Episode 136 - Ape Arms - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Alright, I’ll start the podcast from here next time. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, an action adventure game that was released in 2003 and was one of the biggest triple A titles of the time. Sands of Time is a sort of reboot of a game that was released way back in 1989 on the Apple II and the creator of that original game actually worked on this one. Knowing this, you can see some design philosophies that apply to both in an interesting way. Both feature platforming and combat, with an emphasis on a smooth motion and context sensitive actions, and that smoothness is one of the things that really propelled this game to the heights it achieved at the time of its release. Not a lot of other games looked like Prince of Persia did, with the Prince running across walls and jumping between ledges in a way that felt almost realistic. And that is really the selling point. The platforming is close to movement based puzzle solving: the levels of the game are less likely to be described like playgrounds as you might in other platformers and come off more as prescribed challenges. This is still very fun though, as the Prince is responsive and stages are satisfying to complete. The places the game suffers are in all the other aspects of its design. It contains a lot of systems that developers tended to think were just necessary parts of games at the time, like combat and puzzle solving, and story that never really gets off the ground, even with an interesting setup. This game feels like a relic of the past, and a useful one at that, showing us that for a lot of games, having a focus on what you want to accomplish and cutting the things that don’t work is usually the path to a better game. We’re going to be talking about the game’s movement and camera and how they stack up against other platformers of the time, the combat system and its layers of unnecessary complications, and we debate what types of magic the final boss neglected to learn. Thank you for joining us again this week! Often when we dip back to this era of games it’s due to a favorite we remembered from our pasts or because something was suggested to us, but in this case it was the game’s reputation. If you played games during the early 2000’s, Prince of Persia was a game you knew about and was considered a tentpole release at the time. Playing it back then would have likely been a different experience for us, but as two first time players, it’s interesting to see how far we’ve come in terms of design and development. Do you think the game holds up? Was the game at the time more palatable, and do you think that it had an influence on other games at the time? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re heading into our favorite month of the year, and beginning our selection of Halloween games! We’re going to be starting off with The Evil Within 2, so be sure to check back in with us then.