Prince of Persia is fondly remembered as a legend of the gaming world, an imposing obelisk that dominates the landscape of old. To be honest, when I heard Ubisoft was making an updated version, I was wary. I felt, like many others, that a remake simply could not compare to the original. Ubisoft soundly defeated all opposition with this game.

The story begins when a powerful Indian king invades and defeats a rival maharajah's kingdom, after being promised by the royal vizier to find great riches and power within. Namely, the manifestation of this power is the Hourglass, located within the king's personal stash deep within the city. On his own personal quest, the Prince discovers a powerful dagger, which he brashly uses to unlock the Hourglass, unleashing sands with supernatural powers upon his fellow troops and transforming them into beasts. You, as the player, take control of the Prince in his new quest to reverse the damage he's done.

And what control it is. Ubisoft's greatest triumph with this game is easily the level of control the player has over the Prince and how this control is bestowed upon the player. This is most visible when it comes down to combat. All one needs to do is tip the stick toward the desired target and hit the "attack" button--the Prince does the rest. Fighting multiple enemies? Just keep tipping the stick to a different target, and you can easily hold a mob at bay with constant attacks. To finish off an enemy, however, you have to use the "sand dagger" to absorb their essence, which also gains sand neccesary to use the Prince's next groundbreaking ability: controlling time. You can slow time to more effectively fight enemies, or reverse it outright to prevent a mistake from happening such as falling off a ledge. The Prince's most powerful time-ability effectively brings enemies to a near-standstill while the Prince is free to dart from one to the next instantaneously destroying them with a single blow. If any game out there makes you feel like God, it's this one.

The visuals, while certainly not the greatest, are still breaktaking. The interior of the massive Persian palace the game is mostly set in has that dusty old feel to it, and it begs you to explore it--which you do in the course of solving puzzle after puzzle and defeating legions of sand-creatures. Lighting and cloth effects are very good for their time, although the larger sheets of drapes on the doorways behave a bit oddly if you stand in them the right way. Enemies are somewhat one-dimensional--there seem to only be a handful of different models, all of them based on human forms. None of these graphics are terribly high-quality, but it matters less when the camera is a good fifteen feet away from everything.

And the lesser subjects of this review are sound and replayability. Sound isn't one of the game's high points, but the Indian-style music present throughout adds a lot to the mood. The voice of the Prince fittingly sounds young and arrogant, counterbalanced by the maharajah's daughter, Farah, and her haughty rationality. On the flip side, this game's replay factor is questionable. If you enjoy the game's expansive and brilliant puzzles, you'll love playing through this again. If not, one run through the plot is more than fulfilling.