Prince of Persia: Warrior Within für Windows

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a very enjoyable game. While not a breakthrough in any aspect, the graphics are very good, game play is smooth and the plot is reasonably well done. Overall, I found it an entertaining and reasonably satisfying experience.

First of all, the game requires a Direct X 9.0 capable video card and recommends at least an 800 MHz Pentium III. I played on a AMD XP 3000+ computer with 528M of RAM. The graphics board is an Albatron NVIDIA GeForce 5900 XT with 128M of RAM. It installed and ran fine on my computer with no performance issues. It will support a ThrustMaster gamepad, but I used the keyboard and mouse exclusively.

In a change from most PC first person shooters, the emphasis in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is more on puzzle solving than on blowing away bad guys. The game has a basic plot line associated with restoring the Prince's kingdom and reversing the evil affects of the 'Sands of Time'. The element unique to this game is the ability to control time once you have 'The Dagger of Time'. You can slow time down (a sort of slow motion), freeze enemies, freeze everything in the world, or even go backwards in time. This last capability allows you to recover from mistakes without saving every 10 seconds; handy since the game otherwise allows saves only when you reach fixed locations in the game.

Basic game play is similar to most first person games. There are a series of movement types that have to be mastered including the standard running, jumping, walking, climbing movements but also rolling, running along walls and ledges, and jumping over opponents. These actions and the resulting graphics are smoothly integrated. I found it easy to control the character.

The graphics were very good, excellent in most scenes. Scenes loaded smoothly and movement was very consistent no matter where I looked or how I moved. Obviously a lot of attention was paid to graphics details. The scenes looked authentic and stayed consistent to the games theme throughout. The game was not as dark as many first person shooters; most scenes were very well lit and bright colors were used in many places. At the same time, I found volume levels on the PC version inconsistent, particularly if you have turned down the background music. I had to turn the volume way up to hear another character speak, but then turn it back down when battles began. While not a big issue, it was a little irritating.

Exploring the environment, mostly a castle like place is interesting and a number of puzzles must be solved along the way. Some were complex enough to require multiple sittings to figure out what to do, though most could be solved fairly quickly. The game provides multiple forms of hints during exploration, including visions which give you clues as to what you will need to do to solve puzzles.

There are also a number of creatures you must defeat, ranging from irritating beetles to zombies wielding swords. For me, battle was the least interesting element of the game. Once you have mastered a number of basic maneuvers for hacking with your sword and defending yourself, you repeat those actions over and over until you have defeated all of the creatures in that scene before you can move on. While the graphics in the battle scenes were good and very interesting at first, there wasn't enough variety in combat to make that element a strong part of this game.

My only other complaint is that the whole game felt relatively short. I'm not a teenager who will sit and play the game for 20 hours straight and finish it in one sitting. I usually don't play for more than an hour or two at one sitting. But, I finished this game in about 14 - 15 sessions, probably less than 25 hours total game time. While that isn't bad, this game was sufficiently interesting that I wished it had been longer.

This is not a multi-player game, though the Princess is a significant character in the game. She helps you, but can only be controlled by the computer. There is no Internet capability either, making this strictly a single player game. The game is rated T (Teen) because of blood, suggestive themes and violence. While there is some gore in the game, it isn't realistic enough to be gross nor is it likely to frighten kids older than 7 or 8. The violence is all in sword battles and game elements like falling, nothing gratuitous or disgusting, and I can't even imagine what they thought were suggestive scenes. I would have no problem allowing kids as young as 9 or 10 to play this game.

Overall, I enjoyed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and look forward to playing the recently released Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.