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icyschreviews · 2 years ago

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A Review of Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands

The One You Should Have Remembered

Well isn’t this awkward? Allow me to hype you up for a game no one ever gave a shit about. Don’t worry, we’re so late to the party, the game’s server support has long been dead. Now you can enjoy it without having to worry that Ezio skin is going to steal 5 bucks from your wallet. So allow me to introduce you two. Forgotten Sands, here’s another misguided reader. Dear reader, this is Forgotten Sands, an incredibly polished piece of fast-paced action and an essential entry in the catalogue of every true Prince of Persia fan. Don’t you now feel silly for not having played it? I mean, neither have I, but we can rectify that mistake together.

Forgotten Sands is simultaneously an inevitability as well as a defiance of fate - a movie tie-in produced solely for cash that somehow managed to be a darn good game on its own merits. I know it gets a bad rep, even when it is seldom mentioned, yet most of the criticism I heard is inextricable from the movie. Ah yes, the Hollywood Prince of Persia. Eye-rolls ensue. Yet another shoddy video game adaptation that not even Jake Gyllenhaal could rescue.

I can’t say I blame the cynics, but if you asked the people who actually played the game (and not the ones who came out of the theater jaded, only to realize they were being sold a video game along with the movie ticket), they would have told you that Forgotten Sands has nothing to do with the movie. No, FS let the adaptation do whatever the fuck it was doing, while trying to snuggle itself somewhere between Sands of Time and Warrior Within.

You heard me right, this is another installment in the Sands of Time trilogy. Same old Prince, same old Yuri Lowenthal doing the voice work. The promise of yet another adventure with our beloved protagonist might make your heart flutter, but I’d strongly advise caution in this particular case. FS’ story reeks of cheap action movie screenplays, something an underpaid writer must have slapped together over a drunk weekend. It’s so astoundingly bland, I don’t even have the desire to ridicule it. Even the movie adaptation outperforms it by miles.

Some of you might be scrolling back to the first passage right now. Didn’t you say this game was good? How can that be true if the story is shit? Aren’t Prince of Persia games all about time travel shenanigans and the allure of Arabian Nights? Normally I’d agree with you, but with FS I’m willing to make an exception. What this game strives for is gameplay excellence, and since it came so close to peaking, I decided to turn a blind eye towards its less flattering sides. You’re more than welcome to make your own judgement.

I wonder, did the game snatch this shot from the movie or vice versa?

Since we’re definitely not talking about the story, there are two avenues along which we can further this discussion. Platforming is the more straightforward path, but let’s leave it for later and jump straight to the controversy. Let’s talk about the combat. You with me? You listening? Good, cause Forgotten Sands might have the best combat out of any Prince of Persia game.

You still there? Has the disbelief turned into outrage yet? Forgotten Sands? Best combat? Excuse me, but what? Why, I swear on my copy of Warrior Within there’s no other PoP game that comes close. What is this hack ‘n’ slash garbage and how dare you compare it to a true hardcore experience like WW? I played through Forgotten Sands and hadn’t died once! You call that a game? Are you some filthy casual who always plays on easy? Have you even finished Warrior Within? I beat it like twenty times on the hardest difficulty with one of my hands tied behind—

Shut up. Shut it. Yeah, I’m talking to you. I don’t care for the blind admiration you’ve been dragging around since you were 13. Why don’t you find a place for it somewhere up your ass? Yes, WW’s combat can be exceptional. Emphasis on can be. If Jupiter and Saturn align and Mercury is not in retrograde, Warrior Within can make you feel like a god. Or it can make you smash your gamepad against your desk.

I went over the damn thing in another review (shameless self-promotion here), but it all boils down to one thing. Half of WW’s difficulty comes from poor design choices, making the other half much harder to enjoy. Each time you enter a room you have to make a blood sacrifice to the camera gods lest it misbehaves itself, and then roll a perception check in case some mother fucker is coming at you from a dead angle. What FS offers me in turn is consistency. Being the fifth major PoP title released by Ubisoft, FS had the privilege of looking back on its predecessors and ironing out the creases. And you bet it did its homework.

