The credits are rolling on the first game of the recent Prince of Persia trilogy, The Sands of Time. I think Sands drew both Stan's and my interest after finding it on some best of all time video game lists, and with the recent release of the entire trilogy in HD for PS3 I had no excuse not to give it a shot. The Sands of Time focuses heavily on using parkour to get the titular prince around an expansive palace, and clearly the developers knew that nailing this constant movement would make or break the game as a whole. Fortunately it worked out well and becomes the game's main draw- soon enough I was looking at huge platforming segments and planning out a way for the prince to bound around in a fluid motion that I've felt in few other games- Mirror's Edge and the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series come to mind. A complement to the parkour aspect is the 'Sands of Time' themselves, which allow the prince to rewind time any time he messes up. It may seem a little cheap to just undo an action every time you press the wrong button or don't dodge in time, but late in the game when this ability is taken away I realized it added much to the overall gameplay. The prince and the questionable ally bounce around their palace, killing former guards who have been for some reason turned into monsters. The combat here is pretty shallow, but still very fun- what could have helped was a little more enemy variety though. About halfway through the game you've seen every enemy, and they just increase in numbers the further you go. Aside from that small complaint, Sands of Time lived up to its much-hyped billing, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the trilogy.
Glad you liked it. I was also least-impressed by the combat, both in terms of style and repetition, but apparently the combat is much better in the second PoP game at the unfortunate expense of the parkour platforming element. Then the third one is allegedly just kind of "pretty good" at both aspects but unable to do either perfectly. Time will tell for both of us, I suppose.
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