress in the game, the platform puzzles will grow larger and more complex, requiring you to combine more and more acrobatics in order to beat them, and eventually featuring timed sections so properly timing your movements becomes a factor as well... rest assured you won't get bored easily.

But there is more! Throughout the game there are a number of "regular" puzzles, the kind of massive room-sized puzzles we found in Soul Reaver 2. Much like it happens with the platform puzzles, these are cleverly designed as to be challenging but never annoying. You can figure these puzzles out pretty easily from the get-go, but the actual work comes in putting the pieces together.

For example, at one point in the game you need to re-arrange a number of mirrors in a large two-stories library in order to get a thin stream of sunlight to trigger a certain photosensitive device. Fairly easy to figure out, it does require some thinking in the actual solving, as I think every puzzle should be.

Of course, maybe you're like me, and you still want more --well THERE IS MORE!

From the moment you get the Dagger of Time, you'll be granted access to its several time-bending powers, among which count the ability to freeze enemies, slow down time (yep, much like Max Payne's bullet-time), and roll back ten seconds in time, thus gaining the opportunity to save the prince from a miscalculated jump or a treacherous back-stab, and even resurrect him from a recent death.

You can't possibly imagine how handy this last feature comes when you screw up the last jump of a long platform puzzle.

Finally, one thing that made me remember the recent Legacy of Kain - Defiance: The camera. While I recently said elsewhere that the "cinematic camera" in Defiance enhances the action greatly, I also admitted it wasn't without a number of problems, enough to even get some people to understandably hate it.

PoP, on the other hand, simply sports the best camera ever seen. Not only it makes some nice-looking cinematic shots by itself every now and then, but you can also control it at every moment.

And I do mean CONTROL IT.

You can zoom out to the point the whole scene looks like a 3D version of Lemmings or you can zoom in as close as to see the hair in the prince's ear (ah, OK, maybe not THAT much). You can examine the area from a first person perspective, you can make the camera turn 360º around your character... You be the director.

Reading all this, you might think: “Jeeesus Christ in a motorbike! How complicated can be to perform all those things!?!”.

Well, it is not.

Controlling the prince and getting him to chain up the craziest combo of acrobatics while at the same time fighting four enemies could only be any easier if you could just project your mind onto the prince and command him through pure thought.

Barring that, playing with mouse and keyboard is as smooth as it gets. No control interface designed by a human being so far has been more user-friendly than this. Period.

Furthermore, if you're the lucky owner of a dual-stick gamepad, rejoice: You're in a gamer's paradise.

THE STORY: A cheese-free love story

When I started playing the game I thought of the story as a predictable and unsurprising "The Prince vs The Evil vizier" cliched tale. Since the gameplay was so enjoyable I didn't really care to think much more about it.

Then Farah showed up and we formed this team, and as the game progressed, these guys started this childlike push & pull, constantly going forth and back between fighting and flirting. Whenever I was left alone with the prince, his voiceovers made clear the way his feelings towards the girl were growing deeper by the minute. Granted, the outcome of this relationship could be guessed from the get-go, but the tale was told with so much class, a few humorous moments, and a surprising lack of cheap cheesiness, that it was totally enjoyable.

In fact, this "troublesome love story" sub-plot was much more enjoyable than the "main" story arc itself... until all of a sudden, in the last five minutes of gameplay, I came to understand the full joke. The whole "chase the vizier and lock the infamous hourglass" was in fact the sub-plot, merely a vehicle for the love story.

At the end of the game it all ties up and connects with the very beginning, closing a perfect circle with a major twist which, however predictable, oozes style as few things I've ever seen.

The ending itself, meaning the very closing phrase uttered by the prince -not without a delightful touch of bitterness, by the way- is brilliant in its own simplicity. In fact, this has to be one of the most rewarding endings I ever came to enjoy.

And then there comes the beautiful vocal song I mentioned above to which the credits roll, and you can't possibly deny that the whole package spells perfection.

The Bad

This game has to be the first in a good while in which I can't find a thing to complain about. Everything I usually care about in a game is nicely covered here: Everything I just described performs quite nicely in my awfully low-end box, and I haven't found one single bug or glitch of any kind. Not even the ever-present clipping issues.

The one thing I could whine about has to be the poly-count, especially when it comes to character models. The prince is fairly good, but the other characters have a noticeable low amount of polygons.