The lock-on system is gone. Finally I can move in any direction I want and aim my attacks wherever I want. No more moving to the left only for the game to decide it should reroute my inputs towards a foe on the right. I understand that FS is a hack ‘n’ slash and that removing the lock-on must have been a necessity. If there are 30 enemies in the room, you don’t want the camera whip-lashing the player. However this change feels so liberating, I can’t help but wish it was part of the previous games as well. I despise soft lock-on systems in general and have yet to play a game that employs them successfully.

On top of that, I can cancel out of animations that don’t have iframes, and vice versa, I have iframes for the animations I can’t cancel out of. I cannot overstate the importance of these features and how sorely they were needed in the previous games. Further on, the arenas are spacious and the camera never gets stuck on anything. Couple that with smooth and responsive animations, a clean and comprehensive presentation, and you get yourself a combat system that flows like butter.

Did I hear anyone complain about Warrior Within just now?

This might be a good place to stop and take a step back. While FS introduced a bunch of quality of life improvements, which would have worked wonders in WW, it’s important to note that the nature of its combat is completely different. As I mentioned a few times by now, FS is definitively a hack ‘n’ slash.

Making your way through the tutorial, you won’t really notice any differences. You can still roll, swing your sword and jump over befuddled enemies. Then a few minutes in, a siege tower will open its doors and spew out 15 enemies at you. From then on FS just keeps adding to the deck. "More" is not a word that has a negative connotation in its vocabulary.

In itself I find this change to be neither good nor bad. Rather I’m much more interested in the side effects brought on by this design decision. As I said, looking at your basic arsenal, not much has changed. However a bit further down the line the game introduces you to the kick and the heavy attack.

The kick is there to facilitate the rock-paper-scissors nature of the combat. Way back in Sands of Time you could employ the jump attack against certain types of enemies, but would have to resort to wall bouncing against other types who were immune to the jump. Likewise the kick is there to deal with enemies hiding behind a shield, but can also be utilized as a powerful weapon against regular foes.

The heavy attack, which is undoubtedly my favorite, needs to be charged up and released. This sounds pretty basic, but the devil’s in the details as they say. First off, the attack can be cancelled at any time. Enemies can swarm you pretty quickly, so the game lets you abort and scurry off to safety instantly. Second, it doesn’t matter what direction the Prince is facing when stopping to charge up. You can tilt the stick any way you want and the Prince will launch himself there upon release. Third, the attack can be chained together from one successful hit to another. Mwah!

I know what you’re thinking right now: wow, what cool new additions. I wonder what kinds of combos you can build from them? Well, none.

As I’m sure you remember, both WW and the 2008 reboot had extensive combo trees. I liked how versatile and dynamic they were. You had numerous options for creating your own combat style. However they were shoehorned into the games at best. You’d expect them to be introduced gradually through gameplay, but no. The designers just dumped the entire combo sheet on your head and expected you to read through it. Even if you put in the time to try them all out, you’d eventually settle into using only a handful.

FS doesn’t bother with this. The closest it ever gets to a combo system are the variations of the jump attack. Besides simply vaulting over an enemy or smacking it over the head, the dedicated kick button also lets you tackle them to the ground. If you try to jump over an enemy with a shield, it’ll just knock you off with it. Furthermore the animation changes based on the enemy’s health. If it’s close to dying, the Prince will perform somewhat of a finisher. These special animations can also be triggered when driving an exhausted enemy up a wall or close to a banister.

Say hi to the movie’s ratings when you get down to the bottom.

As neatly packaged as it is, the combat system would certainly have felt barren without any further additions. Luckily FS decided to adorn it with more features. There are 4 brand new elemental powers for you to play with. No, they don’t make any sense within the narrative, so don’t bother frying your brain cells.

The Ice Blast is the most straightforward one, sending waves of ice along the trajectory of your attack. It’s great for mowing down entire rows of enemies, much further than your heavy attack can reach, and especially if you’re trying to get to those bothersome summoners. The Trail of Flame is somewhat of a passive, useful if you’re playing defensively of just like hit-and-run tactics. The Whirlwind is your obligatory AOE, considering the genre. Its logical counterpart, the Stone Armour, is perfect if you don’t want to be interrupted while going after a single target, like a stunned charger, or just want to shield yourself from those annoying scarabs.

Overall I feel the powers are decently rounded. They are specifically designed to be effective against the game’s main challenge - the ever increasing hordes of enemies. The only one I tend to question is the Trail of Flame, since it’s a rather passive ability in a combat system that favors aggressive play.

