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Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Review

Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Freak_c in Games, News, Reviews

The good news for this game is that it is in no way linked to the movie of the same name. Why is it a good thing you ask, well because 99% of all movie games are complete stinkers, except for X-men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged.No this prince of Persia game is actually from the same guys who brought us the previous sands of time games on the PS2. Do they still have the winning formula of acrobatics and combat, along with the sweeping environments?

Yes and No would be my answer. With some great new mechanics and a combat system that really comes into its own by the end of the game, yet still very simply and it’s easy to recommend this game despite the boring story and rather unpolished feel of the game’s visuals.

In The Forgotten Sands you play as the titular Prince of Persia, a handsome, acrobatic warrior with a knack for climbing just about anything and destroying anyone who he comes to blows with. The Prince goes to visit his brother and things start to go awry, as magical enemies appear, and he’s quickly dragged into an epic quest that will take him through the ruins of a kingdom in an effort to save the world. It’s the sort of stuff that these game are predictably always about, but I have to say that this storyline was very bland and I was never engulfed in the story, like I was in, say, Uncharted 2. The plot is utterly predictable, and the characters are forgettable, even the prince started to get irritating.

However, while the story failed to catch my attention, the acrobatic platforming on the other hand, managed to get me hooked very quickly. The Prince has the uncanny ability to run up walls and be an all-around monkey when it comes to climbing, and the game gives you plenty of environments to ninja about in. Each area the Prince enters is essentially a level, and it’s up to you to figure out what moves you need to pull out in order to make it through.

The first couple of hours of platforming and combat would have you thinking it’s a relatively easy game, but it gets more difficult as the Prince unlocks new powers. During the quest the Prince will eventually gain the ability to temporarily freeze water into climbable objects and make certain portions of ruins appear as they were before they were destroyed. The game gradually ramps up the difficulty, forcing the player to combine these powers until eventually they’re encountering rooms where all of them are used in epic sequences that make the game feel like a mix of platformer and rhythm action. It becomes a challenge to use and switch between the powers but once you nail that section you feel a great sense of satisfaction and kinda have the urge to do it all over again only quicker.

As you would imagine, having to use all these powers together results in a lot of deaths. Thankfully, Forgotten Sands brings back the ability to rewind time, which you unlock almost right at the beginning of the game, giving you a second or most likely fifth or sixth chance at success. But this isn’t the infinite retries of the last PoP game, either, as this time around player’s have a limited amount of retries, which are refilled by finding blue orbs in vases or from fallen enemies. Should you run out of retries you’ll go back to your last checkpoint, making failure in Forgotten Sands the perfect balance of risk and reward.

The platforming is immediately gratifying, but the combat takes some time to become a worthwhile part of the game. The earliest enemies are really boring to fight, and combating them amounts to little more than button mashing. Later, though, when I had a series of powers and a good mix of enemies to fight, combat became an entirely different beast. Yet it is still simple and easy to do. The AI seems to wait ages to strike allowing to attack, kick or jump on them to defeat them. Battling the huge Titans turned out extremely easy, when they should be the tougher enemies. You can simply stand under them and hack away at their ankles as they swing and miss you and even take out the other enemies.

Killing enemies yields experience which is then spent on a skill tree of various upgrades. These can be for new combat powers or extra health to extending the time you can freeze water. These powers use up the same resource as your ability to rewind time, and thus the choice to use them in combat becomes a much bigger deal, but there was one that I used more than others and once fully powered up it looked great and was a blast to use, pardon the pun. Once you complete the game you unlock challenge modes, wherein you fight waves of enemies in a set amount of time. One of these is extremely easy to complete.

I must also point out that the game becomes set into a repetitive phase very quickly. You will know what to expect once you have pasted a section and it stays like this during the entire game. You will start in a large room where you will have to escape from by performing platforming, once you are out of this room you will either be in another large room but this time you need to defeat the enemies in it. Move on to a set of corridors that gets you from room to room with more timed platforming if you will. Each time you enter the new rooms they become more difficult and more intense and will force you to use the new power you just acquired. This isn’t a bad thing because even though you know what’s coming it still manages to seem fresh.

The game’s visuals are all over the place. At times the game looks pretty fantastic, with great dynamic lighting and a wide array of colors, and at other times the game looks dull and dated. The sound of the game is forgetful as well as the score and the voice acting is fine, though I didn’t like the princes voice as it just didn’t seem to fit the character.

Conclusion
The Forgotten Sands has some truly great platforming elements, especially during the later stages when you are switching between the different powers. Combat is weak and simple, the game in itself is an easy play through so I wasn’t sure why there was a difficult setting of easy? Graphics are fine as well as the sound. An all round enjoyable game but may after you have completed it, it will become forgettable.

7/10

A big thanks you to Ubisoft for supplying the game for review.

For a second opinion check out our friend at Gamestate review below.

Tags: Prince of Persia, prince of persia: forgotten sands, Review