This can be understandable in the enemies, given the huge size of the environments, the massive amount of actors showing on scene at once, and the brief life they're going to have anyway; but Farah's model suffers from the same problem, and it tells. Especially since she doesn't even have fingers in her hands, and you will see those disturbingly hideous hands in some close-ups during certain cutscenes.

The Bottom Line

I'm not into medieval mid-eastern settings at all. In fact, I neglected this game for as long as I knew of its existence, despite the multiple praises I kept hearing all over the place. However, the moment I got a chance to test-drive it, I could only think of one thing: I HAVE GOT to own this game.

Without actually inventing anything new, PoP simply puts together the most challenging and imaginative platform puzzles and the smoothest combat interface I can remember.

On top of this, a simple yet beautiful love story told with a stylish narrative, and a conclusion to remember for years to come.

After I finished this game, and as the credits started rolling to the beautiful song, I felt a fulfilling sense of satisfaction as I felt few times before. Only a few of MAJOR storytelling masterpieces such as Silent Hill 2 and Soul Reaver 2 made such a deep impression on me, and even about those I had several issues to complain about.

PoP undoubtedly deserves a honor seat among my favourite games ever.

Finally, as some have said, the game IS short. However, I don't think of this fact as PoP's fault; but as a downside of every other game out there, for not offering half of what this one does.

The Good
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has you in control of The Prince (he has no name other than that), who tells a story of how he unlocked The Sands of Time. It clearly borrows elements from Sacrifice, with the Prince giving past-tense voiceovers and when you die, the Prince says "That's not how it happened," but it does this better than Sacrifice, since death messages often change due to context, such as falling, being slain in battle, getting impaled by spikes, etc.

The opening level is the Prince's story of taking the Dagger of Time during a battle. The battle ends with the Prince's father conquering the enemy, and taking some of his treasures, including the Sands of Time, which are inside a large hourglass. A vizier who betrayed the conquered emperor tricks the Prince into using the dagger to unlocking the Sands, which turn everyone except the Prince, the vizier, and a slave girl named Farah into sand monsters.

During the game, the Prince joins forces with Farah to undo what he had done. Much of the game consists of acrobatics, which the Prince is quite good at. As well as the classic jumping and hanging onto ledges, the Prince can tumble, shimmy across ledges, walk across beams, swing on ropes and bars, run up and along walls, and rebound jump off walls to get to higher ground. Oh, and he can climb up columns and poles and jump off of them. He will occasionally have to do this while avoiding a variety of traps, such as saws, spikes, chomper thingies, flying swords, and many other bladed and pointy things.

There is also combat against sand creatures. After the first level, the Prince will no longer fight regular humans. Sand creatures cannot be killed normally. They must be beaten into submission and then stabbed with the Dagger of Time (or frozen with it and then cut up several times). Stabbing a stunned creature with the Dagger recharges sand and power tanks, which allow you to use the dagger's special powers. The dagger's most useful function is to rewind time to before the Prince's death should you make a mistake. It can also freeze an enemy, slow down time, and speed up the Prince to breakneck velocities.

Combat has its fair share of unique acrobatic moves. The Prince can vault over an enemy and attack them (and if you do it fast enough, you can even go in with a quick stab with the Dagger to retrieve sand. But some stronger enemies cannot be vaulted over, in which case you will need to jump off a wall and vault over them that way. There is also a way to shoot yourself off the wall and knock down all enemies in your path. The game controls quite well with the keyboard and mouse, and I sincerely doubt there will be any time that you wish for a gamepad.

The graphics are amazing. The original Prince of Persia was famous for its smooth animation, and The Sands of Time does it even better. I can't remember a single time when the Prince's animation seemed unrealistic. Framerates almost never slow down, so you can truly appreciate the graphics. The water effects are amazing. While you'll only be seeing pools and ponds rather than oceans, the effects for them are stunning. I don't think I've ever played a game in which water actually REFRACTS LIGHT.

The sound and music is excellent as well. The voice acting is very well done, and the sound effects are excellent, complete with echoes in large areas. The music ranges from classic Arabian to somewhat anachronistic heavy metal, and it is all quite enjoyable.

And did I mention the world is completely seamless? I didn't experience a single loading time besides a short one before starting a new game or loading a saved one.

The Bad
There is one thing that must be noted: THERE IS NO SAVE ANYWHERE FEATURE! The Sands of Time is easier than its predecessors, though that's not saying much. A quicksave feature would be welcomed with open arms, especially in a later level in which you lose the Dagger.

