365//365: Day 341 – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (GC)

"You might want the sands of time to fall faster."

Being the first in the trilogy, there are definitely going to be some meager elements to The Sands of Time. Sadly, they are spread along just about every facet in this title. While it has its moments, the graphics and style across the board are ever so slightly above average. Color palette use isn’t very strong, both on the plain Jane thugs you’ll encounter, or the world around you. The action animates wonderfully, however, with a great fluidity to it. Compared to other releases during its time, it really wasn’t a spectacular visual marvel during its time.

Anything that comes out the speakers while the disc is spinning shares a similar feeling to the graphics. The prince’s voice comes off as whiny, though it really isn’t a performance you’ll want to mute away. The fact that all the effects and vocals come off as if they were recorded in mono may. It’s actually quite distracting to go through segment after segment with some obviously low quality sound work piping through the speakers. At least the music does sound fitting, matching the mood or setting to a tee. It’s about the only strong audio performance you’ll find here. The CG quality has a similar “strong at some points, elementary at others” stature. Some points they look pretty impressive, while other points, character detail suddenly resembles PSX quality CG from a company that wasn’t Square, Capcom or Namco.

The character models, both friend and foe alike, suffer from a lack of a color diversity....

Once again, as with the audio and video presentations, the mechanics holds some faults. The camera has issues keeping up with you, or presenting a proper field of view to what you’ll be encountering next. Sometimes you’ll hit a screen transition that just wonks the camera to a convoluted position, forcing the slow manual turning of your camera. Outside camera concerns though, Sands of Time has some pretty crisp controls, for the most part. Running on the ground running along the walls and all the acrobatic maneuvers you can pull off feel like second nature, with a certain grace to it all. It’s definitely the most commendable aspect of Sands of Time, which holds most of the game together. Nothing like wall running across a large chasm, only to wall jump at the end, and then climb up  to a ledge and do it once more. It’s an exhilarating experience and the climbing and shimmy maneuvers in games such as Uncharted: Drakes Fortune definitely picked up a lot of influence from the Prince of Persia series.

Combat has a robust feel to it once you get accustomed to the flow. You could wail away and get parried and stabbed to death, or you can embrace the elegance of it, with parrying back, flipping between combatants, flipping over your adversary and delivering a fatal blow, etc. There’s a certain style and suave to the fighting mechanics of the Sands of Time that you almost never see anymore. While it never becomes progressively deeper, the fact that you have ways of showing off while slicing down baddies more than makes up for it.

Unfortunately, there are other nagging issues sprinkled throughout the rest of the game as a whole that really does taint the experience. They are not necessarily game breakers of any kind, though will really make you ponder, as well as as about its plausibility. The most severe of these issues has to do with instant death on some of the most mundane falls. We’re not talking off teh top of a cliff onto some jagged rocks, but 10′-15′ drops that will instantly kill you. Now we’re not taling about the plausibility of your quest, which involves finding a dagger that can has the ability to manipulate time, which does come into play throughout the game (slowing things down, rewinding back ten seconds to redo certain mishaps, etc). We’re talking about the fact that you can survive multiple stabs and slashes, drink some “healing water” yet a stumble off the curb of a sidewalk is fatal. It’s especially frustrating when you have to perform a series of jumps and climbs, only to accidentally run up and jump off the wrong direction, throwing you into an abyss of pebbles from a fall that has no real depth to it.

....right on through to the vastly bland backgrounds.

Everything else pales in comparison. Why does my character have to face the camera, put his sword away and pose for several seconds before I can move on? Instead of the flamboyant showing off, you should just be able to continue. Understandably, there are certain bits where the story will progress afterward, but that doesn’t excuse this constant nonsense. Finally, the first person views as well as the far off views are completely situational and hold little to no use even during those situations. More time should have been spent on the manual camera use, which is flimsy and has issues throughout the title.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time has a lot of shortcomings here and there. While there’s no one significant flaw (though the instant death falls off the stoop of a front door are a cause for concern), there are several aspects that are just above average, just below average or amateurish. Thankfully the combat, breathtaking wall runs, wall climbs and such, as well as the time rewinding/slowing/pausing mechanics make up for the overly simplistic graphics, mono audio and death trips you’ll take. It’s a dirt cheap title these days, so it’s worth picking up and experiencing for yourself, if you can tolerate the the meager production value on some ends.

Rating: 6.4