It took me some time to come to that last conclusion. The first thing I realized is that blocking is not a thing any more. The designers just made off with it and I didn’t even notice. Later I began thinking about how you obtain health and energy in this game. While it’s perfectly possible to dodge each and every attack, it’s not a realistic expectation to have. The staggering amount of enemies means you’ll get hit eventually, especially if you’re one for rushing into crowds. The game accounts for this by making fallen enemies drop health and energy. That way it creates a system akin to the one Bloodborne popularized a few years down the line - a closed loop of hitting and getting hit, an incentive to get in there and tap some ass instead of standing on the sidelines.

I do find it funny how the elemental powers are introduced to you. At some point the game tells you that you’ve gained enough XP and should open up a level-up menu. Level-up menu? There, among the obvious improvements to your health and energy, you’ll find the elemental powers just waiting for you without any further explanations. FS, you didn’t tell me this was a buffet. In a way this is the same transgression committed by the combo sheets from the previous games, although it is much more concise and comprehensive. For starters, the level-up menu fits on half a screen.

All of you need to chill out.

Well I guess it’s time to start nitpicking now. What? I said FS might have the best combat out of any PoP game, and I’ll emphasize that might again in case you missed it. While I think it polished much of what its predecessors got wrong, it made quite a few blunders on its own. God forbid there isn’t anything to bicker about.

Let’s start off with the minor stuff. Finishing off knocked-down enemies doesn’t quite work. You’re supposed to approach them and press the attack button, but it takes a while for the Prince to realize what he should be doing. Likewise, jumping on top of enemies is pretty imprecise. The Prince’s jump is ridiculously long and in most cases he’ll just leap past an enemy instead of engaging them.

Other than the 4 elemental powers, there’s another special ability I failed to mention. The Power Of Flight, or the dash as I’m sure it’s colloquially called, is a platforming ability that also made its way into the combat. It allows you to knock down enemies like bowling pins or quickly distance yourself from tricky situations. It’s devilishly fun, in both combat and platforming, but I worry it’s too powerful without the restraint of a cooldown bar. Then again, restricting it because of the combat would break some of the platforming challenges, but more on that later.

Boss-wise, there are only two types in the entire game: the chargers and the giants (or whatever class Ratash is supposed to represent). Timing the dodge on the former is completely broken. I could not for the life of me pinpoint the precise moment when you needed to leap out of the way. Its attack pattern is rather simple, though I do like how it’s expanded with crowd control. You can use the boss to clear out whole packs of minions, but then have to keep watch for those same minions not to overwhelm you while you’re chipping away at the boss. I wonder how this fight would evolve if they threw in a summoner…

Ratash, in his first two appearances, is perfectly serviceable, if not a bit too lenient. He also makes use of crowd control to add an extra layer to the fight, though it's not as effective as with the Chargers. Ratash shoots lightning bolts which can be used to kill minions, but he’s much less imposing and allows you to clear out all other enemies before engaging him.

The bosses that really get me going though are the trolls. Their move-set is more or less the same as Ratash’s, with one notable exception. They are the only enemy type in the entire game which forces you into a soft lock-on. Guys, what the hell happened here? The trolls are the perfect example that the lock-on does not work, especially not in this genre of combat. As if this doesn’t tamper with your ability to tackle smaller enemies, the trolls are also the only boss type which gets mixed in with summoners. Oh, now you remember to put them in! Watch as I get stunned-locked into oblivion while the camera stubbornly refuses to move away from the troll.

Overall, all of the boss types are severely overused, even for an 8 hour game. There’s also Ratash’s final form, I guess, but that fight is too short and too easy to make any impressions. If this were any other franchise, I’d be much more critical, but other PoP games set such a low bar with their bosses that I find it hard to complain.

I was also let down by the arena modes. I feel FS laid down the basis for a good combat system that could have been pushed much harder than it was. There are two arena modes in total and once you beat them, which won’t take you more than 15 min, there’s really no reason to go back to them. This could have been an opportunity to try out new and more challenging enemy combinations, to let you tweak the difficulty and measure your performance in various ways. It’s sad thinking of other games that have much more complex arena modes, but not nearly as polished a combat system as Forgotten Sands (The Witcher 2 and Alan Wake ffs).

