Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

THE BAD:
- Some repetitiveness later in the game, fight scenes become a chore rather than an exciting change in pace.

- Not enough cutscenes to move story forward during play

- The plot is a little thin - there's no real character development or unfolding of the evil Jafar's plans.

- Sometimes the controls are unwieldy - until you master the combination of the weird camera control with the movement controls you can accidentally jump in the wrong direction to your death.

- One or two puzzles near the end of the game are VERY hard to figure out and very frustrating, you'll have to restart many times on those levels.

SUMMARY:
Reminiscent of Prince of Persia Classic, but with better puzzles, graphics that are above and beyond what I was hoping for, amazing action sequences, and very, very impressive gameplay.

The thing that amazed me the most in this game is the combination of the attention to detail in graphics and room design, and also the creativity that the developers show in taxing your full use of the myriad of acrobatic skills given to the Prince. The Prince can swing on ropes, run up sections of walls, run ALONG walls for amazing distances, jump huge distances, shimmy up poles and trees, swing like a gymnast from pole to pole, and hang from walls and shimmy along outcroppings like a nimble monkey.

With this huge arsenal of abilities the level designers came up with a huge number of puzzles to test your skill. And while the game takes place from a 3rd person perspective, the game engine is also versatile in that it allows you to look around your surroundings in First Person perspective (though you cannot move in this perspective) and also use a special Zoom out feature to see a birds distance view of your character.

On top of this, the camera freely rotates and zooms in and out with your mouse control. It's with the entire combination of these viewpoints that you will find the solutions to the puzzles - often you will find that you have to switch to first person view and look around to look for clues as to which way to proceed or how to get out of a room. It's an ingenious way to get you to use all the engine's capabilities to even SEARCH for solutions.

The music is also very nicely made, and fits in so superbly with the environment that you'll be jazzed up every time you fire up the game. I also found some of the quips the Prince makes to be very humourous (if highly chauvinist).

The only real complaint in the game is that the timing of some stunts is a little tight, and the camera angles are not always very user friendly - a common problem with many 3rd person games since the creation of the very first Tomb Raider.