Rococo

Isn't that at least partly cause of the screwed-up way game retail works these days? The way I understand it, publishers essentially rent shelf space at retailers, rather than retailers buying X number of units outright. They have no incentive to keep old titles on the shelves when they could be using the space to push the latest flashy polygon-o-rama.

Correct!

I just finished Sands of Time--on my wife's recommendation, no less--and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I didn't find it as pant-wettingly awesome as a lot of people do. She suggested I at least try the start of Warrior Within to see just how bad it is. Wow. I was prepared for a shock and I was still astounded at how staggeringly dreadful the whole thing was. The took the weakest part of SoT, the fighting, and made the whole game about fighting. They replaced the witty, sarcastic dialogue of the first game with three samples: "Hhhhurrrrrrnngggg" "Gnnnnnnrrrrrruuuuhh" and "GAAAAAAAAAAHHH" When the heavy guitar rock started, I just turned off the console and vowed never to play it again. I watched my wife finish Two Thrones and it looked like a lot of fighting and a lot of climbing. The story was very good though.