And did I mention that it's easier, but that's not saying much? Many people think this game is easy, but I found it to be quite a challenge. Combat can be extremely difficult, and certain acrobatic sequences are exercises in frustration.

The Bottom Line
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an excellent game that will keep you engaged until the end. I highly recommend that you get this game.

The Good
The best feature about Sands of Time is by far the graphics and the way it has been programmed. Don't believe the recommendations for the game.... all you need is a good graphics card. I ran it on a slow 400 MHz Celeron and it ran at full graphics at full speed. The GeForce4 did all the work.

Great controls, movement/animation, graphics, sound/music, time-rewind, fight moves, fantastic level designs, etc... It must also be said that the way The Sands of Time captured the feel of the original games was very well done.

The addition of the 'dagger of time' adds another element into the game by allowing you to rewind time if something didn't happen as expected. Very cool.

The Bad
At the start of the game you sit and play with a sense of awe. However after 20 levels of repetitive puzzle room -> too long fight sequence -> save point, it starts getting a little tiresome. Then towards the end, the puzzles start picking up their level of difficulty, and things get interesting.... especially once you have to fight without your 'dagger of time' :) Thankfully by th time the fantastic ending comes, you're well back into it. :)

One thing to note is that the porting of this PS2 game to the PC left behind some flaws. There two points in the game I personally got stuck, and it was due to the game responding too fast/slow. The only way past the situations is varying the number of background applications, enabling 'haste' mode, trying different camera angles, and a whole lot of luck. I assume that this wouldn't be an issue on a faster machine.

The Bottom Line
A kick ass action-puzzle game with graphics that will leave you gasping for more. Imagine a sword yielding Persian, with the ability to rewind time if something goes wrong, and the agility of tony hawk, merged all into one.

I thoroughly recommend it.... well worth the expense.

The Good
Once again you take on the role of the Prince of Persia, but instead of forging though foreboding dungeons as then the original classics, he begins the story as a young warrior that's ready to prove himself in battle with a single goal in mind, to win glory by raiding the treasure vault. Risking death traversing the decaying ruins he only finds an odd dagger, but blinded by pride he claims his prize. However, the purpose of the dagger remains unknown to the naive Prince till the Vizier tricks him into unlocking the hourglass vessel that entraps the Sands of Time, turning all within the palace into zombies under its control save three souls, the Prince, the fallen Maharajah's daughter Farah, and the Vizier. Now the Prince must find a way to undo what has been done and somehow the dagger is the key.

The passages through the palace are blocked with fallen walls, puzzling diabolical traps and hoards of sand creatures. While this task may seem daunting to ordinary men, the Prince's blazing speed and agility allow him to not only leap and swing among the ruins, but run across the walls along deep chasms, climb up walls to unreachable ledges and levers, or even leap back and forth between them up to death defying heights. (As a word of warning, he can't climb walls very well when his feet are wet. Once he's out of the water give his feet a moment to dry.) His range of acrobatic skills are crucial to beating the puzzling paths created fallen ruins and clockwork traps set to kill all who pass. Many of the locked doors will begin to close as soon as they open, so he has to be quick and cunning to dodge the spinning and swinging spikes and blades in time. All of this may seem to be to much for one man, but by mastering a few simple actions the Prince can apply the needed move given the situation and direction he's traveling.

Luckily Farah, the one of the few real characters he meets, decides to aid him in his journey to the recover the hourglass, but only after saving her life. Soon the Prince realizes that her intelligence and petite figure are invaluable to beating many of the puzzles. However, the secrets she hides leads to distrust as well.

Traps are not the only thing that test the Prince. The former inhabitants of the palace have be transformed by the sands into creatures of the undead, forced to do its biding. Luckily the Prince can quickly block and attack in any direction and even leap over to into his attackers. Some of the sand creature may seem single minded, but the undead warriors are also swift and can block many of he moves. Even tough their attacks are usually predictable they can rematerialize anywhere at any time, so he must be cautious or they can easily entrap him. Luckily, Farah will ad you in many of the battles with her lightning fast bow, and mysteriously endless supply of arrows. However, since she doesn't carry a sword and her arrows are too weak to take down some the larger brutes, she can easily be overwhelmed in the later battles, so be careful since he cannot complete the journey to the tower alone.

