Game Reviews: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Since Disney decided that we needed another movie based on a video game, Ubisoft also decided to release a game to coincide with the movie’s release. Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with the movie but instead is the missing years in between Sands of Time and Warrior Within. Wait….what the hell? They needed to make a game about that!?!
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands has a very predictable story that quite frankly, bores me. I couldn’t care less that he has to save his brother. Still, the voice acting was actually good though. It better well be since they got the original voice actor that played the Prince,Yuri Lowenthal. The music is also well done and it does the job giving the player the perfect vibe for the places you go and new areas discovered.
Puzzles platforming is what the Prince of Persia franchise is well known for, yet I still have mixed feelings on the puzzles in The Forgotten Sands. For 3/4ths of the game, the puzzles are way too easy. I could just be really good at platform puzzle games but I know I am not. It came as a shock how fast I was moving through the game. It’s not until the last part of the game where the puzzles start to get challenging by mixing up powers like freezing water and making parts of the ruins reappear. Unfortunately, there are some issues I had with the way the controls were somewhat unresponsive thus causing me to fail numerous times. Also, it has that “auto-go-where-I-need-to” mechanic that I was not a fan of in the Assassin’s Creed series.
To make things worse, the camera angles you get screws with your timing of jumps and execution. At one point in the game I was moving to the edge of the platform to jump across to another platform and the camera decides to move making the game think that I was pointing at an angle and not straight ahead. Yes I know you have the power to rewind time in The Forgotten Sands but it is still annoying to have to use one of your energy orbs to fix a mistake that the game caused you to do.
Combat is also very basic and, with the unresponsive controls, frustrating as well. The Prince gets, along with the powers mention earlier, 4 different powers that you can upgrade in a skill tree by collecting enough XP from enemies. I appreciate the skill tree but found that none of the other powers were really needed. Powers such as a fire trail behind you burning anything that touches it, ice powers that shoot out across the ground, an area of effect (AOE) wind power that knocks enemies down, and earth powers that act as armor to protect you for a limited time were never needed during my play through.
At points, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands almost captures that same feeling you got accomplishing a strenuous puzzle in The Sands of Time. Sadly, Forgotten Sands is marred by a lackluster story, unresponsive controls, and terrible camera angles. If you want to see what could have been a great successor to The Sands of Time, if given enough time to be polished a bit more, go out and rent The Forgotten Sands. And I definitely mean “RENT”.
