Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Overview

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is the name used for four different Prince of Persia games that came out within the past month. One version of the game shipped on PS3, PC, and 360, the second on Wii, the third on PSP, and the fourth on DS. Each of these four games, as I said, is entirely different. While the previous one I reviewed took place after the events of The Two Thrones, this one takes place before. Aside from the storyline differences, both this game and the other I reviewed feature the same nameless prince, just in a different time and place. In short, they should have had different names, because they’re not the same game.

In this version, the prince is lured to a ruined palace by a fairylike genie named Zahra with the promise of great wealth. She seeks his assistance in taking care of one matter, a matter whereby he will prevent a serious problem from happening. Naturally, in a hectic moment he sets off the bad thing he’s there to prevent and then spends the rest of his time trying to fix it.

Concept and Controls

In many ways, this is classic 3D Prince of Persia fare. Jump around, run on walls, swing on bars, attack monsters until they dissolve into a pool of magic sand. Early in the game as you learn the controls, you’ll start to think the A button does everything, and for the most part it does. A jumps, runs on walls, and more. Hold C and move the pointer to move the camera. Push the Nunchuk’s control stick in the direction you want to move, or if you want to climb up, push it against the wall you want to climb, not up. I never got used to that. Later you’ll use the B button to activate magical effects in exact locations, the Z button to drop or slide down things, and wave the Remote and Nunchuk to fight.

Platforming and Guidance

The 3D Prince of Persia games have been pretty linear in the past, with the exception of the more open-world designed 2008 Prince of Persia. This game is somewhat linear, but you’ll revisit some locations multiple times while traveling through the palace and unlocking new abilities. Unique to this version of the game is a filmy white line that extends out from you when you’re lining up a jump. This lets you know if you’re going to make your jump in most cases. It’s often pretty useful since lining up a jump onto a fissure can be tricky, especially from a starting point of your own creation. It’s also a fine workaround for some of the odder control situations, as you can see if you’re going to jump in the wrong direction. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, depending on where the camera is, and where you’re facing. Other times it won’t appear, even if you will make the jump, because you won’t make it exactly: maybe you’ll jump and be slightly high, but the prince will grab the ledge anyway as he slides down.

While moving through the palace, you’re led by a trail of Djinn Souls, which are like the light seeds in the 2008 game. Three of these refill a life orb, which nets you a respawn. These are plentiful when you’re running around from room to room, guiding you like breadcrumbs, but one tough battle and you can easily run out of respawns in a hurry.

Combat

For the first few hours the fighting controls are novel and feel pretty good. However, once you’re facing more than two or three enemies at a time, things become a bit more challenging. You’ll have two enemies alternating firing arrows at you from some way off while three larger enemies are charging you and knocking you down. While you struggle to break the shield of the “leader” so you can do enough damage to defeat all the other enemies in one blow, you will be killed by the others. Save points are frequent and reasonably generously positioned, and automatic respawns are much nicer than the ability to back up time manually. It can be frustrating to take a beating, using up all your respawns in one battle and having to tip-toe to the next save point, but generally speaking, the fights are positioned before the platforming, and the save point is just one room back.

Combat in this game is surprisingly complex and challenging. While the controls seem simple, you will need a mastery of all the prince’s fighting moves in order to handle the fights you’ll be in later in the game. Button mashers, or in this case Wii flailers, need not apply. This stands in stark contrast to the PS3/360 game, which will send dozens of enemies your way that will barely even put up a fight. I had to repeat several of the battles in this game multiple times before getting the hang of the more elaborate battle skills. My personal favorite is leaping onto an enemy’s shoulders and flipping the Nunchuk to throw that enemy off a ledge to its doom. These abilities are learned throughout the game and then improved by gathering experience from foes and hidden chests, similar to the sarcophagi in the PS3/360 version.

Combat Highlight

Other options in the menu include the ability to turn on and off tutorials and also a kind of bullet-time effect in combat, called “combat highlight.” Certain moves, like a jumping slash attack, can trigger a slow-motion effect that, depending on how the battle is going, is either fun or annoying. You can turn it entirely on or off or even let it only happen sometimes, which seems fine if you’re in a good enough mood.

Local Multiplayer

There is co-op gameplay here that’s pretty similar to co-star mode in Super Mario Galaxy. The second player activates their Wii remote for drop-in drop-out play, taking control of Zahra the genie and managing all the magical stuff while you focus on the acrobatics and combat. Unfortunately, even in this mode you’re forced to use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to play, rather than a Classic Controller, which means you’re stuck with the controller-shaking throughout combat. Some reviewers have found this problematic.

Creation Powers

A number of “creation powers” are learned throughout the game by awkwardly kissing statues possessed by your genie. These include “spirit hook,” which lets you activate colored panels which become rings that you can grab onto (or if used on an enemy it turns them to stone for a time), and “whirlwind,” which activates other panels and makes a tall whirlwind you can hop onto and ride upward. Later, these abilities become more powerful and don’t need these panels to operate, so you’ll be popping a magic ring onto a wall in just the right place, then using it to get across walls. This creation concept is really well handled and implemented, and the fact that you can eventually place these things almost anywhere creates some nice puzzles late in the game. The first time I used a combination of creation abilities to scale a sheer wall with relative ease and surprising speed, I really began to appreciate what was going on. When the game started sending me back to zip through familiar areas with my new abilities, I recognized the Metroid-style retraversal fondly.

