Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a game I half regret playing. I picked it up because it was getting positive reviews. Once I actually played it myself, I found the story telling, characters and combat to be uninspired and dull. The only saving grace was the platforming.
I can’t think of a game that has a character as acrobatic as Sands of Time’s. He can wall run, swing on poles, flip around and jumps from ledge to ledge with relative ease. It’s essentially Parkour, although a quite unrealistic version of it. I guess the protagonists in the Assassin’s Creed franchise may be more capable, but the series was born out of Prince of Persia. My memory is foggy on both of them, but I recall Prince of Persia’s platforming being much more demanding on the player, where Assassin’s Creed simplified it down to holding a button.
I remember the platforming being quite challenging. One of the ingenious things the developers did was give the player ability to rewind time. If you messed up a jump, you could go back and get another two or three attempts. You could still die if you don’t have enough sand to rewind time, but it allowed them to design platforming that was less forgiving since every player had a crutch.
I almost bought the whole trilogy in one go, but held back. After playing this release, I was glad I didn’t. However, I think it’s been long enough that I wouldn’t mind checking out the improvements later entries made.
Also, this is another shitty EB Games/GameStop case.
