Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Extended Hands-On

Bending the rules of physics and freezing water in midair may seem like a step too far, yet in the world of Prince of Persia, rules have never applied. Impossible wall climbs, death-defying leaps, and travelling back in time are par for the course. The Forgotten Sands brings the series back to its roots, combining the prince's other-worldly skills with spike traps, precision platforming, and epic boss battles.

The Forgotten Sands takes place between the events of The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. It tells the story of the prince who, on his journey back from Azad, discovers his brother Malik's kingdom is being attacked by the Sand Army. To save his people, Malik attempts to control the Sand Army using a mystical magic. However, rather than save them, this unleashes a powerful evil that turns the palace's occupants into statues. We went hands-on with the first hour of the game, where we witnessed the Sand Army's general, Ratash, attempting to destroy what remained of the palace.

Following a short cutscene, we were immediately set upon by a horde of enemies, which allowed us to get to grips with the combat system. Pressing X launches an attack with the prince's sword. Landing multiple hits on enemies will automatically form combos, which you can also combine with jumps, rolls, and kicks. Rolling and jumping can be used to get out of harm's way when surrounded by enemies. Jumping also allows you to leap over enemies and knock them to ground, where you can finish them off with a quick stab to the chest. Kicking has the same effect as well, knocking smaller enemies to the ground and pushing larger enemies back. This is useful for pushing them off the side of buildings and cliffs or into a wall where a brutal animation sees the prince stab them straight through the stomach.

Enemies often come at you in large numbers.

This initial confrontation introduced us to two different creatures, which we then encountered regularly throughout the game: specters and wraiths. Wraiths look like skeletons that are armed with swords. They are the weakest enemy in the game and are easily dispatched with a few swift sword swipes. Specters are much tougher than wraiths because they are covered in heavy armour. They take several hits to destroy, though this is offset by their slow movement, which easily allows you to dodge their attacks. Much tougher enemies are introduced later on, including ghouls and summoners. Ghouls are wraiths armed with shields and some light armour. In order to destroy them, you must first kick them, which makes them move their shields, allowing you to unleash some attacks. Summoners continuously summon wraiths, as well as other Sand Army minions, and must also be knocked over with a kick. If you try to attack them head-on, they use magic to propel you away from them, which depletes a significant amount of your health bar.

After dispatching the first group of enemies, we had to make our way to a platform in another part of the room. Whenever dexterous jumping was required, the camera panned out to show us what section to aim for and the path required to get there. Firstly, we had to wall-run using the right trigger and leap to a pole suspended directly behind it. From there, we were able to swing to other poles and eventually jump onto a ledge section. There, we came across our first tricky platforming section. Two buzz saws were moving up and down the wall together, preventing us from reaching a column in the middle of the room. We had to time our wall-run just right to move past the saws and leap to the column. Finally, we jumped across to a set of climbable bricks in the wall, avoided more buzz saws, and jumped from one final pole to the platform.

Wall-running is an essential part of your skillset.

A much tougher section followed, requiring us to wall-run past some buzz saws, push a button to raise a gate, and finally leap to a pole from the button to roll underneath the rapidly closing gate. In these tougher sections, the prince's ability to rewind time becomes invaluable. If you mess up one part of a platforming chain, pushing the right bumper allows you to rewind the last few seconds to the point before you made the mistake. This makes difficult sections much less frustrating. However, using it depletes a blue crystal from your inventory. You can only hold up to four at any time, and they can only be replenished by killing enemies or by smashing nearby barrels.

After more platforming, we encountered our first boss battle against the Sand Army general, Ratash. He was a large muscular creature, with a gold face mask and not much of an IQ. As such, he was easy to dispatch. Ratash uses the charging enemy mechanic that was featured several times in Batman: Arkham Asylum. We waited for him to charge and at the last second rolled out of the way, causing him to knock himself out on a wall. Once stunned, we could launch a few well-placed sword strikes before he came to; this process was repeated until Ratash gave up the ghost and turned to sand.