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.