Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is a high paced action game from Ubisoft intended to promote the latest major title in the long running series. You take on the role of the son of the great King Solomon as he is about to arrive at his brother's palace only to find it under attack. It's as if the very sands of Persia itself have arisen to claim the castle, and indeed upon meeting a mysterious young queen claiming to know your father, you find that this is not far from the truth. A deadly sand army marches on and the only hope of stopping them is for you to activate four elemental fountains and use their powers against this terrible foe.
The Forgotten Sands offers gameplay that is mostly similar to Canabalt though with numerous twists and additions to give this mini Prince of Persia title plenty of its own style and flare. For the most part running is automatic, just make sure you jump using [up] and attack with the [space] bar. Later on you will gain special abilities that can be used with the [X] key, and if you find that you've gotten yourself in a bit of trouble, you can rewind up to three seconds Braid style simply by pressing [down].
Like Canabalt and other similar titles, Prince of Persia is largely a reflex game; Identify obstacle and act appropriately. However, the addition of attacks, special powers, and limited time travel give you a great amount of freedom in conquering the obstacles set before you. This also helps make the game a little less challenging and more accessible. As a nice little treat, the boss battles are actually somewhat interesting and well thought out, allowing the game to provide some gameplay diversity while at the same time taking the opportunity to show off some fairly impressive looking visuals.
Unfortunately The Forgotten Sands' high paced action may leave fans of the series feeling a little less than sated given the depth and complexity of the main series. If you come into this expecting the cerebral Metroidvania style of the older Prince of Persia games, or the deep 3D action of the latter-day titles, you'll find neither here. And while the controls are mostly acceptable one can grow annoyed with how tetchy attacking regular enemies could be.
Finally, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands ends far too soon, and with far less fanfare than one would expect from the rest of the game. As a result you probably won't find yourself coming back to this game time and again, but it should provide a thrilling if brief diversion for a little while.
Horrible controls design. The choices make remembering which button is which difficult.
I kept pressing space to jump, and down to rewind is counter-intuitive (should be Left-Arrow, IMO).
I was excited to have Canabalt with more depth, but it's slower and overly complicated.
Besides - "roof" walking? Really? I think even the best at parkour can't overcome gravity enough to walk on the ceiling. :)
Funny glitch/something the game designers didn't take into consideration about the last level...
All you have to do is keep rewinding time enough while the big monster is in the background after attacking him with the powers long enough to fill your blue bar again and you don't have to run through the level.
Canabalt did better in spades.
Really, JiG? I just "finished" playing this over at Kongregate, and thought I'd come over here to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Terrible control design. It's as though they deliberately were trying to break every convention of game controls.
Buggy as all get out. I beat the game and, since it cuts off your control after you win, promptly fell down a hole. The level, however, continued going forever, without my character and without responding to any input.
The pros? ...I guess it looked kind of pretty? I guess?
So, how much did Ubi pay you for the review, JiG?
[We don't accept payments for reviews here at JIG. We decide on reviews by committee made up of our own reviewers. Did you even read the review? It isn't a glowing review by any measure. -Jay]
The vitriol at Kongregate has gone from scathing to dull. Besides the bug in the final level that's keeping some people from winning (which is "that bad"), the game is nowhere near bad enough to attract the criticism it's getting.
The rewinding mechanic is very impressive, if a bit fast-paced, but I think they must have spent a bit too much time on it considering some of the weird coding decisions in other places, like not having the prince do anything with the ice powers. The controls are more or less as tight as I had expected when the game was presented to me, but I agree with OverZealous that rewind should have been Left. I don't think I ever stomped intentionally without accidentally rewinding first, but you want to stomp only a few odd times. The boss are dull as could possibly be, except the first one, which I thought was actually really fun and shows what the could have been.
Heh, roof walking seems like exactly something the Prince of Persia console team would do. If they haven't, you can bet they're playing this flash game and hitting themselves for not coming up with something equally ludicrous in their own time.
I stopped playing when the music cut out every other second. Interesting game, but it could have used 2 more weeks of polish.
Sound cutting out, game not ending... I went through the game for over an hour without a single glitch. Flash, you inconsistent fool of a platform!
Well I thought it was pretty fun and well worth the review.
I just played it for the humour factor, let him fall into the ravine, rewind a tad, let him fall into the ravine again, rewind again... you get my drift.
It's not completely terrible, but it's not good by any measure. It's far too easy, as well as way too short. It passed the time for a few minutes, I guess...
hi,
i m stuck in part 26- the palace, in my game the door is not open... so please can anybody tell me how to get through it..... or some other way ... in video it was said if the gate is not open then delete saved file .... so can any one tell where i can find that saved file! please let me know.
in my game the door is not open... so please can anybody tell me how to get through it
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