Weathering the Sands of Time

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of those games that sticks out prominently in my memory. Although I've had a rough time with some of those recently -- the Prince has weathered time fairly well, if not entirely unscathed.

Starting the game on my PC, the first issue I encountered was that everything looked like one big blur. I guess that sometime in the past decade or so, the GPU technique that these guys used for fog has become deprecated or broken; with fog turned on in graphics options, it is impossible to see a goddamn thing. Turned it off. I can see!

Second issue: my Xbox 360 controller doesn't work. Sands of Time has "Gamepad" options, but here is where I remember: it was released well before the Xbox 360 existed. Had to map all of the buttons manually. Slightly annoying, but now we're off!

The Prince starts telling his tale, and ... oh, there are no subtitles. There is no option for subtitles. That's unfortunate.

Aaaand now we're in the game proper! Huzzah!... well, the controls and camera movement suck a little bit, don't they? The Prince can't just start running, he needs to wind-up his speed first, which is somewhat irritating. The camera can get pretty spastic when going through some doorways or rounding certain corners. And the timing necessary for pulling off wall-jumping seems more punishing than it should be.

And, okay, fights are a bit dull. Generally speaking, the game uses a quantity-over-quality strategy of throwing enemies at you. (A flaw that I remember the sequel attempted to address.) And the battle music gets repetitive quite fast.

All that aside -- this is still a great game. The story is well-told (and well-acted!), the parkour gameplay is fun, and the environments are beautiful and memorable.

What I'm finding really incredible about re-treading Azad is that I still recognize practically all of the game's levels when I see them; this game made a strong impression on me, circa 2003-2004, and that impression is holding up.

Progress: 62%