12th February 2006, 3:57 AM
Sands of Time is awesome, its sequel and threequel are TBA (to be avoided). sands of time has a great fighting engine that lets you button mash to quickly hackthrough multiple enemies (and take damage) or gget fancy and either use moves or special 'sands of time' powers to take down room fulls of enemies without getting hit, so its really intuitive; you decide how to play. The game is broken in to two catagories, your puzzles and your combat. i explained how the combat system is mostly fun, though some eneies will throw a curve at you, some can only be defeated by attacking them in particular ways which can get boring. But the puzzles is where the game really shines, the sands of time powers allow you to slow down time, speed it up or reverse it. The amount of power you have dictates the time you have to use it, so if you have a full bar you might be able to reverse 10 seconds of time, etc. It's dynamic so its upgradable and each power has a different consumption level.
But you run down the hall way and in front of you is a spiky pit. You use the prince's wall-running move and look for a viable place to jump or latch on to. You findd it, make the jump... and miss. Falling to your death, the end. But just hit a button and you reverse time to any point within the last 10 seconds or so and then try again. You can do this over and over until your bar has completely run out (you refill it by killing enemies). Now imagine levels that are giant puzzles themselves requiring the player to activate sequences and figure out proper orders within quick time frames (very Zelda) with the added dynamic of time manipulation - you'll jump farther, react faster and perform mmoves that you can only do while in a slowed or halted time-frame that make the seemingly impossible puzzles 9and some enemies) a tactical-like affair.
So take a ho-hum platformer/beatemup with levels, bosses, etc, add in some special moves and unique abilities previously unseen, add the intuitive combat system and the dynamic time manipulation and level-sized puzzles and you have yourself a few weeks worth of 15 bucks well spent, and like I said avoid the sequels... Though the 3rd one is supposed to be pretty good, the first out still out shines it.
But you run down the hall way and in front of you is a spiky pit. You use the prince's wall-running move and look for a viable place to jump or latch on to. You findd it, make the jump... and miss. Falling to your death, the end. But just hit a button and you reverse time to any point within the last 10 seconds or so and then try again. You can do this over and over until your bar has completely run out (you refill it by killing enemies). Now imagine levels that are giant puzzles themselves requiring the player to activate sequences and figure out proper orders within quick time frames (very Zelda) with the added dynamic of time manipulation - you'll jump farther, react faster and perform mmoves that you can only do while in a slowed or halted time-frame that make the seemingly impossible puzzles 9and some enemies) a tactical-like affair.
So take a ho-hum platformer/beatemup with levels, bosses, etc, add in some special moves and unique abilities previously unseen, add the intuitive combat system and the dynamic time manipulation and level-sized puzzles and you have yourself a few weeks worth of 15 bucks well spent, and like I said avoid the sequels... Though the 3rd one is supposed to be pretty good, the first out still out shines it.