The Gamer’s Quagmire: 23rd Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

As you read last week fighting a gaming addiction can be a tumultuous battle. The end of last week provided an opportunity to step away from my usual gaming routine and pick something different. I started flipping through my collection of games and almost immediately stumbled across a gem. I saw a game that made me think about how rabid a fan I am of the classic games from the original Nintendo era. Every generation of games contains a select few games that always stand the test of time. Certain games look better, play better, and are just much more fun than anything else they had to compete against with upon their release.

Recently one of the defining marks of a high-quality game is whether its release marks the beginning of a new gaming franchise. I think of this trend as the gaming version of strip mining. A new idea is struck upon, it yields riches, and then sequel upon sequel is churned out until the well is dry. Some mines happen to be richer than others. Anyway, after fawning over the memories of running through this game for the first time I started going through one of my favorite games that belongs in my esteemed gaming collection right next to Tetris, Tecmo Bowl, Goldeneye, Vice City, F-Zero, Baldur’s Gate, and Final Fantasy VI.

It was time once again to play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

It is rare case where you can really get into the story of a platform game, the battle system, the puzzle environments, the characters, the visuals and the music. There were several very successful games in this area. After playing all of these games, despite the numerous mind-bending visuals in Psychonauts, despite all the hysterical moments in Jak, and despite the wonderful weaponry in Ratchet I still wound up going back to a game that relies a lot more on environment interactions than battle. Much in the same way that the first Tomb Raider showed you what the results could be when developers challenged the gamer with tough puzzles, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time challenges you to solve puzzles in an almost completely unrivaled environment.

What you first notice about the game is the opening movie with the prince narrating about a story he wants to tell you, where you start off with a siege on a desert city. The opening movie is crisp, the music and sound effects draw you in, and the voice acting doesn’t make you think that Keanu Reeves is about to send you on some bogus journey. The tone drives home the idea that you’re reliving a story that the narrator remembers and would just as soon forget as tell you. This is a concept that some platform games have trouble with. When the voice acting isn’t quite right or the environment is distracting it takes away from the experience. Better still is when the only hints of being inside a story are at the beginning and ending cut scenes.

The fact that the presence of the narrative remains consistent throughout the game is the coolest part of the puzzle (as it were). At no point during the whole game did any of the voice acting, ambient sound, or environment seem out of place. The end boss’ area was not some misplaced graphical marvel. You felt the emotion of the characters. The music, while perhaps a little stereotyped for a Persian desert setting, was still very smooth. Swinging a sword, jumping far distances, running, bumping into objects, and other sound effects were also crisp. I have to believe that the most detail went into putting together all of the environments you made your way through. Even though I knew how everything would turn out I still wanted to play through the game again just to get a loser look at all of the levels that exist in the game.

If you played any of the previous two main Prince of Persia games you will not have a tough time with the 2D to 3D transition either. The 3D is way more than just eye candy. Aside from just the look of all the stages the puzzles are quite well put together. This is exactly the type of game that kids and teenagers *should* play as it forces them to use their mind to solve puzzles. Never underestimate the benefits that games can bring. Games that force the gamer to think their way out of situations transcends the boundaries of games into the real world. I’m not going to go as far to say that playing Tetris for hours on end will make someone much better at packing boxes (even through the Simpsons have already proven this beyond any reasonable doubt), but mental exercises are much better than simply fighting your way out of every situation.

Some stages have a relatively high level of difficulty. This is where you truly appreciate the time manipulation side this game has. There are plenty of games where time travel, in one form or another, is way too sketchy. Final Fantasy 8, despite it being one of my favorite games, deals with time travel in a way that forces the player to scratch their heads and simply deal with the story. In Sands of Time the ability to manipulate time affects the story in remarkable ways (pay attention to the story from the beginning until the end and you will understand). It plays into how you fight the enemies as well as how you work your way through some of the more complicated puzzles.

As a nice bonus, if you never had the experience you should kill your character in the game without reversing time. You are rewarded with a narrative that shows the depths the game designers went to when making this game play like a narrative. You will hear some variation on “wait.. that’s not what happened.” Most games simply give you a restart or load screen. Sands of Time keeps you in the notion of being in the middle of a narrator telling a story… and they stuck to it.

Time manipulation definitely provides the developers the avenue of creating difficult puzzles because even if you die you can erase the mistake by moving back in time several seconds in order to avoid making a mistake. Most of all the time manipulation creates an exciting system for fighting enemies. The prince you control already has impressive agility and physical capabilities, but the ability to manipulate the speed of battle gives your character almost complete control over every battle. Once you understand all the moves it is not too difficult to survive the battles despite the strength of the enemies that you have to face. I’ll avoid spoilers here so forgive the vagueness of this statement, but once you hear about the world you are in inside the game the movement and look of the enemies is nothing short of spectacular.

The lasting impression this game had was that there was nothing I would change about it. You read that correctly. Once you finish the end boss and you see the final piece of the story you cannot help but be impressed by the game’s writers. Be thankful that the originator of the series came back from other projects to work on the 3D adaptation for this game. I still say that the best games will always be the ones which are completed and approved by the people that came up with the vision in the beginning. This is definitely not a foolproof formula for success but when you see games like the Sands of Time you can’t help but be impressed.

It is for all these reasons that when 30 years from now my gaming collection will still include this title. This game is as close to perfect as a game can be. When the story, controls, cameras, effects, music, graphics, and environment are all seamless and engrossing you have a perfect game. Very few games in any generation can claim that. For all of the formulaic first person shooters, sports games, adventure games, and unimaginative sequels that are flooding the gaming industry this game shows that you can still build great games off of old ideas.

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