Camera

The camera functions in two ways under the menu. You can turn “camera assist” on or off. On means the game manages the camera for you and you can turn it manually if you like. Off means you’re supposed to have full control over the camera, which the game warns is recommended only for advanced users. I don’t recommend it for anyone, because it doesn’t help. You can hold the c button and turn the camera if you like, which is great for placing rings and such, but it often snaps back when you let go, making the jumps kind of a pain. You need to keep that camera button down while doing everything else necessary to complete your jump. Otherwise, the camera still winds all over the place, making a mess of things and refusing to stay where you put it.

At one point in the game, I was stuck for an embarrassing amount of time trying to leave a room. I had to jump from a stone walkway onto a ring that was activated on a moving panel. I kept running out of respawns (the game brings you back in time to safety automatically as long as you have filled Life Orbs to do so) and lives and reloading, then redoing the room so many times that it took me, no exaggeration, less than twenty seconds to complete the room and get to the spot where I was stuck. I must have died more than a dozen times just trying to make the jump which appeared to be too far to make, because the camera turns right before you make the jump if you’re not on the c button.

Puzzles

There are many pointer-based puzzles in this game. Some involve pointing at crystals on walls and hitting b to use them as a switch. Most consist of opening doors by pointing at spots and tapping B on them in a defined order, describing a shape. Sometimes this is simple, other times the disc the spots are on rotates, making things a little more complicated. Sometimes it spins constantly, sometimes it turns a bit each time you hit a point, sometimes it changes direction. It’s kind of a bitch, but it’s not terrible. There are sliding panel puzzles as well, and the use of creation abilities to avoid traps. These supplement, rather than replace, the traditional Prince of Persia hazards and puzzles such as fleeing traps, turning interlocking wheels with handles, dashing across crumbling floors and other surfaces, and pressure plates.

The best puzzle solving in the game, though, comes from the full stock of creation abilities you’ll enjoy near the end of the game. You can get just about anywhere in any room at that point by knowing exactly what each power’s strengths and weaknesses are. More than once I was impressed by the level design. It’s a great feeling to walk into a room, look up and say, “how the hell do I do this,” and then pull it off.

Presentation

Forgotten Sands on Wii is a fine looking game with a surprisingly solid framerate. The style and ambience of the areas is done very well. All in all, it looks like a very high end Gamecube game, somewhere around the Metroid Prime games both technically and artistically. It may seem a little strange for me to be pleased by this, but when so many developers on Wii are making games that look worse than they did on Gamecube, I have to admit this is nice. At odd angles, it can be hard to figure out just where a surface is for creation ability use due to the console’s resolution, but it’s rarely something life threatening, just a situation where you need to tilt the camera a little and line things up again.

The music is more of a down experience, as much of it unfortunately sounds synthesized instead of orchestrated. It’s also very dull and the musical pieces are short, which means you’ll feel like you’re hearing the same ten seconds of bland music over and over again. The voice acting is really mixed, and is usually not synchronized well with the character’s facial movements. The prince is voiced by the same guy it’s always been in the Sands games, and his lines are usually delivered well, but Zahra’s voice is obnoxious, and there’s a narrator in the game who’s not much better. Very nearly all the writing of all the dialog is of disappointingly poor quality. This is an issue that plagued the PS3/360 game as well, though. At least here, the prince has someone to talk to in Zahra.

The cutscenes are reasonably well done in engine, but only the story cutscenes are skippable. The ones that set up battles are mandatory, which is frustrating when you’re replaying a boss battle again and again.

Replay Value

The game has a lot of unlockables. Within the first hour or two of gameplay, you can unlock the 1992 Super NES Prince of Persia game to play from the Bonus menu. Instructions on exactly where and how to do this are actually included on a slip of paper in the box. A number of maps to play as side games are also unlockable throughout the game, including those in a 2D mode that are played with a locked camera and only left and right movement. A simple achievement system is built into the game called Heroic Challenges, and some of these are a lot of fun and rather challenging to pull off. Since there’s no cross-game achievement system on Wii, these are worthless once you’ve turned the game off. There are alternate skins (such as the prince from Sands of Time) and even alternate swords, including the sword and the dagger from Sands of Time. There are also art galleries and developer diary videos, all of which must be unlocked.

The Judgment

My overall experience with The Forgotten Sands for Wii was on something of an arc. In the beginning, I was surprised by the presentation and pleased with the mechanics. As the game wore on, I became pretty annoyed with the combat mechanic of waving the Remote to use your sword. Once I took the time to really learn the combat, I found that the system was really interesting and a lot of fun. Toward the end of the game, I was surprised at the story’s progression, and even moreso at the length of the game. This took me almost twice as long to complete as the PS3 game at about 11 hours.

I love that Ubisoft gave Wii gamers something different to play. If you’re a big fan of the brand and you have multiple consoles, you can get multiple full-length adventures with the prince. They tried really hard to make this version of the game unique and special, and they did exactly that through the use of pointer-based puzzling and the surprisingly versatile creation abilities. If they had stopped there, and not made the player shake the controllers to attack enemies, the game would have been far more manageable. As it stands though, the game is surprisingly challenging, satisfying to complete, and much more fun and interesting than the PS3 and 360 version.

Four and a half out of five.

Check out Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and other Wii Game reviews at Test Freaks.