Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a game whose name seems to come up a lot in reference whenever I read reviews of games, so I thought, maybe I should give that one a try. Glad I did. One of the harder games I've ever played and beat, but also one of the most fun ones - as it's mostly about figuring out puzzles (how to get from point A to B) and the pace is as slow as you need (for the most part). The game as has lots of save points, which makes picking it up for just a little forward progress pretty easy. Another cool thing about the way the game saves, is that it tells you how far along in the game you are. For somebody like me, it's very much a relief to be able to know what percentage of the game I've completed and how much further there is left to go (nice to feel the end is within reach). Being able to rewind time when you make a mistake is also a really nice feature, that allows one to try out different solutions without worrying too much about dying and having to repeat a ton of tough shit you just were struggling through. The game's learning curve is smooth too, as you figure stuff out and get better, it's nice to be able to race through problems that once caused head-scratching difficulties. I did get sort of stuck in a few rooms trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, for longer than was probably reasonable, but it felt great when I eventually figured out the puzzle, or what I was doing wrong. The game doesn't have a lot of combat, but what there is, is probably the games weakest point. Swinging your sword and jumping over guys is kinda cool, but there just isn't enough variety to the fighting sections - and sometimes they become extremely difficult (i.e. unfun) as you are swarmed by enemy after enemy. The graphics on the xbox version are pretty nice (for a four year old last-gen game) - they're 480p, but not widescreen though - which is a bit odd. When you complete the game you unlock the original 80s version of the game, but maybe since I was playing this on the 360, the original game wouldn't display (screen turned black) - I guess somebody forget to check the backwards compatibility of the "bonus" features. Or maybe they want me to buy the remake (with slicked-up graphics) due out later this month. And I probably will.
