Prince of Persia The Sands of Time - PS2

21 Apr 2008 at 18:31:24 by Paul Younger
Systems used to review this title: (PS2)

I played the first Prince of Persia on an old PC with a CGA monitor (CGA stood for Crappy Graphics, Always). Even so, its true colours shone through the cyan and magenta palette and I was transfixed. We all were; on our Amigas and Atari STs and all the rest of them, the Prince's world was as beautiful and deadly as a Turkish scimitar, and as much of a joy to handle.

Years later, someone had the bright idea of making it into a 3D game, and that game was called Tomb Raider (and it was good). When the Prince followed on behind, still tying a sash over his big pantaloons, it was a comically poor showing that hurt us all more than being dropped onto a pit of spikes. "Prince of Persia 3D" is a phrase bordering on the offensive here at P-o-P club meetings.

Where the first 3D Prince was too beholden to the charms of Lara, this time round the prince has taken lessons from a different master. Ico, a horned boy who also had to lead a girl through mystical, crumbling interiors, was the hero protagonist of the PS2's best game to date. Key recognisable elements have been taken from that beautiful game: a boy and girl team; majestic architecture; sweeping camera pans drawing the eye to each scene's eventual goal; ghostly enemies; an emphasis on mood, scene-setting and the laying out of intricate puzzles.

"I will make my father proud!"

The lush lighting, the crumbling castle walls and the Prince's nimble acrobatics make it obvious from the start that this is an ambitious game; one that recognises its legacy and wants to better it.

The Prince is cast somewhere between Johnny Depp and a blue-eyed gibbon. His agility and Hollywood looks are shown off to the full as the story unfolds. Shreds of shirt are artfully removed until finally he fights and runs bare-chested, flashing a few scars for good measure.

Early on in the game he will meet the daughter of the Sultan whose palace he's unwittingly destroyed. Farah is a strong-willed, dusky-skinned beauty with the artificial enunciation of a 60s Hollywood heroine doing a historical accent in an epic drama. I'm not sure if she's more Liz Taylor or Audrey Hepburn, but she adds to the old Sinbad movie mood of the game.

Happily Farah is a lot less fragile and a lot more agile than the girl in Ico; she can get herself over that yawning chasm, thank you very much. And yes, she may be posh but she's handy with a bow. There are times, mind, when her judgement is flawed, and she'll draw and fire even if you're in the way. The Prince will tell her off, and rightly so.

The interplay between Prince and lady is mostly made up of mutual help, shouts of "Be careful!" and musings from the Prince of "Hmm, I think I fancy her, even though she's a stubborn so-and-so". These are all elements plucked straight from movie history, but they work.

"Go on, take the crack."

The whole world is unlocked like an elaborate puzzle. Running along a wall can get the Prince to a switch which triggers a platform to appear just below where he would have run out of steam. A set of mirrors can be combined to power a crystal which unlocks an observatory gate. There are many such variations on the theme of cracking the code. A statue on a pedestal can be dragged over a switch to hold a door open, at the same time revealing a hole in a wall. This, quite literally, is where Farah fits in.

Once the Prince and Farah join forces it soon becomes a game of "send the lass down the crack". Farah can slip through fissures in walls, but the Prince can't, so has to find another way around. Thus the episodes are doled out in the form of "meet you on the other side" journeys. Sometimes Farah will be stuck among zombie guards, with a system of death-traps and deadly corridors between you and her rescue.

"Oh no!"

Farah's cry of despair sounds out when the Prince is brought down, dead, by sword-slashing guards. These zombified apes, jailers, and formerly noble warriors have teleporting powers, and flicker into existence all around the embattled duo. Guards are only trouble in large numbers or if the Prince gets cornered, so the fights often feel like prolonged rounds of button-bashing until no one is left standing.

The zombies won't stay down - the glowing dagger (at the heart of the story's tragedy) must be jabbed into them, sucking out their sandy essence. This may sound grim, but it serves two important functions; completely eliminating baddies and topping up the sand tanks in the blade.

Sand tanks? Is this Rommel in the Desert? Not at all. The Prince's magical dagger holds two sandy resources - time and power. The fable Sands are what allow the prince to rewind time. This is handy both when a fight goes wrong and when a planned stunt lands you on a spike. The effect is very much like when Frodo puts on the ring in Lord of The Rings – breathy, woozy distortions and washed-out colours.

The dagger gains storage space as more enemies are drained, as well as "special move" containers. These allow the Prince to slow down time, freeze enemies so they hover in wait for a double-slice death-blow, and generally give him the edge in combat. So it's a special dagger, for sure, even though the brawling's merely average.

Exploration, on the other hand, acrobatics, clambering and puzzle-solving are what make this game fabulous. Almost everything can be swung from, climbed up or run across. OK, not everything; try and jump onto a chain holding up a lamp, for example, and you’ll sail right through it, cursing. This is disappointing at first, but rope-swinging does show up eventually, as does beam-balancing at ludicrous heights.

Just to make things interesting and keep the Prince on his toes, bats or vultures will harass when he's doing an arms-outstretched balancing act on top of a wall, or a on a strip of rock spanning a ravine. The beasties are more bothersome than lethal, and luckily the Prince will never walk off the edge of anything - he will always drop down and hang from it first.

Taking delight in his agility and abilities, we are reminded of the real-life roof-top acrobats seen in films like Taxi 2. Who wouldn't love to be able to run along a wall, to swing from flagpole to crumbling ledge, to climb freely hundreds of feet up the inside of a huge tower?

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time manages to pull off gaming's greatest trick - granting you the illusion of free exploration in a wonderful world, while leading you down a straight line towards the end of each scene, each episode, and the story itself.

“I think I’ll marry her!”

So, can the Sands of Time scrub out the horrific mark left by P-o-P 3D and make us all love the Prince again? We are happy to say it does so in spades. If you've been pining for something as magical and ambitious as Ico, or if the mechanical beauty of the first Prince of Persia still brings a smile to your face, then rejoice: happy days are here again. The PS2 has a new hero, and he comes from the Orient.

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