Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was received with widespread critical acclaim. IGN gave the game a 9.6/10 rating and voted it as the Game Of The Year 2003 thus praising the game for its "intuitive control, stunning atmosphere and satisfyingly clever environmental puzzles," and stating it was one of "[their] favorite adventure offerings of all time." GameSpot gave The Sands of Time a score of 9.0/10 "recommend[ing it] wholeheartedly." In general, the game was most often praised for its lush, dreamy environment and graphics, the acrobatic combat and platforming, the forgiving and responsive controls, the excellent animation of the Prince, the story, and the time-manipulation abilities of the Dagger. The Sands of Time is also often noted for its flowing gameplay - particularly in relation to puzzle-solving, which has a tendency to hinder the action of other true 3D platform games considerably. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw stated on his Zero Punctuation review that Sands of Time rates in his top five games of all time.