Game Review: Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sand for Xbox 360

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Xbox 360)

Released: May 18, 2010
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
# of Players: 1 (offline)
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Price: $59.99 (new), $44.99 (used)
Available: Now (also available for other systems)


Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands marks the fifth game to be released for major consoles in recent years. The series itself has a pedigree of incredible action, adventure, platforming, puzzle based games that never fail to entertain. Does this one live up to that same pedigree or does it fall short? I'm here to let you know.

The plot of this game is very straightforward. On a trip to visit your brother, Malik, in his kingdom to learn to become a better leader, you arrive to find it overrun by an invading army. Upon finding your brother he says he plans on letting loose the army of King Solomon, which has been sealed away for centuries in a vault. The prince warns his brother that he won't be able to control the army but Malik doesn't listen. Upon breaking the seal containing the army, they begin to spill out into the vault, springing up from the sand released from the vault. Malik and the Prince both take half of the seal and are seperated. The Prince meets a female Djinn named Razia that tasks you with sealing away the threat of Solomon's army once again. While the plot is simple enough, it doesn't do much more than drive the gameplay forward. All of the Prince of Persia games had incredible storytelling and this one feels like they did not put a whole lot of effort into it. It isn't a bad story per se but it doesn't make the gamer enthralled in the world which is a shame as its incredibly fun to get around.

Also, Ubisoft really dropped the ball on the "tie-in" here. According to Ubisoft, this game is part of the Sands of Time trilogy that they had released back on the PS2. It takes place during the 7 year gap between the Sands of Time and Warrior Within. However if they hadn't told us this, no one would be any the wiser. This game does not tie in at all and after the fresh story presented in the last game released under the Prince of Persia moniker, I'm seriously disappointed that they didn't handle this better. They traded a new start for the franchise for a generic story that focuses on becoming a better leader and having to make the sacrifices that are necessary for that. They tried to say this game involves the Sands of Time but it doesn't. When you first meet Razia in the game she gives you the power to rewind time. What a cheap way to incorporate that.

The largest part of this game is the platforming/puzzles. These are executed quite well. If anything the only complaint is that they are a bit too easy. It is still fun to navigate through the game and figure out the solutions to the puzzles, no matter how close to simplistic they might be. You eventually get the ability to rewind time if you make a mistake, freeze water so that you can climb or swing on it, and you get the ability (near the end of the game) to make platforms appear that have crumbled with age. These mechanics work well together and don't feel unrelated. The only problem is they crop up a lot. I find it hard to believe that behind a bunch of walls (that get broken in cutscenes) have a spout of water behind it. Not just a spout, but almost like an actual fountain, for no reason whatsoever. That is a bit much. It is a minor detail but it still holds true.

The combat in the game is very well crafted and I have no serious complaints. There is your standard attack (x button), your kick to stun or knock over enemies (y button), your jump (a button), and you have 4 different magical spells you can activate by pressing the corresponding direction on the D-Pad. Each has a different element associated with it and a different use (i.e. the earth element spell coats you in stone armor that makes you impervious to attacks for a limited amount of time). How you get these spells is through an interesting RPG mechanic worked into the game. After killing so many enemies or finding some of the sarcophagi, you will have earned enough experience to get an upgrade. By hitting the Back button you are taken to an upgrade screen. You can upgrade any of the magic spells to lvl 4 or get added bonuses like making your standard attack stronger. This provides a great flow to the game's combat as you feel like you are getting stronger as the enemies start to get tougher.

The visuals of this game are superb, crystal clear detailed environments. The voice acting excels as does the soundtrack. This game has a lot of polish on it and its evident from playing for only a few minutes. Cut scenes display excellent next-gen graphics with no tearing issues whatsoever. This game looks and sounds gorgeous.

Now the achievements. Achievements can make or break the replay value of a game. Do you care to go back and collect the ones you missed just so you can play the game again? Well in this case the achievements for this game are way too easy. Maybe a 3/10. Most of them can be gotten in one playthrough if you are paying attention to the environment and achievements themselves. Even if they weren't easy to get, this is definitely a game that you would want to play through again to get whatever you missed.

