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Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Preview Preview

Mark Simons

06/08/2003

We take a look at the latest update of a seminal game...

'Prince of Persia' was a genuine classic. The animation was something special, the design, puzzles and traps were fiendish and the swordplay felt like you were a swashbuckling hero. The prince went on every format that was going at the time, the sequel was rather good, but then a few years later the three dimensional update we had was not that great.

The original outing of the prince was the best precisely because it broke new ground, not because it was a formulaic title but with different characters and setting. Thankfully 'Sands of Time' appears to be taking the right approach, looking to push the action adventuring platformer forwards. This might have something to do with Ubi Soft Montreal, responsible for 'Splinter Cell', being the developers of the game.

Set in ancient Persia it seems that the prince's father has taken over a palace and the prince, being a naive young fellow to start with, manages to release a curse 'dark powers' and which the guards in the palace to monsters. Those damn dark powers and their curses. Net result of the plot is plenty of platforming action in some stunning locations, job done. To be honest a simple plot that gives you something to do, preferably quickly, is what made the original great, a simple premise just to get you into a high security dungeon packed with guards, big drops and sharp swinging things.

Gameplay and control is what it's all about in 'Sands of Time'. Animation is the thing that will strike you immediately about the game, but this isn't just fancy for the sake of looking fancy, more animations, over 700, mean that the prince can do more; swinging around to the other side of ladders you're half way up for instance. The development team have designed things so that it's not too hard to pull of moves, you've got to concentrate on working out what to do in the room filling puzzles, and having the timing to not fall to your death. It is the animation, in conjunction with the simple controls that helps things running smoothly with mistakes and death only attributable to your poor skills, not the animation, camera or controls.

Imagine running into a room, then onto the wall ? 'Crouching Tiger' style ? before leaping off onto a flagpole, swinging around the pole and onto another, landing on a platform before launching into a fight with multiple opponents, complete with slow motion bullet time effects and all very slick, smooth and easily pulled off. That's what we're talking about. Oh and imagine you're running along a platform, think a viaduct or something, a few hundred feet above anything solid, and suddenly it starts to fall and you're about to plunge to your death. Or not. For the 'Sands of Time' can be used, with a quick button press, to rewind time, a bit like 'Blinx', so that you can save yourself from a near death experience. These will be limited in number, so it won't be too easy to avoid death all the time, but if you're cautious enough you should be able to cancel out those mistakes that inevitably arise from being too eager.

Combat will be smooth and intuitive, seemingly simple, but combinations of button presses, stick movements and context sensitive moves will hopefully result in an experience that is rather enjoyable. With traditional sword based stuff being mixed in with more Hong Kong, almost Anime style, action with off the wall jumps, slow motion panning cameras and all that, this should be an interesting fusion of ideas.

The world that has been created by the developers is very impressive, large environments that are shown off with some smart camera angles, numerous visual effects used atmospherically and the ridiculously impressive animation to top it all off. Touches like the taking into account the weight of fabrics, so that when you swing around a flag pole, that gently bends up and down, the flapping flag moves around just as you would expect it to. It just looks lovely. The art style is wonderful and the whole thing has a slightly magical air about it.