Upon hearing the title Prince of Persia, you may be forgiven for harking back to the 1980’s Spectrum original, and the later, rather disappointing, SNES and Mega Drive renditions. It’s no secret that the title is taking the name and theme from these early titles, whilst the horsepower of today’s systems allow for considerable improvements in terms of graphics, sound, animation and scope-of-play. But, the real question that arises, as with so many of today’s franchise “updates”, is will it be worth it?                                                 Now, as I stated in the above paragraph, I did find the original titles rather disappointing, landing somewhere between Super Mario Bros. (NES) and Aladdin (SNES), and never really feeling comfortable next to either. Two mediocre platform adventures that had some nice ideas, but failed due to basic, boring, unimaginative level design and general gameplay. To this day I have never experienced the original Prince of Persia 3D. However, as critical as I may be of the original titles, I have endeavoured to play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with an open-mind. Upon the first play, this was decidedly easy. Other than visual style, animation/available moves and storyline-details there appeared to be very little to relate the title to its predecessors. This is a step away from most of the “updates” that are released on our systems as, with the originals being rather old, the move into 3D was entirely new to me, and has completely altered from the game.

            The game appears to be constructed in a rather easy-to-access way. Rather than stealing the level plan from Super Mario64 - having individual worlds with a hub to choose your level from - as most post-1996 platform titles have, the game is entirely constructed of rooms. Each room will ask you to complete a task, ranging from merely reaching the door on the opposite wall, to killing twenty-or-so enemies, to realigning rails in order to swing across. Before beginning each room, you are treated to an aerial-pan, which often points out objectives, and at each save point you will view a premonition of what lies ahead-containing many, many helpful clues.  The tasks will make employ every move in your arsenal, which is quite substantial including wall running, jumping between walls to reach higher points, swinging on bars/ropes/pillars, climbing, fighting etc.

            The game’s puzzles range form tedious to very taxing, but at all times there’s a sense of impatience, hurrying to get through the room just to see what lies in wait in the next. For the best part the puzzles are exceedingly well balanced, but one or two of the areas may have you wondering exactly where it is you have to go next. The main feature of the game is incredibly reliable at these points. As the Prince, you control the “sands of time”. This power allows you to “rewind” time, allowing the correction of a single misplaced jump or mistimed wall-run. As you ability increasing throughout the game, as does the length of time you are able to skip back.

The fighting system implemented in the title appears to have taken much inspiration from Enter The Matrix, allowing for some dazzling attack combinations with just a few button presses, but, thankfully, the AI is far improved and the combat-coding has actually been finished! The impact upon the enemies is often pleasing, and the array of moves available will have you prancing about the screen just trying to see what your character can do!

With such a wealth of moves on offer, you could be forgiven for believing that, especially with the uniqueness of the GameCube control pad, that the complexity of the controls would call for a four-hour long training mission just to get used to everything. Although at first they may appear slightly daunting, ala Metroid Prime, within an hours’ play you’ll be rope swinging with the best of them. The responsiveness and layout of control is flawless.

The titles’ sound is, again, remarkable. With a 5.1 system running the game takes on a new level, and boasts cinematic quality effects at every turn. Animation and graphics are also worthy of note. The character models are chunky and well designed, even if the enemies are a bit bland at times, at the animation for the characters moves, cut-scenes and background detail is comparable to the mighty The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker… GASP! A minor flaw in this quality which I noticed fairly late-on in the game was the camera. Although allowing for perfect judgement and clarity at the start of the title, later the camera seemed to become almost arrogant, demanding to remain in its default position no matter how you try to adjust either it itself or the positioning of the Prince on the screen.

The title boosts an uncompromising ability to push the platforming genre forward, and creates some very imaginative features that are bound to become stablemates for the industry. In a change to the current tradition, the game does rely on in-game mechanics and the players’ ability to progress in order to continue the storyline, rather than featuring 15 minutes of FMV followed by 5 minutes of gameplay. The package adds up to quite an entertaining title, that for the average gamer will take about 15 to 20 hours to complete (a seemingly “unofficially agreed” game length within the industry), which by no means is short-lived.