Prince of Persia : Forgotten Sands

NOT A HORRIBLE WAY TO SPEND YOUR TIME

STATUS : [COMPLETED]

RATING : [3/5]

I'm a huge fan of the Prince of Persia series. Unfortunately, my obsession has been wrought with disappointment.  This series embodies one of my favorite types of gameplay. The Prince of Persia Series, the God of War Series, and the Zelda Series (OOT, MM, & TP) represent the pinnacle of my gameplay enjoyment. While other games might capture my attention through story or art, these sorts of games make my hands twitch with excitement. The first Prince of Persia game that I played (Sands of Time for PS2) was one of my favorite games I've ever played. Unfortunately, many of the games that came later on (Such as Two Thrones) fell short. I abandoned hope on the series until Ubisoft released their take on Prince of Persia. It was absolutely beautiful, and fun as hell to play.

This game was also a work of Ubisoft, but I'm not sure if it was meant to be the next installment. The gameplay felt different, and the way the environment and story was set up was also very different. The prior Prince of Persia had a very mystical and ethereal feel to it, while this one was set in a more realistic Persian setting. The prince did say something about 'Ferrah' at one point, which I'm fairly certain was the name of your lady in the last game, but I could have been mistaken. This prince doesn't look like the previous prince either.  In any case, I didn't find it all that important.

The gameplay was regular Prince of Persia gameplay, which I always find enjoyable. This one might have been a little too easy, as I only had difficulty near the end, but I've always found the Prince of Persia games a little easy.

There was one major flaw; an obnoxious major flaw. There's a design hurdle that you have to cross when creating a game like this: how to create the environmental aspects that allow you to get around without making the game too... convenient.  That one word embodies the entire resounding issue I have with the game. It starts small, laughing whenever I come across a series of water spouts that I just so happen to have the power to freeze and use as a trapeze, and evolves into a disgusted grunt as I'm given the ability to zoom to enemies, and from then on, the only way to get to certain places is by zooming to a conveniently placed enemy. Previous installments of the series did a much better job tackling this problem.

The game did, however, have some very good merits. The environment, in particular, stood out. The previous game had a very artistic stylization to it, but this one focused more on realism. While the character models didn't impress me very much, the environments were stunning. They were very warm and dusty, very realistic. As an extension of this impressiveness was how the Prince was programmed to interact with it. There were different animations for each of the environmental situations. While crawling around on bricks, hands and feed landed perfectly on handholds. If you stood underneath a waterfall, his hand would annoyingly bat at the water above him to try and keep it off his head. When standing near a pool of water that emitted blue flecks that floated eerily around you, the prince's head moved around to stare at them, apparently confused and enchanted.

The game was enjoyable, and I would reccomend it to fans of the Prince of Persia series. It only takes about 10 hours to beat, and while it doesn't stand out as the most enjoyable game I've played in recent history, I didn't consider it a waste of my time.


[TLDR] Even the gameplay scenarios are WAY too fucking convenient, the game was fun to play, and the environment art and the way the character interacted with it was dazzling.



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