Prince Of Persia Sands Of Time By Atv Srinivas By Atv Srinivas on Oct 26, 2008 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

We must have uttered this single word to ourselves on 100 different occasions during the time we spent playing through Ubi Soft's masterful new action-adventure, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. This breathtaking 3D sequel to creator Jordan Mechner's classic titles is very faithful to its predecessors and simultaneously new and innovative in remarkably creative ways. It bears some resemblance to other outstanding adventure games such as Ico and yes, even Zelda, but mostly it's a spectacular extension -- in, fact, the evolution of -- the Prince of Persia franchise. It's also one of the very best titles of the year.

Gameplay

It was almost 15 years ago that the original Prince of Persia shipped and dazzled players. Here was a smart and stylized action-adventure game during a period of relatively primitive, shallow software. This title featured elegant and challenging environmental puzzles, deadly traps, brutal swordplay and astonishing acrobatics. It had an intriguing premise, a Persian Prince on a quest to rescue his princess from the evil Vizier Jaffar and with only an hour to do it -- a time clock counted down to zero during the entire quest. Fun and intuitive, it defined a genre and became a classic.

Ubi Soft's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the 3D grandson of the original, is every bit as clever, as well made, as wholly entertaining and enjoyable -- and then some. This long-in-development sequel not only retains the established play mechanics and charm of its 2D predecessor, but it actually betters them -- and by a considerable amount. A commendable accomplishment given that the first is considered by many to be one of the greatest videogames ever created.

The title features a very intelligent, thoughtful presentation. Prince's story is told through a variety of crisp, ambient full-motion video cut-scenes and witty in-game dialogue. The character talks to himself, yes, and he even acknowledges this oddity sometimes, which is amusing. This direct method of storytelling works tremendously well because it never breaks us from the action. Plus, because the story often unravels from the very lips of our hero, we always know what he's thinking and feeling and it makes him more real and more likable. Prince, as it turns out, is not the cliché hero. He has his own agenda. He's proud, if not conceited. He wants to please his father. And it's this ambition that starts all of the trouble. The game begins in medieval Persia shortly after the Prince and the king have defeated the Maharajah and looted his palace. When the Prince takes a mysterious dagger he accidentally unleashes the Sands of Time, an evil force that infests the kingdom and transforms its inhabitants into demonic beings. The character's quest is, ultimately, to set right his own stupid mistake and reverse the dark magic. No easy task.

The quest seems just as insurmountable from a purely gameplay perspective. Prince will travel through the entirety of the palace, a huge, hulking thing that stretches up, down, and all around. He'll use his wits, his acrobatics, and his sword, avoid traps and kill enemies, engage in high-rise platforming, balance on beams and swing on poles, climb and hang, dangle and flip, shimmy and slide, run, summersault and fight, fall and rewind, slow time and... fall in love? Well, he does meet a beautiful princess along the way and an intriguing sub-story unfolds. As to just what happens, our lips are sealed.

The control and play mechanics that define this adventure are the absolute epitome of intuitiveness. Prince is moved tightly around with the analog stick and can jump or roll depending upon his situation. He can also run on and up walls with the right shoulder and eventually slow and rewind time with the left. These acrobatic and magical moves are seemingly complicated, but are manipulated so effortlessly that we wonder why other developers haven't figured out the formula. Certainly the overly clunky Tomb Raider, which feels positively robotic by comparison, could have benefited from this superb control implementation and execution.

It's this phenomenal sense of freedom that surrounds movement and the way in which it can be used to interact with the wholly giant, but still linear 3D world that makes the experience so exceptional. Prince can run across a wall, reach its end, jump from it onto a ladder, slide down to a ledge, shimmy across it, leap outward onto a post and then to a pole, swing and flip outward, bounce back and forth between two structures, land swiftly on the ground and keep running, and the entire amazing sequence can be executed easily and with little practice.

Meanwhile, malfunctioned processes in other games feel smooth and intuitive in this one. Just as Lara Croft struggles to move a crate, Prince can easily push it in any direction. Just as Kain can only shimmy to the end of a corner, Ubisoft's warrior can go around it and continue onward. It's all so good that it makes almost everything else out there feel archaic and wrong.

As ever, the puzzles in Sands of Time are always environmental based and usually involve getting Prince from Point A to Point B. It's important to remember that Point A might be the ground floor and Point B the highest palace peak. There are some thrilling challenges in place and a great degree of satisfaction gained upon successfully completing them. The puzzles, sometimes downright intense, are almost always logical; they make sense. And because of that they can be understood and solved in a logical manner, which again is refreshing when so many adventure games throw logic directly out of the window -- ahem, Resident Evil. Prince might be required to move a series of mirrors around a room to reflect beams of light in a particular path or he might simply have to figure out how to get across an abyss without dying. Both are engaging for different reasons, neither less important. The puzzle elements seamlessly mingle with the control and are perfectly brilliant throughout the entire adventure.