Like Sands In The Hourglass

I've spent quite a bit of time on Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands recently and decided to review it.

As a fan of the entire Prince of Persia series and Sands of Time in particular, i really wanted to hate this game. That said, I can't. The Forgotten Sands has all the acrobatic wall running action Sands of Time had and then some.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is the latest game in the Prince of Persia franchise and a return to the 'Sands' universe. The Forgotten Sands chronologically takes place between the Sands of Time and Warrior Within and sees the Prince visiting his brother Malik for a lesson in leadership. Upon arrival however, the kingdom is under attack and Malik releases Solomon's Army thinking it will save his kingdom. If that were the case, The Forgotten Sands would be a pretty boring game, so naturally Solomon's Army is accompanied by an evil djinn called Ratash who promptly takes control of the army and turns all the kingdoms inhabitants to sand.

An hour in you feel like you're playing Sands of Time's more attractive but slightly slower cousin, but given enough time you get more used to the slow combat controls and realise that the diversity of the acrobatics has been drastically increased. Gone is your power to freeze time, instead replaced with the ability to freeze water. Yep, seems stupid at first, until you find yourself running along the face of a waterfall, jumping and pole swinging off a spout of water then unfreezing as you launch yourself through another waterfall and performing a landing that would put an Olympic gymnast to shame.

Combat is increased in scale, which can be a problem at times because the combat controls tend to be fairly slow and a bit unresponsive. While you can unlock some special abilities, they don't really change combat much and leave the fights lacking in variety. Sadly once you get about three quarters of the way through you get a new sword that completely nerfs the difficulty of fights. There's also a distinct lack of enemy variety with about 5 types of general enemies and two bosses.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands looks better than previous installments (well except maybe the cell shaded version of 2008, but I'm not really sure how i could compare the two) but still doesn't compare to the impressive visuals of more recent titles like Assassins Creed 2.

You'll also see (or should that be hear) the return of a whiny prince who finds reason to complain about everything, but he does seem more likable than his cell shaded counterpart. Voice acting in general for the game is pretty decent and you don't really get sick of hearing anyone.

Graphics 6/10 - While The Forgotten Sands is an improvement on the looks of older games in the franchise, it still looks fairly average by today's standards.

Audio 7/10 - A good backing soundtrack combined with decent voice acting makes The Forgotten Sands listenable, but the Prince's internal monologue can get tiresome.

Gameplay 9/10 - In terms of navigation, The Forgotten Sands is the best Prince of Persia game yet. Combat can seem strange at first but in time it grows on you.

Overall 7/ 10 - The Forgotten Sands is one of the better Prince of Persia titles and definitely rates up with the Sands of Time but could use with a bit more replayability, a problem that has plagued the entire franchise.

So there you have it, and a quick reminder that all of my reviews can also be found over at the West Gamers blog.