Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Prince of Persia begins and plays out with the titular character recounting the tale of how he acquired the infamous Dagger of Time, and unwittingly condemned an entire kingdom. It all started as Sharaban, a Persian king and the hero’s father, invaded the land of a Maharajah. There was betrayal from within as the kingdom’s own vizier opened the gates to make way for the Persian invasion. In exchange, the vizier was promised his choice of the Maharajah’s treasures, among which were the “Hourglass of Time”, the “Dagger of Time”, and the “Pearl of Time”. During the invasion, the Prince aims to please his father by securing one of the legendary treasures himself from the treasure vault.
The action starts immediately, with the player racing their way through the castle – avoiding traps and dispatching the guards. The combat system is precise and intuitive with a shallow learning curve, allowing you to jump right in without much confusion. Initially, there is only one attack button, with which the Prince can slash enemies with his scimitar. The control stick is used in conjunction to direct his attacks, and his moves vary with respect to the position of the enemy. For example, you can momentarily break your string of attacks against the enemy in front of you and deliver a kick to the one coming in from your right.
The Prince also proves to be one of the most agile and acrobatic characters in a game to date, able to run up an enemy’s front, flip over its head to slash it in the back as he lands behind them. One may think that such a maneuver would require some skillful use of the controller, but all of that can be done simply by pressing two buttons (jump and attack) while holding the stick towards the enemy. He can also repel himself from any vertical surface to dive at an enemy and drill them with his sword. Again, all it takes is a simple two button combination.
As the Prince maneuvers his way through the palace, it is being ransacked on all sides by his father’s army, ballistas firing and causing heavy damage to the infrastructure. This of course conveniently creates chasms for him to have to leap across, and makes it so that the path to the treasure is everything but direct. He will have to scale pillars, shimmy along narrow ledges using only his hands, and even reach the tops of deep pits by jumping and kicking off of walls. Eventually he finds his way to the treasure vault and acquires the Dagger of Time, which he presents to his father as proof of his skill and valor. The vizier makes his interest in the dagger known immediately, but Sharaban allows the Prince to keep it instead, much to the old man’s frustration. As he makes a claim for the hourglass – also recently acquired by the Persian army – Sharaban states that it will be a present for a sultan in another kingdom. Twice thwarted, the vizier bides his time…
The Persian army collects all the treasure it can hold, including animals and women, then moves on towards the Kingdom of Azad. There Sharaban presents his friend the sultan with the Hourglass of Time, as a symbol of everlasting peace between their lands. The sultan is curious about the glowing sand inside the hourglass, at which time the Indian vizier tells him that it holds a “mysterious power”, which can only be unlocked by the very dagger the Prince holds. Indulging the onlookers, the Prince inserts the dagger into a slot on the hourglass, just as one of the enslaved Indian women yells out for him to stop. His action unleashes a cataclysm, the sands of time “infecting” those they touch, changing nearly everyone, King Sharaban included, into freakish “sand monsters”. Three people remain unchanged by the sands’ powers – the Prince, the Vizier, and the screaming Indian woman, who as it turns out is the daughter of the Maharajah. The Prince’s dagger, the Princess’s pearl, and the Vizier’s staff are what keep them safe as the rest of the Kingdom of Azad is reduced to silence and desolation, that is, except for the legions of sand creatures.
Thus is the stage set for Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Players must combine their own resourcefulness with the Prince’s athleticism and skill in combat to make their way through the Kingdom of Azad, and eventually confront the Vizier for his treachery. Along the way, the Prince meets up with Farah, the Maharajah’s daughter, and the two must work together to stave off the attacks of the sand creatures, and create their own path through the ruined palace. The journey will be laden with difficulty as the Prince must jump from one platform to another, scale ladders and pillars, swing from poles and ropes, dodge rotating blades and moving columns of spikes. At times he will even defy the laws of physics by literally running along walls, and repel from them to reach an opposing location.
Once the player has gotten used to the basic mechanics of the game, it becomes a matter of figuring out which combination of actions will allow them to advance. There may be a locked gate on the ground floor of a vast multi-level room, and the switch to open it is high on some balcony. Of course there will be no staircase or gondola to take you there, and so the Prince will have to make use of his skills and the environment to reach it. There are various puzzles as well, of the traditional block pushing and plate-stepping variety, but all of which seem logical within the context of the game.
Last but certainly not least, there is the Dagger of Time, which enables the Prince to control the flow of time in various ways. Should he fail to make the jump from one platform to another and fall toward his death, he can use the power of reversal with the press of a button (there’s actually a button on the dagger itself) and try again. The power of delay slows down time for everyone and everything but himself, allowing him to speed through a gauntlet of traps or gain an advantage over his enemies. The power of restraint freezes the enemy in mid-movement, allowing the Prince to dispatch them with two strokes of his sword. Haste enables him to attack multiple enemies in rapid succession, making quick work of them before they can even raise their weapons. Lastly, there’s the power of retrieval, which is vital to defeating the sand creatures. Slashing and kicking them repeatedly will only disable them momentarily, and the only way to destroy them permanently is for the Prince to use the dagger to extract the sands of time from their bodies. Retrieval replenishes the dagger’s supply of sand, which is required for the Prince to execute all of the other abilities.
The entire adventure takes place in the various parts of the palace of Azad, from the reception room to great halls, from the Sultan’s personal zoo to the depths of the dungeon. The environments are spacious and meticulously designed, and so diverse that it seems hard to believe they’re all part of the same castle. There is considerable attention to detail, from reflections in water to the cracks in aging concrete structures. The character models are designed economically, using lower poly counts than some of the other graphical powerhouse games out there, but probably as a compromise for the vast environments. Still they are more than adequate within the gestalt of the game’s visuals, and are not likely to draw many complaints.
In terms of audio, Prince of Persia captures the ambience of the dead castle, most of the game played merely to the sounds of the environment. The soundtrack kicks in mostly during battle, featuring a rock-style guitar melodies with an Arabian flair. The sound effects reflect the same quality as the rest of the game’s presentation, with all the necessary clangs and howls of combat. Finally, there’s a good amount of spoken dialogue, as either the Prince continues to narrate in retrospect, or as he talks to himself or Farah during their real time interactions. The conversations between Prince and Princess are believable, often humorous, and sometimes contain an underlying sexual tension – insinuating the potential for romance.
In conclusion, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a quick adventure; With its simple control scheme, intuitive and fast-paced battles, there is little to stop most players completing it in around ten hours. With gameplay reminiscent of Sony’s ICO, only with a more in-depth combat system, it should fit well into the collections of platform and action-adventure gamers alike.