Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

When this game came out to great critical acclaim some seven years ago, I was a skeptic. After all, I'd dabbled with the series way back in the day on my dad's first laptop computer and remembered it as nothing special. Recently though, when trying to come up with a comprehensive "best video games of the decade" list, I was reminded once again of the general public's love affair with this game. I gave it a purchase - I'm terrible at keeping my backlog from growing, I know - and beat it earlier tonight. Consider me thoroughly impressed. The game took me nine hours to beat with no walkthrough whatsoever and I disliked maybe a total of fifteen minutes of it. The reason? The combat system. Vanquishing enemies is not really the main point of Sands of Time, but palace guards and sand monsters will try to thwart your progress now and again all the same. What's annoying about the way combat works is that Sands of Time is one of those games where the baddies can block every attack you make; you need to wait for them to wind up and take a swing first, exposing themselves to attacks. Fortunately, you too can block all attacks just by holding down the guard button. Due to this, every battle is a trial of patience more than technique. In the latter half of the game, I managed to find peace with this, but early on I was very frustrated at points with the boring and annoying fights I needed to endure. I suppose I see why some combat was necessary in an adventure game, but honestly the game would have been just as fun (if not more fun) without it. But enough about the bad - and really, that's all there is that's bad - let's talk about what makes this game so great. Namely, the puzzle and platforming elements of the game. The Prince can swing and leap from poles and beams like a gibbon, can wall jump as well as Mario, feels as comfortable as Lara Croft when dangling from ledges, and can run along vertical walls as if he was (virtual) Tony Hawk on a skateboard. In general, merely getting from Point A to Point B is an absolute thrill. And that's really what the game consists of. It's very linear; there's almost nothing "optional" to find save for some health and sand power-ups (we'll get to the "sand" concept soon enough) and there are no sidequests or secret rooms. Instead, the Prince must simply traverse an enormous palace armed only with his extreme athleticism, a sword, and the "Dagger of Time." The Dagger of Time is pretty special, because it is the only device that can be used to recollect the Sands of Time after something goes awry early on in the game. The Prince can then use the sand to turn back time. This comes in especially handy when fucking up high-flying stunts and falling great lengths to your death; just press L1 and, poof, time will run backwards as you careen back upwards toward the pole you fell from. People familiar with Braid will find the "rewind" dynamic almost identical to that game's. Now, you can't just be reckless; you only have a certain number of sand orbs and to refill them you'll need to find a white glowing light or kill some enemies. Sand also allows you to do special attacks, but again, it's tough to give a shit about the combat in this game. Anyway, Prince of Persia isn't just a few easy fights amid a gigantic jungle gym (though that's actually a pretty apt description of what I've covered so far); perhaps best of all the elements of the game were the puzzles. For the most part, these weren't real "thinking" puzzles. They were timing puzzles. Can you pull a switch, monkey your way across the room with blazing speed, dodge the spinning blades, avoid the pitfalls, and make it through the door before it closes? Yeah, probably, but only because the Prince is ridiculously agile, mobile, and strong. I meant it when I said that nothing in this game aside from battles - not one puzzle or obstacle course - was something I didn't like. It was a very pleasant surprise and lived up to all the hype and then some. I'm a skeptic no more; on the contrary, I'm looking forward to buying (ugh!) and beating (yeah!) the other two (soon to be three) games in the Sands of Time series. But not yet. Not yet.