#405: prince of persia: the sands of time
a classic reboot of an even classicer franchise — does it stand the test of time?
prince of persia: the sands of time (2003, PS2/XB/GC/PC, ubisoft montreal): the prince of persia series occupies an odd spot in history. the 1989 original is considered one of the all-time greats, one of those smash hits that saw ports to nearly every major system under the sun, in part because of a strong theme rooted in orientalist takes on arabian nights, but mostly because of how smoothly animated the game was, thanks to the use of rotoscoping to translate, frame-by-frame, real human movement into a little two-color sprite. it was incredibly effective, and set the game’s creator, jordan mechner, on the road to being a very wealthy man. the plot was simple enough: an evil vizier has staged a coup and demands that the princess marry him within the hour, or perish, and it’s up to her boyfriend, currently languishing in the dungeons, to fight his way up and rescue her. but the gameplay was what brought people in— you’ll run, jump deep chasms, dodge traps, hang off ledges, fight guards, solve puzzles, and if you’re good enough, you’ll get it all done inside of an hour. the precise movement of the game certainly feels part of the DNA of the early tomb raider games, which had a similar focus on carefully planning your jumps and puzzle-solving and other stunts.
after a less-well received sequel, and then a disastrous third game that was victim of the industry-wide leap from 2D to 3D, the franchise kind of fell dormant, until 2003, when ubisoft, having bought the IP, put ubisoft montreal in charge of developing a new game. rather than try to carry on from the franchise’s personal bubsy 3D, they simply rebooted the franchise from scratch. the result is prince of persia: the sands of time. now, the evil vizier’s plot is to use a mythical time-manipulating dagger to achieve immortality, and tricks the prince into unleashing a magical sand that sweeps through the palace of azad and turns everyone except the prince (who remains unnamed,) the vizier of an unnamed kingdom, and the kingdom’s princess into monsters. it’s up to the prince, and the princess (in this game, named farah) to fight and climb their way through the enormous palace to try and undo the prince’s mistake. and undoing mistakes is something you’ll be doing a lot of in this game, as the dagger of time can be used to rewind time, allowing you to try again when you mess up a jump, or get killed by an enemy.
(or you could just emulate the PS2 version and abuse the hell out of save states.)
where this game succeeds is the presentation. it’s a surprisingly beautiful game for 2003, feeling slightly cartoonish yet not overly so, somewhere between realistic and world of warcraft in terms of aesthetic. the writing is clever, with parts of the game being narrated by the prince himself after the fact, a feature that’s played with on a meta level if you pause the game and then unpause it (“now where was i?”) or die (“wait, that’s not what happened!”) the interaction between the prince and farah grows from mutual distrust to affection for each other, sometimes bickering like a married couple; of course, when the prince manages to rewind time all the way back to the beginning of the game, it’s not as if farah remembers him anymore — and she promptly rejects his affections.
aside from resurrecting a once-venerable franchise, the sands of time was at the time a major step forward for the action-adventure genre. lots of little things we take for granted now were invented or popularized by ubisoft montreal’s little reboot that could, such as an early attempt at making a more cooperative camera, and smooth player movement that afforded acrobatic options such as wall-running, dodging, rolling, jumping, climbing, all animated with much greater care than is typical of the era. combat, too, felt like it was intended to be smooth and fun. it’s easy to see the roots of assassin’s creed in this game, not least because the original assassin’s creed started off as a prince of persia sequel.
unfortunately the presentation is all the game’s got. the puzzle-platforming is dull as dishwater; while it’s more streamlined than the old tomb raider games, it’s lacking a lot of the sense of accomplishment, instead being just a lot of pushing buttons.
taking enemies down is more difficult than it seems, in part because you and farah are both being swarmed at all times; in part because each fallen enemy must be finished off with the dagger lest they resurrect; and in part because jumping over the enemy and slashing them from behind, the only reliable method of dispatching enemies quickly because they’re constantly blocking your attacks otherwise, doesn’t work on enemies in blue uniforms — they simply toss you back with some damage. by the halfway point, that’s practically all the game throws at you. in short, smooth animation can’t hide the fact that combat sucks shit through a crazy straw.
in spite of these issues the game proved successful enough to warrant not just two sequels, but several spinoffs, a movie adaptation, and yet another reboot. while i can’t say anything about these latter entries in the franchise, i can tell you that prince of persia: the sands of time hides a lot of tedium beneath a flashy veneer. like many of its contemporaries, it’s important in how it was helping invent the modern video game, but as a game itself, it’s perhaps best left to the sands of time.
