Games of the decade: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

(2003, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC)

I can't be sure, but I think Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was the last game I played without the aim of writing about it. There may have been others, but it was right near the end. It was definitely the last game I fell in love with and played repeatedly, content not to rush on to the next big thing (or not so big thing).

A common theme on this list, among the games predating 2004, are games I got for Christmas, because that was the way I got them for the first part of the decade. This was no different. In 2003, I remember seeing TV commercials for two games: this, and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. When either ad came on, I'd comment about wanting to play them, but when Christmastime arrived and my girlfriend handed me a suspiciously game-shaped box, I found myself desperately hoping it would be Prince of Persia and not Castlevania. I'm not sure why. I don't think I'd read any reviews. I'd been a Castlevania fan in the past, especially Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night, but held no particular affinity for anything PoP. Still, when I unwrapped that gift and saw a sword-wielding Prince leaping out at me, I felt relief more than anything.

As I delved into the game, my relief turned quickly to excitement. Sands of Time is nominally similar to Tomb Raider, a franchise I have never liked because of its unforgiving and slow-paced platforming, but it solves every problem that Tomb Raider had, including some I didn't realize existed. The acrobatic Prince performs one impossible stunt after another, and the beauty of the game is that you don't often have to stop and line up your next move exactly right. Using only two buttons, you can wall-run over a gap, then spring onto a bar, flip around it once before leaping to a pole, then shimmy up it and disembark for a perfect landing, all in one smooth and unbroken sequence. Navigating the game's physical space is thrilling. I had never felt such freedom of movement in a game before.

Smarter still is that magical sand. I can't believe it took until 2003 for somebody to come up with the idea to let you rewind upon making a mistake. There's no such thing as a cheap death in this game. Instead, you learn what you've done wrong and can immediately correct it. That doesn't make the game too easy or simplistic. It makes it fun.

The sand is the linchpin of a surprisingly powerful story. From the beginning, the game is cast as a flashback, with the Prince narrating his incredible story to someone whose identity we don't learn until the end. The writing is fantastic, and so is the acting. Yuri Lowenthal, as the Prince, strikes exactly the right note of raffish charm. His sarcastic asides to himself as he progresses through the game are funny, and his gradual acceptance of responsibility for having unleashed the Sands of Time is both believable and affecting.

(Why Lowenthal was replaced in Warrior Within by some generic gravelly voiced dude, I have no idea. Nolan North did all right in last year's Prince of Persia by playing, as he always does, Nolan North, but Lowenthal is the definitive Prince.)

It's the game's finale that pulls the rug out from under you. Throughout the game, the Prince has been slowly developing a relationship with the Princess Farah, at the end of which they are well and truly in love. Standard stuff. Then, after the Prince topples the evil Vizier and rewinds time, back to before the Sands destroyed everything, it's as though they've never met. When we realize that the Prince has been talking to Farah all along, and not to us, it is a perfect storytelling moment: funny, surprising, achingly romantic. I don't remember if Farah falls in love with the Prince after that, but I did.

Games of the decade: Burnout 3: Takedown

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Burnout 3: Takedown

(2004, PlayStation 2 and Xbox)

One of the first games I reviewed for the Phoenix was Burnout 3: Takedown (ignore the dateline; it actually went up in the late summer of 2004). It was also the first time I would experience what is, hands down, the worst part of this job: having to immediately move on from a great game to whatever the hell is next. Since I had rented the game from Blockbuster rather than get a review copy, I couldn't even run a race or three in my spare time. For the next three months, I kept talking about how great Burnout had been, and how much I wished I was playing Burnout right now.

Providing me with yet another reason to eventually marry her, or maybe just to shut me up, my girlfriend got me Burnout 3 for Christmas. Since then, circumstances have evolved to the point where the last thing I need for Christmas is another video game, but at the time it was the best present I could have gotten. I poured myself into that game, playing for hours at a time. I've come to think it's the best racing game I've ever played. It has everything: the dizzying speed of F-Zero, the intuitive handling of Daytona, the over-the-top carnage of Twisted Metal. Spectacular, clear graphics. Tons of tracks. Numerous game modes. On and on.

