It's been a pretty phenomenal week for the gaming industry. Though PlayStation's recent showcase was a bit disappointing overall, it still gave fans an amazing first look at Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Summer Game Fest had a surprisingly excellent show just a week later, with some big reveals and a great first showing of Mortal Kombat 1's gameplay. And then Xbox took the baton on Sunday to deliver one of its best showcases in recent memory. And while there were a lot of games fighting for attention these past few weeks, one of the biggest surprise standouts was Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
The first new Prince of Persia game in 13 years, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was first unveiled at Summer Game Fest, and then given a deep-dive gameplay demonstration during the Ubisoft Forward presentation. Being developed by the same studio behind the excellent Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown takes the series back to its roots with a 2D Metroidvania that features fluid combat, and even flashier platforming. But Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown doesn't just hearken back to the first game in the franchise, as the Sands of Time also make a prominent appearance in the game.
How Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown's Sands of Time Stack Up to the Original
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the greatest action-platformers of the sixth generation of consoles, and is likely the first entry in the series that many modern fans experienced. One of the biggest hooks of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was its titular time manipulation powers, giving the player a variety of magical powers. The most useful and prominent power in Sands of Time is the ability to rewind time by up to 10 seconds, allowing the player to reverse a fatal platforming mistake, or avoid the detrimental effects of a surprise ambush.
On top of its reversing time abilities, the titular Sands of Time could also be used in combat. During the course of the game, players unlock the ability to slow the movements and attacks of individual enemies, or an entire room full of foes. The player only has access to a certain number of sand vials at one time, however, and once they're depleted the player can no longer use any special time-bending abilities. To refill these vials, players either need to find a deposit of sand in the environment or finish off enemies with the Dagger of Time.
Being one of the most iconic features of the modern Prince of Persia franchise, it's only natural that Ubisoft would want to include the Sands of Time in the upcoming Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, albeit with a pretty big twist. Unlike Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the player isn't the one in control of these time-bending powers, the main antagonist is. But that doesn't mean players can't still manipulate time to their advantage.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown's Sands of Time powers will feel familiar but different for long-time fans of the series. The whole premise of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown sees the past and present converging, causing some timey-wimey shenanigans, and giving the player some interesting takes on classic abilities. Rather than being able to rewind time by 10 seconds, players will instead be able to place a shadow marker in one spot, and teleport to it. From the brief glimpses of this ability in the trailers, it seems as though this power can be used both during combat, as a form of evasion, and during puzzles, as a way to return to a past point. It also seems as though the player will be able to use this ability to create shadow clones that can be used to solve puzzles, and potentially be used in combat.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches January 18, 2024, on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
