Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands has nothing to do with the fun cel-shaded reboot Ubisoft took the Prince of Persia franchise through in 2008. It also has nothing to do with the Prince’s first foray into cinemas, although the game’s release date certainly attempts to optimise the brand across multiple mediums. Instead, Forgotten Sands harkens back to the “Sands Trilogy”, offering an acceptable experience for those wanting to relive the time bending platforming introduced in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time but lacks the polish and budget to truly make last generation’s experience current.
From the start, The Forgotten Sands reinforces its stance as a mere side story in the franchise. Taking place between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within it finds the nameless Prince on a trip to visit his brother Malik’s castle only to find it under siege from a feuding kingdom. With little chance of victory Malik opens an ancient seal lying dormant in his castle, which to his knowledge should release the army of the legendary King Solomon to fight alongside him. Unfortunately for The Prince, Malik and his kingdom, the army locked within his basement were enemies of King Solomon and waste little time in turning Malik’s castle and its inhabitants into sand statues before filling its halls with countless enemies.
From there, the brothers clash over how to stop the malicious army before it spreads across all of Persia and players will find little surprises before the games abrupt ending. True to any side story The Forgotten Sands ends without any lasting consequences to the franchise and while enjoyable in its own rights, offers little retconning or surprises to make itself seem like a necessary entry.
Story aside veteran Prince of Persia players can expect roughly nine hours of gameplay as they make their way through multiple sections of Malik’s castle avoiding spikes, bottomless pits and spinning razor blades. The basic mechanics of the game remain the same as previous iterations: jumping, wall sliding and climbing feel as fluid as ever, but the game also attempts to offer some new ideas in the form of special powers granted to The Prince by a magical djinn who will appear sporadically throughout the game.
The powers themselves come in four variants. There’s the time reversing powers as found in previous games in which the player can reverse time a few moments in an attempt to avoid death, although without the assistance of the Sands Of Time; there are some elemental combat attacks which attempt to add some variety to the game’s button-mashing fighting; the ability to create platforms from thin air in certain parts and finally the power to freeze water. It’s the water freezing that players will find both the most useful and most enjoyable. With a flick of a button players will freeze all water sources in the surrounding areas creating poles, ledges and walls to help guide the Prince through the complex maze of his brothers castle.
As mentioned, the combat is mostly a case of mashing buttons and while players will find the aforementioned powers useful, it remains more of a diversion from the game’s main focus of platforming, and an attempt to extend the game’s length rather than offer a fully realised experience of its own. And while killing enemies offers points to put towards a very shallow upgrade system, these points are best spent upgrading the Prince’s platforming skills over his elemental combat ones.
All of this is wrapped together in a less than impressive package, both in graphics and overall presentation. The majority of Malik’s sand covered castles is highlighted with drab colours and the Prince’s outfit and character model does little to make him stand out: in fact I immediately switched to the unlockable Ezio costume when possible to offer a bit more colour to the experience. The game also suffers from a few unfortunate glitches, slow frame-rate in larger, more crowded areas, rough character animations and an unwieldy camera. None of these things will completely ruin a player’s experience but gives the game an overall rushed feeling, one that would be less apparent with a few extra month’s development.
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands at its heart is a very good Prince of Persia game. At it’s high points, when players are using various powers to stream together multiple jumps and slides into a rhythmic platforming experience, the game almost makes up for its short comings. It’s just that even then, the game can’t seem to shake the feeling of it being a rushed, unfinished product which with maybe a little more time could have been excellent.
Zombie Rating: B -