The inclusion of aftertouch control, which lets you steer the flaming wreckage of your car into the paths of oncoming racers for a takedown, is one of the smartest game design decisions I've ever seen. It transforms crashes from a simple failure state into an integral part of the gameplay. Between the speed and the road rage, it's very easy to crash in this game, but it's almost never annoying, because aftertouch keeps the race moving forward. That's important.

Everything here is about making you go faster. You won't win without using boost, and you earn boost by doing the craziest stuff imaginable, like going off jumps, drifting, driving in the oncoming lanes, and, yes, using boost. But nothing fills your boost meter like a takedown, and forcing your opponents to crash is one of those game mechanics that works absolutely perfectly. You can tell when your momentum will bulldoze somebody off the road, or when you'll need to duel for a good quarter-mile or so until somebody gets the upper hand.

When you do take someone down, the camera angle cuts to a Matrix-style slow-motion shot of their destruction, before returning you to your car, still racing the course at top speed. How does this work? Why do the takedowns seem fresh and exciting every time, without ever growing repetitive? How is it that you're never disoriented when you're back behind the wheel? As with how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop, the world may never know.

More on Burnout:

• What's right with Burnout Paradise
• What's wrong with Burnout Paradise
• Burnout Paradise demo impressions

Games of the decade: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

(2001, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, GameCube; 2002, Xbox, PC)

I got the PS2 for Christmas of 2001, and with it I received two games I would have given my eyeteeth to play. One was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the sequel to what, at the time, I would have called a top-five game of all time. The other was a game you may have heard of, Grand Theft Auto III, which at the time seemed like it might topple breathing as the most important thing you'd do all day. Yes, I was excited to play these games. I was ready to spend my semester break obsessing over them.

I had also gotten a Best Buy gift certificate, and picked up this Tony Hawk thing I'd heard was good, because I thought it would be nice to have a casual game I could use to cool down between intense MGS and GTA sessions. You can guess where this is going.

Neither Metal Gear Solid 2 nor Grand Theft Auto III is on this list. The former, because it was a big sloppy mess -- and, yes, I will be the fanboy who's still upset that you spend 90% of the game not playing as Snake. Beyond that, the storyline seemed to invalidate everything I had done in the original game, which I took as a personal insult, and which had the unfortunate consequence of making me like that game a little less, too. GTA was great, fantastic, and I admire it for many reasons, but ultimately it's not a game I connected with on a gut level, as with the rest of the games on this list.

So how did it go with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3? Well, within days of having bought it, I was playing all-night sessions that passed in the blink of an eye. I remember well that I had to leave to go to Maine for New Year's around 10 in the morning. Close to 2 AM, I started thinking about turning the system off, after I got one more high score. At about 9:30, I finally turned it off, not by choice, but because my ride was en route.

Games just don't get more addictive than this. It's rare that something which succeeds as pure gameplay breaks through to me -- usually I need some underlying reason to be doing what I'm doing -- but when it does, it's all-consuming. Improving at this game was secondary to the fun of simply playing it. Grinding rails, getting air, even just a simple invert to manual -- it all feels just right. It's sad to see what the franchise has become, grasping at lame gimmicks while the more sim-like Skate series blows right past it. We're missing something this arcade-like, this silly, and this expertly produced. It's ironic that today I think of Neversoft as the company that ruined Guitar Hero, because in its way THPS3 is every bit as compelling.

It was also the scene of one of my greatest triumphs in gaming, better than the 89-second Expert clearance in Minesweeper, and almost as good as beating Contra without dying. In the airport level, I eventually was able to start a combo right at the start of the board, with an ollie onto a ticket counter, and keep it going with a variety of grinds and manuals down the escalators, through the metal detectors, and into the baggage claim, where I did a special grind on the carousel over 24 times, for a total score well in the millions. I'm sure in the scheme of things this is not so impressive, but at the time I felt like the kid in The Wizard.