I don't see it.

I've now GameFlyed Prince of Persia: Warrior Within on 2 platforms (PS2 and GameCube) and I don't understand how this happened:

“Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is already one of the most critically acclaimed games this year,” said Ubisoft vice president of marketing Tony Kee, referring to the game’s outstanding review scores from PSM Magazine (10 out of 10) and Official Xbox Magazine (9.6 out of 10).

[ Ubisoft - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within™ Available In Stores Today ]

PoP: Sands of Time was very unique, we hadn't seen much like it since Ico which hadn't sold nearly as well as it should have. PoP: Warrior Within might have been fine if it had offered more of the same, but somehow Ubi seems to have made it worse. Worse you say? But this is the “most critically acclaimed blah blah blah”. That's where I'm lost.

PoP: WW has issues, but first lets go over what's better. The new fighting system is much more flexible than in the first game. This is where Warrior Within really shines. It makes the combat a lot more enjoyable. However who is playing this game for the combat anyway? The puzzles seem to have been kicked up a notch, but in many cases I was halfway through solving a puzzle when I realized that I was in a puzzle that needed solving. There are new characters, which is fun, and the cinematic sequences are nice, perhaps not as nice as PoP:SoT.

Yes, those were the better points, not so impressive eh? Now what's gotten worse? The story so far (I say so far because I'm only a couple hours into the game) has been beaten into our heads. I hazard a guess that the story isn't going to be all that complex, so it's best to repeat things over and over and over. The video on the PS2 version had some issues where glitches would show up, especially when the CPU seemed a bit taxed. I've already run into 2 rendering issues on the GameCube version, one where a bird somehow became invisible (they aren't supposed to do that) and another where I was impaled on my enemy's sword, yet she had performed a completely different move. And, worst of all, on the GameCube one sequence where I was learning all about some nonsense the voice audio dropped out completely (and I swear right before that it was rather poorly synced).

Plus, I should mention the save system sucks. It requires far too many “OK” confirmations, and takes too long. Many other games these days have nice auto-save features, or at least quick enough save times. Not only are the saves slow, and require too many confirmations, but the music and video are stopped abruptly during this process yanking you clean out of the game experience, not something I expected from the group that gave us the first PoP on modern consoles. And yes, I have one more complaint, you don't get the ability to rewind time at first, this meant I had to replay some learning screens over and over as, in my haste, I accidentally launched myself off of cliff after cliff after cliff. Each time forcing me to repeat a section, each time making my play sloppier since I was tired of replaying that section. And, when you do regain the power, there is no plot element (that I can sense) that explains why you've regained this power.

I do have one more complaint, but I can't be sure that it is one, and it is a bit of a game spoiler, so I won't mention it here, but suffice to say the Prince claims to have saved someone twice, and I can only count once...

10 out of 10? Doubtful. My copy is turning right around to GameFly. If I make it through the games I have now, I might rent it again. In the meantime I'll wait for the game I really wanted out of Ubi, Beyond Good and Evil II

More unexplainable ratings:

X-Play 5 out of 5
IGN 8.6
GameSpot 8.8

And one that I can get behind:

GameSpy 3 out of 5