The little white mouse that, when the Prince gets himself stuck at a certain point, (…) comes through the bars of the gate, steps on the pressure plate and allows him to continue. The Progenitor of Farah is not the princess in Prince of Persia 1, but the mouse. In a way, Farah finally gave Mechner the opportunity to realize his “princess and mouse” idea for the never created Prince of Persia 3 – except the princess was the mouse. Surprisingly, the love/hate banter between the two is written as well as it is acted, and actually adds a little bit of emotion to the plotline. She acts as your guide and helps you solve puzzles, and also provides backup in combat from a distance. Since the Prince belongs to the army that invaded her country, she’s sceptical towards him at the beginning, but soon the two recognize they have to work together as the only two human beings left. The Prince narrates the tale through the game, and while he’s an arrogant, unlikable bastard (with a slightly lame visual design), it’s easier to find sympathy for his ally by necessity – Farah, the bow-wielding princess of India. The battles are still fun, but they’re really just intermissions between the real meat of the game. The only real challenge is that the game tosses a ton of enemies at you at one time, often for a period of several minutes before you get to move onto the next segment. The Dagger can also be used to turn enemies into sand statues, which leaves them open to be cut in half. His most impressive move is when he strikes enemies while leaping over their heads, for which the game likes to switch to a particularly cinematic camera angle.Īll enemies have to be finished off with the Dagger of Time, lest they stand right up again.
The combat system feels a bit sluggish at first, but the Prince has a fair number of moves that allow him to block, react and attack enemies swiftly.
#PRINCE OF PERSIA SAND OF TIME GAME LOCAL CIOO SERIES#
While most of the game is spent crawling up ledges, running through the usual series of dangerous traps and dashing up walls, you do spend a fair amount of time fighting monsters. There are also a few puzzles, which mostly consist of pulling levers and pushing boxes. Each location also has a scenic view you can switch to via button press. The camera alternates between the behind-the-back and fixed camera angles, so there’s rarely a problem in judging distances. The castle as a whole is a grand masterpiece, perhaps only rivaled by the architecture in Ico, and it comes as no surprise that Fumito Ueda’s creation had a direct influence on the visual direction for The Sands of Time. We also watched several Capoeira documentaries – it’s a Brazilian fighting style that intricately melds martial arts with stylized dance. The incredible fluidity of the Prince’s movements are what makes this a true sequel to the original Prince of Persia.Īs for the moves, the team was inspired by Hong-Kong action movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Jet Li action films. It gives the same sense of spiraling vertigo that the old games did fifteen years prior, but with less frustration. Each room is a puzzle of crazy architecture that you solve by running along walls, swinging on poles or climbing up columns. Instead, you’re given a prince that has all of the swift moves of a ninja. This dagger allows him to control time – this allows for a whole bunch of nifty powers, but mostly importantly, you can turn back time to undo any of your mistakes.Īs if that innovation alone wasn’t awesome enough, UbiSoft went ahead and rewrote all the rules of platforming – it’s rare that you actually have to jump from platform to platform. During the battle, he seizes a mysterious artifact known as the Dagger of Time, and in the process, releases an evil that turns nearly everyone in the castle into sand demons. The hero is an entirely different Prince from the old games – here he’s following his father into invading another kingdom. The creative director of The Sands of Time was Patrice Désilets, who later created the Assassin’s Creed franchise, while Jordan Mechner contributed the story and stood by the team as an advisor. Except this time, it was created by UbiSoft Montreal, and they actually turned it into an amazing game by essentially starting the franchise from scratch. After the relative disaster that was Prince of Persia 3D, it seemed a bit odd that someone still wanted to make another 3D version of the game.