Even with all of their their might and cunning, they cannot defeat the undead without releasing the sands from their deformed bodies. Soon the Prince learns that the dagger can also be used to weld the Sands of Time to his command, by reversing the flow of time to undo a recent mistake, to slow time to slip though a tough situation, or to release the sands from his foes. Most importantly the dagger can be used to retrieve the sand that is released, which is required for it to preform its time bending magic.

Unfortunately, the sand creatures often guard the sand vortex, the place where the Prince can return if he were to fail at any point, so if he cannot complete the journey to the next vortex he must return to the previous one. Fortunately, if he doesn't gave up, he can often return to a closer point. Since the other points are not typically marked, it can be hard to know where they will be.

Behind the magic of the story and the gameplay, the graphics overall are stunning. The level of detail of the characters and world isn't the greatest, but they strike a fare balance and are well done. While most action games that allow jumping and climbing ledges require a simplified world geometry, and Sands of Time (SoT) still maintains a fairly complex and nearly continuous world. While there are a good number of moving objects in the world, most of it however is static, many of the objects are simple doors and traps.

Atop all of this are detailed textures and soft lighting, which mostly make up for the simple underlying geometry. In fact the texturing of the models doesn't fall far behind those used in to scarce prerendered cutscenes. The world textures are also fairly detailed, but tend to be in monochromatic browns. However, when the world is mostly made of sand and sandstone, there really isn't much one can do. However the lighting does make up for some of the lack of color of the textures, especially in the indoor scenes such as the well. Also the shading and lighting used give it a nice soft somewhat cartoonish feel. After, this is no ultra realistic gore-fest like Doom 3. It's also in the little details where the game really shines. No, I mean literally. The Sands of Time really glow as they float like a soft fog over the floors of the rooms and halls and the dagger even glows in response whenever the Prince wonders near.

One of the elements that would have really ruined the game is animation, but SoT doesn't disappoint. The animation of the Prince is extremely fluid throughout all of the many moves he can preform. He smoothly follows through from one to another with out pausing and it seams that most actions can be interrupted if appropriate to do so. The animation of the other models doesn't fall far behind. One thing that seamed to be missing was facial animation during the game. The Prince's face doesn't seem to move at all when he speaks. At least the in game rendered cutscenes are better. Last, but not least the cloth animation was great. The wall banners fold, shift, and waft as the Prince touches against them or as he pushes them out of the way as runs along the wall behind them. Too bad that's about the only time you really get to see it in action.

The sound and voice overs in the game are great. The sounds are of good quality and the acting is simply top notch. The music in general was great, but I think that it would have been better with they didn't stray so much away from arabic motif with the electric guitar. I know they were going for a harder modern sound, but I would prefer that they didn't.

The Bad
First and for most, the one thing that completely ruined the game for me was the character control scheme. I've played a good number of PC adventure and action games and of the two kinds of control schemes commonly used, character and camera relative, the use of camera relative movement in SoT was by far one of the worst decisions I've seen in a long time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for an action game, but SoT had to take it one step farther with dynamic camera movement. While sometimes being cinematographically eye catching, in others it becomes painfully clear why every other 3D 3rd person action game I've ever played almost always used character relative controls. I tried in vain to find any way to fix this simple mistake, but alas the option was nowhere to be found.

Most of the time you can at least control the camera to do whatever you wish, but often times it decides to reposition itself on it's own accord and occasionally refuses to move regardless of how bad the angle is. Typical case in point, the prince is on a ledge with the camera pointing let's say north and to the east you can see a pole and a hole in the facing wall the he has to swing to. Now the camera at this point might own its own either decide to swing around to the west so that you can't see the obstacles ahead or swing slightly to the west just enough at last moment so that instead of dashing across the wall toward the pole, continuing to push the right control button will send him climbing up the wall matrix style. Again when as soon as you make it up to the hole, camera swings around behind you to point east, showing you what lays beyond, but the shortly after you push the up button to run inside the camera will suddenly position itself on the other side pointing west. If you're not fast enough to stop or push down instead to account for the abrupt change in camera angle, the prince will spin around to match the new camera angle and run back out the hole again. Having to constantly readjust your prospective of how the controls move the prince through a hall when dodging traps is annoying, but having to do it constantly during battles is just ridiculous. A number of times when I tried to vault over a lesser sand creature to get out a sticky situation the camera would swing around enough that at the last moment that the up button when send the price vaulting over a staff man instead, which would in turn readily fling the prince to the ground with an overhead swing. Also in a few occasions the camera would get stuck with a section of wall or curtain between it and the prince such the view of the prince and his assailants was complete obscured.