Now you see me, now you don’t.

I think we can let the combat rest for a while and finally talk about the platforming in this game. Unlike the combat, the core of the platforming stayed the same as it was in the Sands of Time trilogy, with numerous improvements and additions further expanding on the original formula. This allows FS to deliver some of the best challenges the series has seen so far.

A number of tweaks have been made to the basic move-set, a lot of them inspired by the 2008 reboot, no less. This is rather surprising considering that FS leans heavily in WW’s direction, with its complex control scheme and relentless late-game sections, while the reboot made its mission to use as little buttons as possible. First off, you can now jump off pillars instantaneously by pointing the stick in the desired direction and pressing the jump button, regardless of where the Prince is facing. Next, you don’t have to press the jump button to pull yourself up a platform, but just tilt the stick forward without breaking the momentum. Last but not least, you can run up a wall after jumping towards it from any other obstacle, significantly increasing the potential of wall-to-wall scenarios.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how they revamped the control scheme for polls. Previously you had to hold down the special action button to initiate a swing and then press the jump button to launch yourself off the poll. Changing the Prince’s direction on a poll was particularly frustrating, as you had to keep twiddling the left stick like a mad man until the game decided to oblige. Now swinging is initiated by holding down the left stick in the direction perpendicular to the poll, while the direction parallel to the poll moves the Prince along it. Switching the perpendicular direction also neatly switches the Prince around the poll, removing any ambiguity from the mechanic. I appreciated this the most when tackling timed obstacles, such as doors, where being able to switch direction without breaking momentum is necessary for completing the challenge.

One new addition, which I’m positively blown away by, is the ability to initiate a wall run while holding on to a ledge, both horizontally and vertically. To give you my favorite example, you’ll come across a familiar trap when you first start descending into the underground city: a ledge and a spinning saw. However this saw is spinning right under the ledge, able to cut through the Prince if he were hanging on. At first I was confused. What is this setup? Then I realized what the game wanted me do. You have to grab onto the ledge when the saw moves away from you and run up the wall to let it pass beneath you on its way back. Then you have to slide down and move quickly along the ledge before the saw comes back to get you. My mind was positively blown. The game is full of little reinventions like this which make you view old obstacles in completely new ways.

Characteristic of a PoP game, all of FS’ animations are fluid and seasoned with little details to further enhance the experience. E.g. if you jump towards a hanging pillar just beneath its lower tip, the Prince will grab onto it with his arms and yank himself up until he’s encircled it with his legs. This comes off much more naturally than simply snapping you into place. Another good example, when you jump from one poll to another at a lower elevation, the Prince performs a different animation. He’ll grab onto it with only one arm, as if to signify that this is not a clean landing, perform a spin and then settle into the default position. All of this adds nicely to one of the most polished platforming experiences in the entire franchise.

Booby trapped corridor, my favorite.

The game wouldn’t be much fun if it only stuck with the basic move-set. There are three new platforming abilities tied to the Djinn: the Power of Flow, the Power of Flight and the Power of Memory. The Power of Flight, aka the dash, I already mentioned. What I didn’t go into is how it’s used exactly. See, another change made to the basic move-set is the separation of the jump from the roll. In previous installments, these were mapped to the same button and triggered contextually. In FS they occupy different buttons, clearly signifying the player’s intent.

To be honest, I don’t really understand this decision, neither in combat nor in platforming. To add to the confusion, the jump almost makes the roll obsolete. There are two reasons for this. First, the jump is ridiculously long. Rolling used to be king when it came to overcoming timed obstacles, but now it sits in the shadow of its far superior counterpart. Second, the camera feels weird when rolling, like it crashes into the Prince from the behind and squeals to a halt. It makes the already modest distance crossed by the roll seem even shorter.

To go back to the Power of Flight, the only reason I can justify the divorce between the jump and the roll is that their button combination is used to dash. As mentioned, the dash is recklessly unleashed during combat, but much more tuned to my liking during platforming. The camera work is exquisite. There is a genuine sense of exhilaration when swishing ahead, and an even greater satisfaction upon smashing onto your destination. The only thing I worry is that it over-saturates the game with yet another move for crossing distance, threatening to retire the other two mechanics whose buttons it makes use of.

