Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

The previous self titled Prince of Persia was a 'reboot' of the series but strangely, Ubisoft have took a u-turn and gone back to the original style and the original Prince which probably was to tie in with the movies release.

The Prince visits his brother Malik at King Solomon's palace but they are interrupted by an invading army. As a defensive manoeuvre, Malik releases Solomon's mythical army from the secret chambers which turns out to consist of sand monsters which turn both the armies to sand statues. Only the Prince and his brother remain human due to their medallions and must fuse together their halves of the medallions to stop the sand army. Many events ensue which keeps the brothers separated and Malik becomes increasingly corrupt by the monsters' powers and only the Prince remains to prevent the evil.

Forgotten Sands has the usual Prince of Persia game-play and so is a platformer which focuses on acrobatics and agility. The Prince must navigate through the palace by running across walls, jumping back and forth between walls, avoiding traps, and solving puzzles. The game is very linear unlike the previous game and there isn't too much variety as you navigate through the palace. There are many sections of the game where there is no real skill involved because you just need to press the right-trigger to run along walls and press the A button to jump to the next section. Other areas require more timing, especially close to the end of the game because you are required to press more buttons and each one requires precise timing. If you mistime a jump and begin plummeting to your death, you can rewind time which is what the Prince of Persia series is famous for.

There are a few puzzles too which helps to add variety and slows down the pacing of the game but not many of these are very complex. Additionally, there are also occasional fighting sections which play out like a simple hack and slash.

As you progress and level up, you can gain extra power ups which include a whirlwind attack that damages surrounding enemies, an Ice attack which shoots ice in a direction, Fire which adds fire damage to your attack, and Stone which prevents damage. A new feature to the puzzle and platforming element is that you can freeze water, and there is a surprising amount of water in the palace! These sections usually require a lot of timing as you will be swinging on a frozen water spout and must jump, unfreeze the water, then freeze the next water spout as it pops out.

Achievements are pretty straight forward apart from the hidden sarcophagi. Even though they are hidden they do emanate an aura which is fairly easy to spot but you will be bound to miss a few without a guide.

People seem to claim the camera is poor but the camera moves to guide you in the direction of the next platform and in more open areas, you have full control of the cameras movement; so there are no problems.

People also claimed there was a bug which reset your experience when you loaded the game. The bug that I had is that when you died, your experience reset to 294/300 so you always levelled up in the next fighting section! Forgotten Sands is still a cool game, but it's been done many times before so is beginning to feel a bit old.