A couple of years ago the Prince of Persia series had a bit of a reboot with a new cel-shaded look, a wise-cracking prince and a sidekick which meant you could never really die if you fell to your doom. To be honest, unlike that very sidekick, it didn’t really grab me and what I wished for was a return to the fantastic form of the original ‘remake’ of the game ‘The Sands of Time’. Thankfully Ubisoft have listened to the fans and made a next-gen game that mostly brings back the magic of the PS2 game.
The Forgotten Sands is set between Sands of Time and Warrior Within and begins with the kingdom under attack. You fight the bad guys using your sword but your brother has a wise idea of resurrecting Solomon’s Army to help win the battle with ease. Unfortunately undead armies tend to be a bit evil so once unleashed, all hell breaks loose and it’s up to you and your brother to stop it.
Gameplay is separated into two distinct modes, those being combat and platforming. When it comes to swordplay you can kick opponents, dodge them, jump on them and attack from above and hold down the attack button to perform a power strike. It’s a little too simple a combat system and some form of point scoring and combo system would have been nice but on the whole it works. The platforming element, like in Sands of Time, is much more enjoyable as you run along walls, leap onto poles and slide down large horizontal banners using your knife. You can also rewind time like in the first game if you misjudge a jump or fall through a crumbling floor.
The prince also has some new powers which you can choose to upgrade as you progress through the game such as stone armour, a whirlwind and blasts of ice, and you can also manipulate the flow of water, turning it into ice temporarily to use as poles to swing on and walls to run across.
Thankfully the game is an enjoyable one but the platforming and puzzles in the game are a little too easy. The palace traps and timed events give you a very large window of opportunity so there’s not as much satisfaction as there should be when you make your way from A to B. There are also some odd audio glitches where music stutters or stops altogether as well as a couple of other odd graphical glitches in the game.
However, Forgotten Sands is a fun if rather linear game to play and it should keep you busy for a fair few hours. It gets a very good 7 out of 10.
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Related: Prince of Persia review, Assassins Creed 2 review, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands review on Youtube