The Power of Flow, i.e. freezing water for a specified amount of time, is an absolute banger. The game uses it to string together some insane challenges, which push your platforming skills to new heights. You’re asked to perform your usual assortment of moves while also rapidly switching the state of the water, freezing it to give the Prince new obstacles to interact with and unfreezing it to allow him through. This all culminates during the game’s final stretch where you’re tasked with hopping your way past multiple rows of waterfalls.

The Power of Memory, or level reconstruction, is yet another surprising inspiration provided by the reboot, specifically the phantom walls found in the Epilogue. On its own, it’s much lower stake then the other powers, requiring only the quick engagement of one button to successfully pull off. Never the less, it can be thrilling jumping off one solid surface, letting its safety disappear behind you, and then watching anxiously as another one forms in front of you in the nick of time. Coupled with the other two powers, it creates another layer of complexity around FS’ platforming mechanics.

The game introduces each of these powers in separate sections, allowing you to get used to them on their own terms. Soon though, it starts mixing them together to form some of the franchise’s most intricate platforming sections. You’ll find yourself splashing through waterfalls, landing on freshly reconstructed walls, bolting to unsuspecting birds, and then back swinging around bars of ice, all in the matter of seconds.

Come here, birdie, birdie.

Come to think of it, there are actually 4 powers of the Djinn, aren’t they? The poor Power of Time somehow got lost in the process. If I were to take a closer look at it, what’s the point of having it in the game at all? No, I don’t mean because of the lore implications. I couldn’t care less about that, not to mention that the other powers aren’t tied by some narrative thread either. What I’m aiming at is gameplay. Isn’t the rewind kinda pointless in FS?

I mean, just think about it. Auto-saves are so frequent, you’re basically being restarted on the last solid surface you were standing on. Minus Elika, it is functionally the same system as in the reboot. Why would you waste your rewind on that? Likewise, slain foes drop health, meaning the mechanic is equally useless during combat.

I only found two applications for it in the entire game. The first one is for poorly timed dodges on incoming Chargers. The second is for misinterpreting directional inputs (more on that in a sec). So, yeah, you could say I used the power rather frequently, but both of these instances were for correcting the game’s busted mechanics and not some intended design choice.

Furthermore, why on earth is the rewind power using the same energy bar as the combat abilities!? The Power of Flow has its own cooldown meter, the Power of Memory can be triggered at any time (as long as you like having a floor beneath your feet), and the dash has some (barely noticeable) downtime between bursts. It’s like they added the rewind just so they could have another reason to lodge the game within the SoT trilogy, without considering if the power even had anything to add to the gameplay.

Don’t you dare slip.

If I could add more complaints to the pile, I have some serious gripes with the camera. For the most part, it performs its job rather competently, but problems quickly start to arise. The first one that became apparent to me was its restrictiveness. The camera is fixed during most platforming challenges, giving you only a little wiggle room to look around. On one hand, I like this. You are constantly being pointed in the direction you need to go in. There is no ambiguity about what stunt to perform next, allowing the action to flow uninterrupted.

On the other hand, I felt like I was stuck on rails. The previous games let you explore their worlds without much hand-holding, emulating a sense of freedom which the open worlds in Warrior Within and the 2008 reboot made real use of. Sure, the camera would occasionally point to a specific direction, but only when necessary for clarity’s sake. I think that restricting the camera as much as it did, FS inadvertently created a sense of artifice, like its world is no more than a set of static scenes going by a carnival ride.

But enough about the camera angles. What really gets me about FS’ platforming is how directional inputs are handled. For some obstacles, moving the Prince forward requires pointing the stick in the direction relative to the camera. For others, you just have to push the stick forward. This is insanely confusing to say the least.

I don’t remember the previous games having this issue, at least not often enough to notice. In FS it is a constant recurrence. I wish the designers decided on one approach and kept it throughout. The camera is at its absolute worst when the game strings together two obstacles which don’t apply the same movement principles. It adds and unwelcome layer of uncertainty to platforming challenges which require quick decision making. The problem is further magnified by the fact that the game insists on using cinematic camera angles to frame the action. Yes, I know, it looks a lot cooler than your standard bird’s eye perspective, but it’s also much harder to tell what constitutes as "moving forward" when you’re viewing the Prince from some weird angle.

