Because someone might demand it in the future someday maybe!

My only frame of reference for this type of game is Flashback, a wonderfully frustrating yet short once you figure out how to actually play it gem that was released on nearly every console of its time. It draws a lot of inspiration from the original PoP, in large part the precision platforming and the fluid rotoscoped animations. More in keeping with the modern Prince games is my experience with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, which I found to be a decent shootan with some very restrictive platforming elements. That the best descriptor I can come up with for this type of 3d game that says, “Here is this cliff, you need to do this. Want to do something else? Suck it.” Which is one of my beefs with the Sands of Time.

But to borrow a line borrowed by White Zombie, perhaps I had better start from the beginning.

Characters

The Prince



On a summer outing with daddy, the Prince is not content to sit on horseback and watch thousands of troops die for his amusement in an attempt to sack the Maharajah's kingdom. Instead he ventures off into the castle alone with the aid of his badass parkour skills, determined to retrieve a priceless artifact and make is father become not disappoint. This artifact happens to be the Dagger of Time, which to my knowledge makes him gaming's only time-traveling freerunner. The game is narrated from his point of view, whereas he treats save points as places where he'll start the story from if he's interrupted, and he responds to his own deaths with, “No, no, that didn't happen.” It's endearing or irritating depending on how many times you have to listen to it. I got into the habit of muting the TV when pausing the game just so I didn't have to hear, “Shall I go on?” again.

Farah



One of the women whose lamentations are heard after her kingdom is crushed and driven before the Persians. She helps you with puzzles, will occasionally shoot enemies, and ends your game if she dies. Unfortunately she doesn't have Alyx Vance's endlessly regenerating well of health, but just don't let her get surrounded and you should be alright. In later games she gets removed from continuity, killed off, and reincarnated as a donkey.

The Vizier



Evil jerk who tricks the Prince into unlocking the hourglass that holds the sands of time, turning everyone into a sand demon. He betrayed the Maharajah to the Persians and it turns out he was in it for himself all along? Fucking wow.

When the game begins in earnest, you're in a castle full of sand demons and you have platform the fuck out of it to get anywhere. This place seems massive enough without all the collapsed hallways and bladed deathtraps impeding your progress, so I can imagine it's enough of a pain in the ass to move through even on a normal day without having to flip around and run up walls. My guess is the royal family and their guests rode a pony express system on the backs of slaves, but delving into that aspect of the backstory might make the audience a little unsympathetic to the protagonists.

The graphics are damn good for a last gen game, at least as far as the Xbox is concerned, which is the version I'm reviewing. The environments are simple and clean (hurr) yet bright and colorful when the mood permits, rarely falling into the realm of drab post-Playstation era graphics that seem to plague multiplatform titles of its time. I mean, these are some good looking environments. They're just detailed enough and the engine rarely shows its seams, yet it captures the desert milleau with a kind of dreamlike fairytale atmosphere without having to resort to tricks like cel-shading or gratuitous particle effects. Only the character models tend to look fucked up at times in the face area, particularly in the in-engine cutscenes. The Prince, once you get past his permanent scowl and Edward Furlong hair, is fluidly animated and looks decent enough. The biggest problem occurs when he opens his mouth, which is kind of gross.

The crux of the gameplay is of course platforming, which is simple enough to get the hang of. You'll need to jump, hang from ledges, wall run, wall jump, swing, and roll to surmount a given room. Some of the actions are context sensitive, which can be a problem. If you press A when running, you'll do a roll, but press it near a ledge and you execute a running leap. This makes it easier to stick the distance, but too often I ended up pressing A too late and would go over the ledge, which automatically puts you into a ledge hang. Wall jumps can be a bit tricky to time properly. Your basic wall to wall ascent isn't as timing sensitive as Super Metroid, but it can be difficult to pull of when you're required to swing into a wall and rebound off of it. The timing just doesn't feel natural sometimes. The game also has some idiotic points where you have to walk on balance beams. How your camera is positioned will inevitably determine which direction you need to push the analog stick, so if you don't keep it in check, you're going to fall off. All that happens is that you go into wall-hang mode and must pull yourself up again. It's not challenging or difficult, it's just tedious. This same crap shows up in Uncharted, except you control Nate's balance with the SixAxis.