My only other real complaint is about the save game points. I know that its a common, and antiquated, crutch commonly used in console games, yet it's a point that's often overlooked when porting games to the PC. At least they manged to integrate the logic of the save game point into the game better than most games I've played recently and even give you a bonus by showing you the path ahead.

The Bottom Line
I really wanted to like the game and often found this unique pole and sword swinging action/adventure to be a real blast, until I found myself caught between a battle with hoards of sand creatures and the constant disorientation induced by a runaway camera with a mind of it own. It's really sad to see a such a great game humbled by such a simple mistake.

The Good
This was one of the first PS2 games I remember buying other than ICO.

I'll jump right on the graphics as usual. AMAZING! I new the PS2 was capable of these sort of graphics, but it's so much better when you actually get to see them in motion. I love the way the prince moves effortlessly across walls, it's so smooth and natural looking that no other games acrobatics can match it. The environments were dreamlike and absolutely surreal at times. The glowing ,sparkly fog in some of those levels could only work in this game. The character models could have been better as far as the hands were concerned, but that is such a small gripe compared to how wonderful they look. The monsters are all very imaginative and very challenging. Fara and the prince look exquisite and are some of the best I've ever seen on the PS2.

Now on to the sound. Half and half. Sometimes it's at the right volume, and sometimes it's far too low. I know some of it was for dramatic effect, but it can be to quiet for it's own good. The voice acting sometimes sounded rush but rarely stilted or stiff. But overall it was very well done and incredibly convincing. I also like the music, even if doesn't fit the age it's in.

The con-trolls were very intuitive and easy to learn after a few tries. There isn't much other than that to discuss in the con-troll department.

Now on to the gameplay. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST ROCK SOLID GAMES I HAVE EVER PLAYED!!!! Seriously! Jumping from walls, running on walls, jumping off platforms precariously perched over bottomless pits, swinging from poles, and the revolutionary realtime rewind all come together for a amazing experience ! And something else I didn't experience in any other game before was how the story was told with minimal cutscenes. You'll be pulling a lever and the prince will start his tale from that particular point. The distance between save points was annoying, but not aggravating. Overall no major complaints here! Oh, and the load times are always short! No long waits! And one last note, the original Prince of Persia is a unlockable ! I never got past level two, but it's the original! Come on !

The Bad
Some of the sequences where you have to jump between walls was kind of hard. And some of the fights early on in the game could drain your patience if you didn't have a lot of it. And in the original game that you can unlock, I can't make that last jump in level two.

The Bottom Line
Get it ! you'll love it ! The best Prince of Persia game since the original is the best one since! No other sequel will ever match what this one did.

The Good
In Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time you play the prince who of coarse is the son of the king of Persia with a vizier helping them who has more intentions than clear by breaking in the Maharajah’s vault and unleashing the sands of time which turns all but The Prince, Farah the maharajah’s daughter and the vizier because they each have a special artifact that protects them The dagger of time, a Medallion, And a staff.

But the dagger doesn’t just protect the prince from the curse it also allows the prince to reverse time when he gets in a sticky situation and you will need it a lot it’s not so helpful in combat but in the platforming elements it is which sometimes it can be difficult to figure out exactly where you are supposed to go the game has a very storybook type feel having the prince narrate the story.

The Bad
One of the strange things that happens because he tells the story when you die you’ll say something like “No no, no that’s not how it happened” then how does it happen? As if in the middle of the story the listener blurted out “And then you died?”

The combat also isn't particularly good with a lack of moves and the fact you have to finish the enemies with the dagger of time and the only things you can do is a regular attack and what is called a vault in which you jump over the enemy and attack as you come down which later enemies can block which can lead to some frustrating moments but was fixed in Warrior Within but that’s for another review.

The Bottom Line
Overall if you liked the original or you are looking for a fun new action game pick this one up.

The Good
Great story line that kept the game interesting. The character design was really awesome and made the game very fun to play. The puzzles were easy enough to solve but weren't to easy. The different swords made combat fun and turning back time was fun and got me out of a couple of difficult spots.

The Bad
Sometimes you don't have enough time to use your time orbs so you just waste time turning time back and forth as you see yourself die several times. Also, i was really confused with what i had to do in the part after you and the girl go into a bath. I had no idea what was going on so i was just going in random doors.

The Bottom Line
A game for all action/puzzle solvers libraries.