The Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Xbox 360/PS3/PC Review
It’s Prince of Persia day here at 30ninjas! Why? Because between the movie and two completely separate games to review we now have the sands of time coming out of our ass, and it’s very uncomfortable. Our first review is of the PS3/Xbox 360/PC versions of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, simply because it’s the version that managed to port itself across the most platforms.
Many of you may remember the attempted re-imagining of The Prince of Persia back in 2008 when the prince fell into dumpster filled with scarves and cell shading. Needless to say, this didn’t please purists that preferred the more Jake Gyllenhaal-esque prince that we have known since The Sands of Time. Well, realizing that this was a pretty dumb move, Ubisoft decided to bring the series back to its roots with The Forgotten Sands, by centering the story on the prince we all know and love.
This time around, the prince is visiting his brother for some lessons on how to be a good ruler. Apparently princes aren’t actually supposed to run on walls and jump off rooftops. Who knew? When he arrives the kingdom is under-siege, and the prince begins doing what the prince does best: running off walls and stabbing people. It’s not long before an evil genie shows up, summoning evil sand monsters, and generally making the prince’s day even worse.
As Arabian Nights as the story is, the prince only deals with problems in one of two ways. He can either astound you with his high flying acrobatics, or stab you in the face with his high flying acrobatics, just like every other Prince of Persia game. This time, the game focuses on elemental powers rather than the prince’s iconic ability to control time.
Early in the game you get the ability to make flowing water solid. This turns waterfalls into walls, fountains into columns, and spouts into poles that you can swing off of. It’s pretty cool, but also very obvious. Whenever there is some sort of water structure that looks like can be used as a platform, you end up doing exactly that, so this cool power eventually just becomes a “I can use that as a platform” mode.
The prince also gets a slew of other abilities, the most notable being the ability to materialize de-materialized platforms one at a time. On one hand this makes some jumping segments thrilling as you hop from one invisible platform to another in a series of leaps of faith. Cue Indiana Jones reference. On the other hand this mechanic lends itself to cheap deaths and unfortunate pitfalls as the invisible platform always seems to be just a little bit further away than you imagined when jumped.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of the jumping puzzles in The Forgotten Sands is that they are all obvious. In previous Prince of Persia games, there was a large focus on figuring out where you needed to go next and how you were going to get there. In The Forgotten Sands, most of the how and where have been taken away. You are pretty much shown where you need to go AND how to get there in the camera pans that trigger every time you enter a new area. Whether or not your acrobatics succeed or not simply comes down to how familiar you are with the controller, and how quick your fingers are, and this feels cheap if anything.
The other side of this sandy coin is combat, and that is perhaps the most disappointing part of all. While the platforming is still fun regardless of its flaws, the combat feels slow and plodding. Yes you can spring off walls and do all that other cool shit the prince is known for, but in all honesty every battle can be won with nothing more than repetitive button mashing. The enemies rarely give you any sort of challenge and they feel more like XP dumps than actual opponents. You can use special abilities in battle like AOE attacks and temporary invincibility, and while they are graphically pleasing they are pretty much useless. This is mostly due to the fact that your cool combat powers and the prince’s ability to rewind time are dependent on the same energy pool, and since you are way more likely to die due to a random misplaced jump rather than a hoard of rampaging sand monsters, you always save your energy for the former.
Speaking of rewinding time, you no longer have the infinite retries of Prince of Persia’s past. Instead you have a limited amount of energy orbs which, as I said before, fuel both your ability to rewind time and your ability to use cool combat powers. Completely dying takes you back to a checkpoint, which never tends to be too far back, but is always far enough to be an annoyance. It makes you try just a little bit harder during platforming segments, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.
Presentation wise, The Forgotten Sands does its job well. When you are outdoors, the world looks vast and vibrant, extending in all directions in a very realistic manner. When you are indoors, however, things become a bit repetitive, if only because it’s hard to tell the difference between one section of crumbling castle, and another section of crumbling castle. The visual effects are stunning, especially in combat. Ripping through your enemies with a twister is satisfyingly beautiful for what rare times you will actually use it. The character models look a bit wonky, as the prince has specifically been made to look more like Jake Gyllenhaal to coincide with the movie release, and this makes his face look a little awkward in the digital realm. It’s not enough to ruin the game though.
Finally, the game’s sound isn’t bad but it’s nothing to write home about. The music is the same old Prince of Persia fare we have heard for a while now. It’s the same epic Arabian Nights beat, and yes, it does replay enough to get repetitive, especially if you get stuck in a particular section or combat. The voice acting is decent, considering the script. The actors do a great job of portraying the characters’ personalities, even if the script is little more than snappy one-liner after snappy one-liner.
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a good game, and it’s certainly better than the 2008 attempted re-imagining, that’s for sure, but as far as being an actual worthy successor to the Prince of Persia name goes, The Forgotten Sands is astoundingly mediocre. It’s not as fun as The Sands of Time, The Warrior Within, or The Two Thrones, even though it is a fairly competent game in its own right. If anything, The Forgotten Sands manages to pull The Prince of Persia out of the hole the 2008 release dug, but it’s not yet the grand comeback the series has been waiting for. If you are a Prince of Persia fan and you only have an Xbox, PS3, or PC, then you won’t be hurting yourself by picking up a copy of The Forgotten Sands, but you certainly aren’t missing anything huge by letting it pass you by. Continue to the Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Wii review below
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