If you screw up too much in the platforming segments (and you will), you can always bail yourself out by way of the Dagger of Time. As you progress by collecting sand from enemies or preset wells, you increase the number of sand tanks available to you. With the L trigger you can rewind the game for about 10 seconds. You a get a circle on your HUD that must refill before you can use the sand again. You can use it before it fully recharges, but it will only go back as far as it has refilled. It's cumbersome to explain, but think of it as an egg timer counting down counterclockwise and you'll get the idea.

Even if you run out of sand tanks, the game is more than generous with restart points. You'll usually end up relatively close to where you died. Save points are plentiful enough that it doesn't matter much anyway.

Then there's the combat. While I can't fault them for giving you something to break up the gameplay a little, and I understand that swordfighting was a big part of the classic Prince games, combat usually ranges from repetitive to infuriating. You'll be forced to dispatch a set number of sand demons before you can move on from an area. They're easy enough to run away from, but they'll teleport to your position after too long. You can strike them with your sword until they go down, after which you must perform a sand retrieve to dispatch them. The Prince plunges the Dagger of Time into the downed enemy and refills one sand tank. Figuring out the best time to do this is part of the challenge; you'll usually be surrounded by enemies who are all too willing to strike you when you're attempting a sand retrieve. Let the KO'ed enemy sit there too long and it will revive. Fortunately if you're already well into the sand retrieve animation the other enemies will hold off their attacks until it's finished. Except when they don't. Every once in a while you'll be close to through with one and you'll get smacked anyway.

Getting surrounded really turns the combat into a teeth gnasher. There seems to be no reliable way to target enemies. The manual cryptically says to use the left analog stick and let the Prince do the rest. He'll circle around his selected enemy until you either sheath your sword or push the stick in the direction of a different enemy and choose to attack it. This leads to a lot of doing what you didn't mean to do. The A button performs a dodge roll in combat, but it also performs a vault attack where the Prince leaps over an enemy and strikes it on the way down. This is good for turtling block whore enemies (they're worse than a competitive Guile player), except about ¼ of the game in you'll run into enemies who will completely no-sell this move. Accidentally doing this to one of those jerks when you meant to dodge roll can bone you.

You can block, too, but God help you if you get knocked down. Enemies can still attack you when you're on the ground, so all you can do is keep holding the block button and hope they get bored trying to beat you to a pulp so that you actually have time to complete your unnecessarily long getting up animation. You're given combat tanks, which allow you to do things like slow down time, freeze enemies so you can slay them (without being able to use them for a sand retrieve), and when your tanks are full you can freeze time and annihilate every enemy in the room. You also have a wall rebound which is sporadically useful, since it's unblockable and causes and automatic knockdown. Even with these abilities, combat goes on too long and is to frustrating to be much fun. I kept wishing it was over so I could get on with the damn game. One instance went on so long that I swore there was a spawn point or something that I had to take out. Nope, I just have to keep killing the same prick skeletons over and over.

Overall, the Sands of Time is a very simple game. You go into an area, figure out the best method for clearing its puzzles (the save points even give you hints), get into a fight every now and then, yell at Farah, repeat. The only thing in the way of secrets are hidden fountains that extend your lifebar, and these are never well hidden. That said, and with all my gripes about the combat, I can't really bring myself to hate it for its simplicity. There are no minigames, quick time events, useless stats, or bullshit to unlock (except for the Macintosh versions of Prince 1 and 2). When you get the hang of doing the platforming right, it's fun to execute and impressive to watch. That said, there's not much exploring to do, but given the simplistic goal-based structure of the game, it didn't strike me as that much of a detriment. Even the combat isn't so bad if you remember to play it less like a hack and slash and more like a fighting game. I started this review when I was about halfway through the game, but my opinion of it has softened a little bit. It was enjoyable, even after having played better games that have come out since and not being familiar with the classic games. Now if they had made an XBox remake of The Last Ninja, I'd 10/10 GOTY in my pants.

You know what? Nevermind.

An hourglass. I'LL STEAL IT! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!