|
| ‘Persia’ is
a prince of a game A Review By Glen Osterberger “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is the fourth in a series of games dating back to 1989. I played the original one when it came out, and it was a fun platform adventure but one that can become frustrating. “The Sands of Time” plays much better for someone who easily becomes annoyed with platform adventures. The story takes place in medieval Persia. A young prince and his father defeat a mighty enemy and loot the palace. In the process they find a mysterious hourglass and a dagger. The evil vizier tricks the prince into activating the sands in the hourglass. This causes a great misfortune to fall on the kingdom and most of the inhabitants of the palace are transformed into brutish parodies of themselves that are controlled by the sands. Of course it is up to the prince to find a solution to the evil that has befallen the palace. The story is fairly basic but it leads the viewer into a splendid puzzle and adventure game. It feels a lot like “Tomb Raider” (which sort of felt like “Prince of Persia” in the earlier era) but it has managed to improve upon a lot of the problems that sometimes plagued the “Tomb Raider” franchise (such as the sometimes-clunky camera and frequent deaths). I found “The Sands of Time” very forgiving as it uses a rather unique time manipulation that is developed throughout the game. The dagger can control time to a small degree. Fail to make a jump, and a player can back it up a little so he or she didn’t actually make the jump. Fall on a bed of spikes? A quick rewind takes it to a point where the player can try again. The same thing can be done in combat and a player can also slow time into slow motion for short spells. It saves from constantly having to do the same thing, which happens all too often in most platform adventure games. The game also just happens to be beautiful. Some of the initial video fails to impress but the game itself is full of crumbling walls, dust particles that fly up as you land near them and subtle touches that keep a person playing. |
 |
||
