It's always sad to find out that a game you adored in your childhood isn't as good as you thought, but here we are. While Warrior Within has all the same technical issues I gave Sands of Time a 'Not Recommended' for, that game itself was fine. Despite the emo in me wanting to believe Warrior Within is better, it's not. It's worse.

The heavy metal soundtrack and the sexy ladies and decapitations are all awesome, yes. They were awesome when I played this game 17 years ago on PS2, and they are still awesome now. But there's a reason anyone who talks about this game only ever mentions Shahdee's ass despite her being a minor character: I'm pretty sure most of us never bothered to play much further.

Combat is repetitive and unrewarding (some enemies only allow one combo and parry everything else, so you're not ALLOWED to have fun), backtracking and the inclusion of a bad ending are blatant artificial game lengtheners, and this title employs Tomb Raider 3 levels of misdirection. The platforming is far too mechanical, and there's something terribly wrong with the depth perception in both Sands of Time and Warrior Within - it's hard to judge whether or not you'll make a jump, an issue I've never had with other platformers.

Publishers these days are always crying about how games were $60 for so long and so the price hike to $70 is justified, but playing this game led me to the profound realization that they were always scamming you even at $60. This game does not justify that launch price; neither do lots of PS2 games. Of course there are exceptions like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy 10 and Metal Gear Solid 3 and Tomb Raider Legend that fully justify it. Warrior Within does not; it's clearly a budget game.

The hair and blood and particle effects look so bad; the colour palette is so feculent; even the soundtrack isn't tied well to the combat. You'll have heavy metal guitars roaring long after the last enemy is killed, while other times you'll be fighting in silence. Basically what I'm saying is that this is a buggy, glitchy, visually and mechanically unappealing title that loses its luster once you can stop ogling Shahdee. If it had been a $20 game, no problem. But a AAA game it is not, even for the time.

Disregarding the game's quality, Ubisoft still deserves a public lashing in the streets of Baghdad for charging money for an abandonware version; it took me an hour just to make this function. The FMVs and images in this PC release are horribly low-res, despite there being an HD version available for PS3. Any good publisher would have cohered those assets and optimized the game for modern systems to make this a better experience, but Ubisoft is not that publisher.

The Godsmack song in the end credits is pretty awesome though. The little emo in me is happy about that.

I really wanted to enjoy this game as I loved Forgotten Sands on the ps3 but unfortunately this just was not the experience I was hoping for. The port has not been made with care making the game feel like a struggle to play half the time. The soundtrack was underwhelming and did not aid in creating the game's intended atmosphere I think. The constant sexualisation of the antagonist and other NPCs did not help either and was done so distastefully. I don't now if I will ever finish the game but I know it wont be any time soon.

boo