Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

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.