The Prince bravely watches the bloody battle below.
Ubisoft re-booted the series again for the current generation of consoles in 2008 with the much maligned Prince of Persia, featuring a very attractive cel-shaded look, a dark versus light visual theme and a secondary character who could help the Prince along the way. While being relatively well-received, some critics and gamers were left a little under whelmed by the simplified combat and repetitive boss battles, and it seemed inevitable that the series would need to go back in order to move forward.
So here we are two years later on the crest of new Prince of Persia game, subtitled The Forgotten Sands, which takes the series back to the Sand of Time storyline. The game is set in the seven-year gap between the first and second game and will no doubt give some insight into the transition of the Prince from happy-go-lucky ladies man in The Sands of Time to the angry emo in The Two Thrones.
My name is Prince, and I am funky.
On the story front, The Forgotten Sands begins when the Prince visits his brother. Always a magnet for trouble, the royal palace is soon under attack after the Prince sets foot in the place. Unable to ward off the violent intruders, the Prince’s brother, Makik, uses the Sand powers to release an ancient sand army to save the kingdom. However, you don’t get something for nothing, and it turns out that the sand army is all evil and stuff. Cue heroic action music, because our friend and saviour – the good Prince of Persia – is on hand to use the world as his personal jungle gym in an effort to restore life back to normal.
The visuals we’ve seen blend the extravagant and colourful Arabic architecture of The Sands of Time with the sometimes darker and slightly sinister structures and symbolism of Warrior Within and Two Thrones. Because we’re back in The Sands of Time storyline, the Prince can once again disrupt the space-time continuum by rewinding time back several seconds. Not everything from the 2008 reboot has been discarded though, with the Prince aided in his parkour shenanigans by a secondary character in the form of a genie who grants the Prince powers to overcome obstacles, with each power presumably unlocking a previously inaccessible area. The powers are water, earth, air and fire-related. For example, the water powers gives you the ability to solidify the wet stuff to allow you to get across water, or up it in the case of waterfalls. This will no doubt add a layer of complexity and challenge to the movement sections of the game as you combine movement and magic to get through certain areas. Add in the time-altering elements and there is the potential for some real brain-teasing challenges.
The Prince's aerobics came in handy for getting a good view of Haley's comet.
Combat is again a big feature of the The Forgotten Sands after being scaled back in Prince of Persia. From what we’ve seen, the Prince takes on multiple enemies by stringing together fast-paced combos. Also interesting is the decision not to allow the Prince to block (which presumably means no countering) while removing the quick-time actions that plagued combat in the last game. The battles are large and intense with the Prince battling up to 50 enemies at once, and seems to be a nice compromise between the gratingly slow and repetitive combat in Warrior Within and the fun and fast battles of Sands of Time. The game will also integrate an experience system into the combat gameplay, giving the player points to spend on upgraded health, combo moves, damage and powers based on– we assume – how skillfully you dispatch your enemies. One of the combat-based powers includes a tornado that makes a right mess of those pesky sand warriors.
While a new movie is also in the works, the two – while bearing obvious similarities – don’t follow the same plot, which is good considering where this game is set in the Prince of Persia timeline. The movie and game are both due in May, with the game set for release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Separate PSP, Wii and DS games will also be available, with the Wii version said to give the Prince three magical sand powers to help him get around and dispatch enemies.
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