Those Warrior Within drapes will never go out of style.

Although FS is more than capable of chaining together some exhilarating platforming sequences, the levels the action takes place in are often quite forgettable. Whether from a lack of inspiration or pressure from higher-ups, the designers seem to have dug up SoT’s art book somewhere in the back of the office, and just blown the dust off it. The line between homage and rip-off dangerously leans towards the latter. You’ve got your baths, your gardens, your astronomy chambers, etc. They even reprise the palace’s defense systems.

Each time you enter a new area, the game swirls around the camera to give you a sense of the room and display its name in bold letters across the screen. Unfortunately, they all have a terrible case of the cookie-cutter syndrome. Each room is square-shaped. Each is entered from a balcony up above. The obstacles are placed circularly around the walls. There’s always an indistinguishable hallway leading from one room to another. On and on like that.

SoT was linear, but its levels were much more spatially complex than simple cubic environments. For some reason FS’ designers skipped that lesson while screening the predecessors for inspiration. Instead they just slapped over some SoT-looking textures. As a result, Malik’s palace feels like a temporary movie set, like a bunch of fake walls hastily propped up just before the player enters the room.

To give the game some credit, the levels do start to improve once you’ve made it past the halfway mark. My favorite sections are those adjacent to the Terraces. There the game finally stops leading you from one box to another and lets you scale spires and hop over balconies. The visuals are crisp, selling the opulence and magnitude of the palace’s rooftops. The featured content is also varied, giving you a pretty good puzzle section in the observatory and a chase sequence with Ratash, an unexpected throwback to all those fun times with the Dahaka.

Good old crank puzzles.

Ok, you know what, I lied. I said we wouldn’t talk about the story, but we absolutely must. I can’t believe they slammed some random door between the Prince and Malik just to stop them from settling their argument. It’s one of the main contrivances the plot keeps recycling to justify its existence. The brothers are like: could we toss over this amulet and fix everything? Yes, we could, bro. Ok, you do it first. No, you do it. No, you. No, bro, you do it!

Hold on, game, wasn’t the Prince’s biggest mistake in SoT not trusting Farrah with the dagger? Then why on earth is he not handing in the freaking amulet!? Also why do the brothers not trust each other in the first place? Did I miss something? What is their relationship made out of anyway? It wouldn’t have hurt to flesh that out more, especially if you’re going to make it the focal point of the story.

What’s worse, here’s the Prince, a couple of years past the most significant event in his entire life, still bearing fresh scars from letting his arrogance get the best of him. And does he talk about it with Malik? No. Does he share some insight regarding this strikingly similar situation? No. Does he try to appeal to his brother instead of succumbing to the same childish stubbornness? No! They could have had an honest to god interesting story about strained family relationships, the abuse of power and the difficulty of speaking up about one’s issue. But that would have required some actual effort, wouldn’t it?

The game culminates with the laziest Hollywood ending I might have ever seen in a video game. To my utter amusement, Malik died in the Prince’s arms as the camera zoomed out and the Prince screamed into the heavens. I was hoping they would squeeze in the Dahaka’s appearance somewhere in the post-credits, but I wasn’t even rewarded with that much.

Bro, we’re meeting up at the baths, right?

It’s really quite sad how often the game relies on SoT’s branding, but tosses aside everything that could have been drawn from its story. Instead, it desperately copy-pastes whatever it can get its paws on. Here’s yet another army attacking yet another desert city. Which army/city, you ask? Who cares. Why don’t you chew up SoT’s tutorial section - we nearly identically transplanted into FS, down to the specific camera angles.

Someone must have flipped through SoT’s glossary at this point. What are we missing? But Farrah, of course! Here’s her knock-off counterpart, what’s her name? Razia? (I had to Google that, just so you know.) She and the Prince share as much chemistry as Godsmack and a glass of lukewarm water. Most of her time on-screen is spent blabbering out exposition - I didn’t listen to a single word she said.

Yuri Lowenthal is back, and while I’d love if he narrated my life, could the Prince please keep his mouth shut unless he has something substantial to say? Yes, how dare I, but the dialogue is so poor it’s barely listenable even with the stellar performance. The only remarks the writers could come up with are so inconsequential, they could have had the Prince comment on the weather. They reuse the same joke about a collapsed staircase three times!

