Description
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time takes place in a mystical Middle
Eastern setting, all bathed in soft, warm light and looking like
something straight out of a storybook. You play as a young prince who
possesses exceptional athletic and acrobatic skill. Early on in the
game, the prince steals the dagger of time, a treasure from a rival
nation, as a token for his father the king. When a traitorous vizier
compels the prince to use the dagger to unlock another treasure, a huge
hourglass, everything goes wrong. The sands from the hourglass blow
forth, enveloping the kingdom and turning its guardsmen and citizens
into, for lack of a better way to describe it, "sand zombies." The
prince, the vizier, and a young woman named Farah are among the only
survivors. In the prince's efforts to undo his mistake, he'll join
forces with Farah, seek out the hourglass, and confront the vizier. The
game's story takes a backseat during most of the game, but it is
bookended nicely and is framed as the prince's own retrospection. So,
for instance, should the prince fall and die at a certain point during
the game, you'll hear him say, as narrator, something like, "No,
that's not how it happened." Not only is this an interesting
technique, but it compels you to keep pressing on. You'll want to know
exactly how his complicated ordeal will unravel.
The prince's new dagger of time has other uses besides causing
calamity. It's the key to defeating the evil spread throughout the
palace, and it also makes the prince virtually immortal. In most
cases, should the prince fall to his death or be slain by a sand
creature or a trap, with his last breath, he may use the dagger to
"rewind" the course of time to a point prior to the unfortunate
incident that would have ended his life. Each time you use this
ability, it costs a "sand tank," which you earn a greater quantity of
as you get farther into the game, and which you restore by defeating
sand creatures. In practice, you won't often run out of sand tanks,
but even if you do, you'll restart the prince's story from a recent
location.
A highly responsive, very forgiving control scheme further ensures that
at no point during Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will you get
particularly stuck, if at all. Though other action adventure games
involving a lot of death-defying leaps and other such bravery tend to
force the player to perfectly time his or her maneuvers and often force
him or her to wrestle with issues concerning the controls or camera
perspective, Prince of Persia is set up in such a way that it's
remarkably simple to pull off all of the prince's spectacular moves.
The default PC controls are a mouse-and-keyboard combination, similar
to what you'd use with a typical first-person shooter. They work well,
though not quite as well as the console versions' gamepad controls.
On consoles, it's a bit easier to move in the direction of your foes,
as the camera changes angles and the analog control lets you move with
more precision. However, the default PC controls ultimately aren't
detrimental to the game. What's strange is that the PC version of
Prince of Persia apparently only seems to support one specific dual
analog gamepad, so even if you wanted to use a dual analog gamepad
with the game, you probably wouldn't be able to.
Screenshots
Download Links
Download Prince of Persia Sands of Time