All in all this is a good game, its not phenomenal and its incredibly short, clocking in at around 6-7 hours to complete. This is a great return to form for the Prince though and if you are a diehard Prince of Persia fan, I strongly recommend it. For everyone else, it will entertain you to its completion but unless you truly fell in love with it, this is a game that you probably would not play through often, if at all.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands for the Xbox 360 scorees a 74 out of 100

Game Review: Too Human for the Xbox 360

Too Human (Xbox 360)

Released: August 19, 2008
Developer: Silicon Knights
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
# of Players: 1 (offline), 1-2 (online)
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Price: $29.99 (new), $12.99 (used)
Available: Now

This week I’m reviewing another game in the RPG genre, (Thank God), so it is back to the normal grind for me. Too Human is this week’s review, and while the game does have its faults, I genuinely enjoyed playing it. But, objectivity will always be my primary concern here.

This game plays like a 3D version of Diablo. In other words, it’s an exercise in gathering loot and constantly upgrading your armor and weapons to bigger and better things. As far as that goes, it succeeds with flying colors. But, this is also where the game has one of its biggest problems. A game like this is almost dependent on the camera and with Too Human, you have absolutely no control over the camera. Part of the reason for this is because you don’t attack enemies by just hammering the X or the A button or something to that extent. No, instead, you use the right analog stick to attack. Whatever direction you move the stick is the direction you’ll attack in. Now, it’s a very nice idea and it works very well, I, myself, enjoy the innovative feel of that function. But, as a result of that, the company left the camera controls to “hit the Left Bumper to center the camera behind you.” That would be fine as well, except there are instances where you can’t, because the game is trying to take a dynamic look at the environment. On top of that, the environments themselves are very bland,usually spanning no more than a range of 2 or 3 colors, and 2 or 3 different rooms that are just repeated over and over. The environments do not look very pretty or polished either. To be perfectly honest this game felt rushed.

The graphics for the game are certainly not impressive at all, and don’t even look halfway decent, especially for a next-gen game. They are bearable at best. The cutscenes are really terrible, the voice acting is very hit or miss (usually miss) and the game lends itself to too many other ideas. Norse mythology is a very in depth and interesting social structure for the gods and it feels like they just tossed it into this game as a side note. None of it is really ever explored and the ending fails to incite any emotion at all out of you. I understand they left the ending open for the other supposed two games in the trilogy, but I’d bet my life savings those games will never even see the light of day. Also, as a result of this, the game feels way too short with only 4 levels that might take a couple hours each to plow through. Another serious flaw in this game’s proverbial armor is the fact that you die far too often. You’ll usually get overburdened trying to take out a group of enemies, with missiles being fired at you from afar, and you can’t even reach the missile enemies to kill them, because there are just too many enemies in your way. This is before they start adding trolls and the tougher enemies into the mix as well. That, in itself, would be something, except there isn’t much of a penalty for dying. Whatever damage you’ve inflicted to said enemies stays and the only real consequence of death is that your armor and weapons will start to degrade. Other than that, there is no point to it. And, when you die, Dear Lord, you have to watch a cutscene of a Valkyrie dropping down from the sky, which will carry your body to Valhalla, Norse mythology’s idea of Heaven. This cutscene lasts from about 30 seconds to a minute, every single time you die, which, as I said, will be quite often. The list of achievements for this game isn’t too bad though. They are fun and genuine accomplishments, and will take some time to complete. But, most of them are also rather simple to finish. The exception to this comes with an RPGs idea of the "kill 10,000 people" achievements that have been showing up in games lately.

In shooters thats a hard thing to accomplish as you have to be either really good at the game or just play it constantly. Too Human has a similar achievement which is easy to reach simply by playing the game a lot, which you would most likely do anyways to gather bigger and better loot. The comparable achievement here is one called "Relics of a Forgotten Past." This achievement entails completing a 7 piece Elite armor suit. Now the armor and weapons in the game get classified into colors which represents their rarity. They are made by finding blueprints that have that rarity color. The elite armor suit this achievement is talking about is made from Red blueprints that are the rarest. Not only are they the rarest (meaning somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 dropping every 100 times you kill a boss), but they cost an astronomical amount of money to forge. This is beyond ridiculous and takes wayyyy too much time. It goes well beyond the shelf life of this game for any gamer.

They took on an ambitious role with this game, attempted to live up to a lot, and they fell on their faces. This game has been in development since before the Gamecube was released. The Gamecube! That’s quite a long time. And it really shows, because this game does not live up to any of the standards that a next gen game should.

Too Human for the Xbox 360 scores a 62 out of 100.