Amazon.com: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Xbox: Video Games

84 Reviews

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

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4.2 out of 5 stars (84 customer reviews)

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50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Visual Feast, November 16, 2003

By	Lisa Shea "LisaShea.com" - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Talk about a brilliant implementation of time technology, plus stellar graphics and motion animation. This is a showcase for the great achievements gaming has made.

Other time-involve games either jumped years forward or back in time, or used cheezy VCR symbols to handle your time changes. In Sands of Time, it's extremely easy to use and VERY handy. You fall off a ledge? Just slide back in time a bit and try again!

The graphics are just amazing. The character moves fluidly, and the combat sequences look like a well animated movie. The character can run along walls, do back flips, climb poles, leap chasms, and much more. When he runs along a wall and passes a banner, the banner ripples in the wind. The attention to detail - from shadows to textures to torches flickering and water rippling - is just amazing.

Part of the game is slaying your enemies in new and interesting ways. But part is negotiating the terrain and figuring out how to get to the next area. Some of the puzzles are straightforward - run along the wall, jump up the ledges. But others are far more devious and require a lot of thought to get through.

There are many great releases out right now that we are enjoying greatly, but Sands of Time is the one that always draws the most fascinated reactions from friends. They comment constantly on the graphics, animation and gameplay while we move from scene to scene. It's like poetry in motion. And it's fun.

Highly recommended for someone who is looking to really enjoy the game as a visual feast while reaching their goals.

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Playable Dream, November 22, 2003

By	Matthew Warner (Providence, RI United States) - See all my reviews

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was not a game I was looking foreward to. Like a lot of folks in this generation who grew up with video games, I had very fond memories of the original Prince of Persia for PC, an incredibly animated, original, and difficult title that wowed you with it's remarkably efficient simplicity. Even the Gameboy and SNES version were fantastic, all adhering to the similar formula but expounding on them just enough to be new without betraying the roots of the game.

When the poor 3D version debuted for PC a few years back, nobody was really surprised that it was poor; from the earliest preview screens, the game reeked of a formulaic approach to try to "update" a game that had no need of updating. The result was, well, expected.

When Sands of Time was announced, I barely let it register. Oh, great, I thought, another Prince of Persia game. Didn't they already try that? Why not just try updating Asteroids again? It would be cheaper to fail at that.

Well, my foot's in my mouth pretty deep right now. Really deep, in fact.

The new Prince of Persia is among the best games I have ever played in my life. It falls just a teeny bit short of legendary status - It's not quite the legendary, genre-defining stuff of Mario 3 or Half-Life - but it's very, very close, and it easily ranks as my favorite game out right now.

What sets this game apart is apparent from the instant you start playing it. Gone is the feeling that this is a rehash - everything is new while maintaining the spirit of the original games, from the Prince's ninja-like acrobatics to the music to the storyline. It all comes down to this, possibly the highest compliment I can pay this game:

If the original Prince of Persia had been made in 2003, this would be it.

It's obvious that the developers had an excellent idea of what the player will find fun, as opposed to what they think the player will find fun - a huge difference. It boils down to a confidence issue concerning the programming team. Do we go with what people are expecting, or do we take the chance to make our own thing and see if people will accept that? It's not easy to go the latter route - see Sega's Gunvalkyrie for an example of what NOT to do when trying your own thing. Innovation is key, but it has to be something that will make you actually want to play the game, not make you want to play something else.

Speaking of controls, this game controls like magic, with ultra-responsive and quite forgiving moves that interpret what the player is trying to do without requiring absolute precision, a Godsend in 3D games like this. This carries over from the acrobatics involved in the game to the excellent combat engine, both of which are integral to the experience.

Most of the game has the player navigating one trap-filled room to find the next - strong shades of Sony's ICO here, which should be seen as a good thing - and at various points the player becomes involved in a pitched battle against a set number of spawning enemies - ICO again - which he must defeat to move on. What's remarkable is how cohesive everthing is. There's no feeling of disjointed challenges being thrown at the player, but rather the impression that all this stuff really is the same castle, and could, if you squint, be believable. The game has it's own logic that it adheres to, which really is the mark of a game that's been developed properly.

In addition, the design team made an interesting choice concerning the difficulty. Instead of making the game seriously hard, they make it "tricky". It's not an easy game, but it still makes sense as to what to do, and it's this key element that determines the difference between "frustrating" and "challenging." In other words, if the sole reason the game is difficult is because the game makes it hard for the player to do what they want (again, see Gunvalkyrie) then the fun of the game is lost, and the challenge becomes irritating as opposed to engaging. In Prince of Persia, the controls are so fluid that you always feel fully in control, and any screw-ups are your own fault, not because something didn't work like it was supposed to.

This concept, which seems so difficult to nail down, is present here in perfect display. The only game I know of that is a better example of this is Treasure's Ikaruga, a masterpeice in it's own right.

If it seems like I'm making a lot of comparisons, there's a reason. Prince of Persia can be looked at like a Quentin Tarantino movie in a way. It takes lots of elements from other works in the medium and mashes them all together, but in the process actually improves upon them and makes something unique. If I were to break the new Prince into it's components, it might look something like this:

Take 2 parts Ico, 1 part Soul Reaver, add a touch of Blix, bake it in the Splinter Cell engine until perfect and voila! Sands of Time, unlike anything you've ever had before.

Don't miss this game, whatever you do.

(As an aside, this review is for the Xbox version, but word from the front is that the differences between versions are slight; for the record, the Gamecube version, surprisingly, has the best graphics, the Xbox version has the best load times and comes with the full version of the Prince of Persia 2 PC game, and the PS2 version is the one you get if you don't have either of the other two consoles - the game was designed to run on the PS2, so it's not like you'll be missing much. Any way you go, you're in good hands, so it boils down to a matter of convenience.)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly one of the best games ever..., January 17, 2004

By	Markus Egger "www.MarkusEgger.com/blog" (Spring, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This game is nothing short of amazing. I wouldn't say that this falls in my favorite genre, yet this is probably my all-time-favorite game.

The game looks great! Not just are the graphics very good, but UbiSoft is also introducing a new way of presenting a jump-and-run game to the player. While most of the time the camara is behind the player as in most other jump-and-runs, it also moves around whenever something special happens. Example: When the prince runs up and along a wall, the camera moves to the side to show the best possible perspective for the action. This is more like a movie than a game as far as the presentation goes. And the most amazing part is that this does NOT interfere with the gameplay. One would think that all this moving around would confuse the player, but it does not, because it is done very well. To me, this is a major advance in gameplay. Many player may not even notice the effect or think it is a small issue, but it is really a major leap forward towards providing a much more immersive experience.

Luckily, this game has more going for it than just visuals. The best part is probably the gameplay. The prince can do things that are breath taking, yet they are easy to pull of. This makes the game a lot of fun, because it makes the player feel good about him or herself. At the same time, the game is not too easy. In fact, the game has a number of difficult parts, although asides from one battle, I didn't find anything that is really frustrating.

So is there anything I do not like about the game? Well, the camera could be a bit better at times, although it has been majorly improved over the demo versions that were available before the game shipped. Also, the game says it is Xbox Live enabled. This is true, but it only means that your friends can see when you are online. There is no online playing or even special content (at least not at this point). I do no expect this game to have an online mode, nor is there any major need for other online services (although additional downloadable levels would be nice :-) ). But I always think it is borderline false advertising when a game claims to be live enabled, yet once one logs on, nothing more happens.

If you are thinking about buying this game: Go ahead! You will not be disappointed.