I'm a fan of the Prince of Persia series starting with the Sands of Time. I always said gaming needs more puzzle platformers, and this is as good as it gets. There was a little hiccup with Warrior Within (it sucked), but the ship was righted with The Two Thrones and the book was closed on an epic storyline. 2008 introduced us to a new prince...who for some reason was not a prince (at least not yet; not until he knocks up Elika) and is played by Nolan North, the guy who does the voice of pretty much every single mother fucker in games lately. Jesus, if he keeps this up, he'll put Steve Blum and Cree Summers out of business and that's no easy accomplishment.....and it just occurred to me that you have no idea who I'm talking about. Despite the overused voice and a wardrobe that looks like a runaway ninja crashed into a Skittles factory, 2008's POP was a good game all around and a good launch pad for the next trilogy. I was getting syked about what they would for a sequel, then I finally got to see that the new POP...has nothing...to do....with this contingency.....wait what?
To make as much money as they can off the new movie coming soon, Ubisoft released a game in the Sand of Time storyline, effectively confusing everybody including me who thought they were fuckin done with that storyline and moved on. There's gonna be some trouble when both games are shelved side by side at Gamestop. You play as the Prince, not to be confused with the Prince who is not yet the Prince but probably will be Prince if he hooks up with...ah fuck that shit; let's just give them names. In the Forgotten Sands, you play as the Sands of Time Prince (who we'll call Sandy). Despite popular belief, this is not based on the movie, nor is this a sequel of the 2008 game starring Reject Ninja. The events takes place after the Sands of Time and before Warrior Within where Sandy visits his brother who despite actually having a name we'll call him Spongebob to keep with the theme here. Spongebob's kingdom is under attack and is about to go down like almost every Xbox 360 before 2009, and in order to save it he's releases the legendary Solomon's Army to aid in this fight. Sadly, evil sand pours from the vault...AGAIN...and creatures I'll called Beach Shoes emerge to destroy everything in their path. Now it's up to Sandy to do what he always does and hop, skip, jump, and repeatedly die his way to victory with some help from the woman who helped seal the Beach Shoes centuries ago: Water Hoes. It's a fine story but doesn't add anything to the overall story-arch. Hell, I don't know if it's really relevant at all. In my opinion, you can put Stone Cold Steve Austin in the game and it wouldn't make a difference, and in hindsight that might be for the best. We don't need a side project to fuck up to story here. Ask Metal Gear Solid fans.
As I describe the gameplay, stop me if this sounds familiar. You will run, jump, climb walls, climb poles, jump from pole to pole, wall jump, wall jump repeatedly between 2 walls, run on walls, run up walls, hang from poles, swing from poles, balance on beams, jump from beam to beam, dodge traps, solve puzzles, and inevitably fail a lot at trying to do all of the above. It's a tried and true formula that never gets old despite how many times I do it. It's one of those games where you say to yourself "Okay, I'll stop at the next checkpoint", and you're still playing 7 checkpoints later. Instead of sand, all your powers are given to you by Water Hoes to do what you need to to get from point A to point B. You can also upgrade Sandy like every other action game, making his health and attacks unfairly awesome, which leads to the biggest and probably only worth-noting change: combat. Instead of the stiff combat of Sandy's past games or Reject Ninja's stupid ass one on one move as slowly as possible duels, combat in this game is a little more fluid and a hellava lot more fun once you upgrade yourself to badass proportions. Not only that, but as much as 50 Beach Shoes can be on-screen at once. If you can win that fight without getting hit:
1) send a video of it, and
2) let's see you do that shit on Batman
If there's one thing that Reject Ninja has on Sandy, it's that he has a partner who won't let him die, unlike Sandy who is only as alive as how often you're allowed to do a rewind. Now I know everyone made a big deal about not being able to die in Reject's game, but after playing Sandy's game, I can confidently say that you guys can shut the fuck up about it. In the Forgotten Sands, it's filled with so many save points. It seems like every time I go into another room, the game autosaves. It's funny how everyone likes how you can die in this game, but the effect is still the same. Am I the only one noticing this shit? Yea, in Forgotten Sands, you go back a little further, but a lot of times I don't even use my rewind because I know I'll spawn close by. How is that much different from Reject Ninja getting saved by Floaty Bitch? At the end of the day, Reject Ninja made you feel like you got bailed out, whereas Sandy makes you feel like you can't fail, but it's the same shit.
Rating: Sweet
NOTE: What was that? A closing paragraph? Bitch, I got 2 posts to do today. I don't have time for a closing paragraph.
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