Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Platforming; Sub-genre: Beat-'em-up
ESRB: T (for hitting sand monsters with a sword)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 8/7
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Quebec, Ubisoft Singapore, Ubisoft Casablanca
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Sometimes a game is just a good game. For some reason, game critics lost their shit over Prince of Persia (2008) and fans, understandably, were a bit disappointed with it. *cough* Thecriticswerepaidoff *cough* Ahem. So then this game came out and people seemed a bit lukewarm in its reception. I don't think this game was "game of the year" or anything (that was Mass Effect 2, heh) but it's still just a completely solid recommend. Am I being weirdly lenient? I don't think so.

PoP 2008 was pretty, though. So... there's that.

The story is functional enough. Whenever a story contains "screwing with time like a cheap whore" the only tone that'll work is a somewhat silly one. So the game keeps it a bit light-hearted and adventurous, but doesn't really worry too much in the technicals. I mean, they just crammed this right in-between Sands of Time and Warrior Within for continuity. When does the Prince ever get to take a break? At some point they'll be making sequels that take place between time jumps or some crap. So the continuity of it will have existed in less than a minute, or like some kind of negative amount of time. But anyway, the events seem to flow well enough for a game series about messing with the concept of flow. And there's no forced female characters, aside from some kind of water Djinn or something. Yup, it's the Sands of Time Prince back to making sarcastic comments to himself. So I give this guy a pass.

Prince of Persia's take on a "strong female character".

Gameplay has two parts in this franchise: combat and platforming. Combat is often considered the weaker point. I remember when I played the first Sands of Time, and I did wish the combat was somehow fuller. With Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, they tried to improve it by introducing a bunch of bullshit combos. You know the type: impossibly long combinations of square and triangle (or X and Y) that you'll never use because you'll stick with the most basic three hit combo and throws. So those games did not really improve upon anything, as far as I cared. In Prince of Persia 2008, they revamped the whole system in favor of some kind of fighting game crap. The end result was you'd get in boring one-on-one fights where you mashed attack just to keep pressure on until there was an opening. Finally, in Forgotten Sands, they introduce another new system. This time the groups of enemies are larger and the Prince is much more powerful due to his new elemental attacks. He is sluggish, and the combat is simple... but I'd say it works. It's not Arkham City, but I found it to be something of a step forward for the first time in several games!

I defeated the boss of the first game by jumping over him. Just like everything else...

Platforming is like a breath of fresh air coming back from Prince of Persia 2008. Instead of pressing "A" to "make the Prince solve the entire sequence on his own", you have to use several buttons and, like, use timing and stuff. Wow! What a concept! But seriously, there's a little change from the previous Sands of Time games. Each game introduces a new little thing here and there, and this mostly does that with things like the ability to freeze and unfreeze water. I don't know why people think this is so stale. Maybe I don't play enough platformers. Usually when I see platforming in a game that borrows from Sands of Time (like Assassin's Creed, Infamous, etc) it only takes the bare minimum stuff and uses it as filler to take up your time. This tends to come about as grabbing ledges and the general feeling of "pushing up and A to continue". However, Forgotten Sands and its predecessors takes these ideas and fully flushes them out and makes the level out of them, instead of just tossing them in there. Think of games that involve a shitty stealth section (like Witcher 2) and compare it to an actual stealth game (like Deus Ex, Metal Gear, or Splinter Cell). It's the same thing here. This actually makes it fun.

Pressing up is boring!

My biggest issue with this game when it came out was the bugs. It had a terrible tendency to corrupt your saves for various reasons. And since it only relies on auto-saves with no way to perform a manual save, you would have to START OVER. Being such a critical issue, I didn't want to recommend this game to anyone. However, the game has since been patched and as far as I know this is resolved. My other issue is re-playability: the game treats every new game as a new game+. Can't start from scratch, I think. Unless you delete your saves on your hard drive. Kinda dumb. There's also a challenge mode, but those seem to be kinda silly. They're just an extra hour or so of fun if you want 'em.

Conclusion:
While not ground breaking or a necessary play, this game is so easy to recommend as just a fun game. Sometimes that's all you need!

"Here's your time powers. Go have fun, whatever!" -Razia stating the concept of the game as a whole.