The other peculiarity of The Forgotten Sands<\/em> is that, aside from the PS3 and Xbox 360 version (which is the one I played), it also exists on the Wii, PSP and Nintendo DS with a completely<\/em> different plot on each console. I must say that I find this particularly bizarre, but also suspect. Perhaps the Prince did all of what goes down in these games within that seven-year interval, which would be legitimate, but then it\u2019s as if the developers were inciting people to purchase all of the different iterations of the game to have \u2018the full story\u2019. Or perhaps they\u2019re trying to say that the Prince could have done any and all of these things, which serves to trivialise the story somewhat. What\u2019s also suspect is that the game comes on the heels of the 2008 Prince of Persia<\/em> reboot, which essentially attempted to restart the series in a different setting and with a somewhat different Prince, but proved to be a controversial move, even though\u2013or maybe because?\u2013it was a hell of an example of a downer ending. With all that in mind, The Forgotten Sands<\/em> may be considered as an attempt to return to the \u2018tried and true\u2019 success of the PS2 trilogy in order to placate fans.<\/p>\n![\"Elemental,](\"http:\/\/www.satrapov.net\/mysst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Elemental-my-dear-Watson.jpg\" "\\"Elemental,")
<\/a>I\u2019ve played sequels and prequels before, but this is the first time I\u2019ve come across a bona fide<\/em> \u2018interquel\u2019, that is, an entire game set between two pre-existing ones. So, if only because of this, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands<\/em> made me curious. Released in 2010, it\u2019s set between The Sands of Time<\/em> and Warrior Within<\/em> in the PS2 trilogy, and it does answer a legitimate question: what did <\/em>the Prince do for seven whole years, before the Dahaka caught up with him (although, I also wonder why it took the Dahaka so long to get to it)? And while the events of the game are a bit too short to have taken up that entire interval, it\u2019s still an answer to the question.<\/p>\n<\/a>The real question is: is it successful? Well, not quite. Mind you, it isn\u2019t for a lack of trying: there has been a genuine effort to keep gameplay interesting. It\u2019s just that the storyline somehow fails to be entirely engaging. Or maybe it was because, after three games, I\u2019d gotten a bit tired of the PS2-trilogy Prince and his shenanigans.<\/p>\n<\/a>Be that as it may, after his misadventures in The Sands of Time <\/em>and his realisation that he was maybe a bit of an idiot, the Prince decides to go visit his elder brother, Malik (who still manages not to call him by name a single time over the course of the game!), and ask him for advice on how to be a good ruler. However, when he arrives at Malik\u2019s castle, he finds it besieged by an army that\u2019s trying to breach its treasure vault to obtain \u201cSolomon\u2019s Army\u201d, a fabled magical force that is somehow supposed to be locked within. The Prince manages to get inside the fortress and finds Malik, who admits that he can\u2019t win the siege and is about to release Solomon\u2019s Army to defend his kingdom by using a special seal. After the whole Sands of Time fiasco, the Prince is understandably wary of this\u2026and he turns out to be right.<\/p>\n<\/a>What Malik unleashes reveals itself to be an army of sand warriors led by an Ifrit (a fire djinn) called Ratash. The army turns everyone into sand statues, except for the Prince and Malik, who are protected by the two halves of the seal. The rest of the game focuses on stopping Ratash, with a bit of a twist thrown into the proceedings, albeit not a wholly unexpected one. It\u2019s not a bad story, per se<\/em>, but it does feel like a re-tread of The Sands of Time<\/em>, more so than the two other games in the trilogy, especially since, within the original PoP chronology, it\u2019s set directly after The Sands of Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/a>Mind you, the Prince\u2019s powers are not focused on sand this time around. He manages to acquire the help of a Marid (a water djinn) called Razia, who has been protecting Malik\u2019s citadel for a long time and lends him elemental powers. Much like in The Sands of Time<\/em>, the Prince needs to find entrances to the magical fountain where she resides before she bestows these on him. He can now either leave a trail of fire behind him when he runs, which damages all enemies caught inside it; shoot a beam of ice with each sword attack; create a whirlwind to damage multiple enemies or put up rock armour.<\/p>\n<\/a>These abilities are considered as magic, and the Prince accordingly gets four magic slots to power them up. He earns EXP by killing enemies and breaking sarcophagi that can be found in out-of-the-way spots, and can use it to upgrade either one of the four abilities, his HP or his magic slots (up to eight).<\/p>\n<\/a>On top of that, the Prince also gets abilities that he can use at will, without depleting his magic slots. These include the good ol\u2019 rewind mechanic that has become a staple of the series. However, this time, it\u2019s not infinite: a metre determines how far you can go back. There’s also the ability to solidify water for a limited amount of time, thereby making it usable for platforming; the ability to fly over some particularly large gaps; and, later on in the game, the ability to materialise destroyed walls in places where they used to exist.<\/p>\n