And could we take a minute to talk about the Prince’s face? I know technology evolves over time and new models need to be created to present the same characters. It’s not uncommon to have someone’s appearance change between installments, especially if there have been longer breaks between releases or if the in-game context justifies it. So for example, I can get on board with the transition from SoT to WW, where the 7 year in-game gap, as well as the Prince’s move from adolescence to adulthood, more that justify our protagonist’s altered visage.

On the other hand, Forgotten Sands, what the actual fuck? Who is this person? How does this Prince fit in between SoT and WW!? If it weren’t for those bangs and that signature goatee, I wouldn’t have recognized him to begin with. I’m becoming more aware with each new installment that our blue eyed Persian is a genetic abomination. At least we’re all in agreement that Warrior Within’s armor is the best armor.

Wait a minute… You’re not Farrah!

Here comes the obligatory section where I shit all over the publisher. So let’s see, Ubisoft, what have you done this time? Did the game have a troubled development? Hmm, I don’t think so. I can’t remember any such reports from back in the day, nor could I dig up ones now. Were there any egregious online features? Not really, just some inconsequential skins.

Wait, I remember now! Uplay! Let it perish in the deepest depths of hell where it came from! Uplay was what you had in store back in early 2021 when I first gave this game a try (yes, I know, late to the party). What I had to go through to get the game up and running on Steam was ridiculous.

At first, I didn’t have Uplay installed, so the game was trying to boot itself up using some archaic Ubisoft launcher I had leftover on my PC. After I installed it, it still wouldn’t run because the cache files created by the old launcher were causing issues. After clearing the cache, it couldn’t sync non-existing save files, so I restarted it in offline mode. Then, the cherry on top, it kept crashing silently whenever I tried to boot the game. Why, you ask? Because you can’t have your gamepad connected before the game itself starts. Don’t even ask how I got to that conclusion. It took me more time to get to the title screen than to download and install the damn thing!

At the time of writing this, early 2023 to be precise, Uplay is dead and gone, replaced by some other infernal construct called Ubisoft Connect. I flinched when I realized the game would put me through more launcher torment, but fortunately this time the effort was minimal. Except I had to launch a separate EXE to change the display settings. Ok, whatever. Now the new launcher tracks my in-game achievements. Cool, I’ll still be sure never to use it.

Ubisoft, don’t you keep pushing me.

To be honest, there’s not much here I can blame Ubisoft for specifically. Well, except for one thing. It’s clear as day why they ran back to the SoT trilogy. The earnings of the 2008 reboot were supposedly disappointing, leading Ubisoft to cancel the game’s sequel - a grudge I plan to take to my grave. Even so, I don’t mind they took that as a reason to revisit the old formula. FS shows just how much room there is to build upon the original mechanics. What I do mind is that the game’s creative wings have been clipped from having to stick so close to SoT. FS doesn’t lack polish, nor fun gameplay twists. It lacks an identity.

Just who talks about this game any more? People who’ve actually played it cannot come here in good faith and slander its quality. However, I doubt the game has many fierce defenders. I’ve looked through old reviews and couldn’t find critics being unfair with it. When you comb through them all, it comes down to the same thing. What good gameplay, what bad story. I can’t say I disagree. FS is notably better than any movie tie-in has the right of being, but is still a soulless husk despite its shredded body.

In a way, Ubisoft got exactly what they wanted, the polar opposite of the 2008 reboot. A game that tries to stick to everything a diligent marketer identified as the franchise’s strong suits. A venture that must have been pulled down each time it flew a little too close to the sun. Even so, I’m amazed it managed to get away with as many gameplay innovations as it did. There were clearly some incredibly talented people on the PoP team, who fought for every inch of creative freedom they could get there hands on.

Despite all that effort, the game failed the test of time miserably. True to the irony in its name, Forgotten Sands slips my mind way too easily. This review sat in my virtual drawer for two years until some twist of faith brought it back to my attention. I daydream about Sands of Time, I pull my hair over Warrior Within, I cry in my pillow thinking of the reboot, but I barely contemplate FS unless it somehow plants itself right in front of me. It never managed to carve itself a piece of anyone’s adoration, so it was left behind in the dustbin of gaming history.

Ezio would have jumped, you pussy.

#game review #review #prince of persia #forgotten sands

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