Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

If you have seen the movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, this game is NOT based on the movie. That is good because games based on movies suck for some reason.

If you are a Prince of Persia fan, you would most likely followed the series. The Forgotten Sands sets during the 7 year gap between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

In Warrior Within, the Prince (not Dastan, apparently there are several Princes of Persia and up until now, there are 3 different Princes. Each of their stories are not related in any way.) has a serious personality 7 years after the events in The Sands of Time.

This game and also the PSP version of this game (same name, different story) are one of the few events during the 7 year gap.

In the 360/PS3/COM version, Prince visits his brother, Malik at his kingdom, finds it being attacked by the rival, Malik escapes into the castle, releases the Solomon army but things went wrong and everyone died. That's the beginning, you go play the rest of the game to know more.

This is Prince:

Nameless as usual (except for the movie).

Character design?? Erm... he looks as if he hasn't fully gone through the last stages of evolution. He totally looks like an ape-man.

I have quite a problem with the number of characters in this game. This game is very focused and character development is there but come on... using only 4 characters throughout the whole game?

There are only 4 characters that you actually interact with = yourself, Malik (your brother), Razia (friendly Djinn) and Ratash (Djinn sent to kill King Solomon). Everybody else are like soldiers and monsters.

The game is okay, I guess.

It's not like God of War quality. There isn't much variety. In fact, if you think that Dante's Inferno is too repetitive, wait till you play Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

The gameplay is so repetitive that it gets boring. No doubt that the Prince's movements are very fluid and fast but the repetition made the Prince repeat himself and repetition is just plain boring. You go through the same traps, same jumps, same running on walls, same freezing of water, same enemies, same mini bosses with different skin, everything is the same. Not enough variations to kill an enemy.

Yes, almost all of his climbing moves are from Assassin's Creed. But hey! That is good because Prince of Persia is kind of like Assassin's Creed except with monsters and linear gameplay. It would be cool if Prince of Persia is a sandbox-style game but then it would just be another Assassin's Creed. But then again, if it is linear, it will be something like an inferior God of War. Okay, Sandbox-style is better, but it might break the progress of the story.

Not to mention the annoying freezing water tactic:
The cool thing about this game is that you get to freeze water and climb on them like a wall or even trap enemies in between these waters but when it comes to jumping from one water wall to the other water wall behind the water wall next to yours (bloody confusing, I know), it is really a pain in the aschenholler.

You are "O"

Water wall that you must freeze and jump from is "{"

Water wall that you must unfreeze immediate and jump through is "|"

Water all that you must freeze immediately after jumping through "|" is "}"

So here is the mapping:

What's worse is that sometimes the mapping will be like this:

And you got'ta jump like hell!

I got through that part out of timing, seriously... timing is the key to winning this game. You have to jump precisely, have to go through traps precise, everything has to be precise in this game. It's a challenge and it would be fun if the traps are varied but no! The traps are all the same! Boring!

The graphics are great! Characters look believable and the surrounding is just amazing. BUT the surrounding became so bloody repetitive, it is no longer that amazing. There are some variations but overall, they're all the same when you come face to face with the traps. The sound is great but still prefer God of War sounds. They just sound more powerful.

God of War had giant Monsters and creative ways to kill them and slash them in half or beat their brains out of their heads. Dante's Inferno had giant Monsters and creative ways to kill them and cutting off their heads with a scythe. Prince of Persia had a giant Monster and a creative way to kill it which is to destroy the medallion.

Unfortunately, Prince of Persia only has ONE giant boss monster. No decapitating, no immoral ways to kill somebody (extremely explained in God of War). There aren't any bosses actually. The first time you meet Ratash, his attacks are like one of those mini bosses except with a different skin.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands does not really have any replayability. Beside obtaining all of those statues that give you tonnes of EXP, there is nothing much to do. There is no cinematic mode where you get to watch the cut scenes again. There is only one challenge in challenge mode. Basically, not much can be done after you have finished the game.

Like in the movie, the Prince gets to rewind to his previous state with the sands of time! This is really cool and pretty fun to play with and also a life saver. Whenever you fall off and die, the game gives you 2 to 3 seconds to hit the button to rewind the whole thing (even the music rewinds!) to the time before you die! That is the fun part of it! If let's say that you lose too much life, just hit the button and everything will rewind to the state before you lost those lives (depending on how long you hold the button and the limit).

You get to use Ezio Auditore de Firenze though... but you have to have XBox LIVE and go to UPlay to download the content. Damn!

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is not such a fun game to play. The story is not that good, too few characters, repetitive gameplay, enemies and bosses. The graphics are good but the gameplay just made the whole game pretty bad.

There is a lot of room for improvement. Maybe open-world as a fresh start. But because fans want to keep the Prince of Persia "sacred" with the same gameplay, you might want to start off with a new character.