At times bland, Exorder can also be fun to play. A lack of reward for any achievements contributes to a sense of no progression, but that's compensated by the complexity you'll find in troop types and maps. In sum, an option to consider if you like turn-based games.

Strategy and Tactics: Dark Ages by Herosoft is the latest iteration of a risk-style board game that is enhanced by persistent upgrades to generals and leaders and a large variety of different troop types and formation options. In the end however, the bigger army wins, and getting the bigger army in this turn based game is disappointingly trivial.

Although some of the new ideas in Mr. Donovan are appreciated, what exactly was supposed to be fueling the motivation to play remains a mystery. For an action RPGs, there’s not enough loot or action; for a survival game there’s not enough survival or base-building. In the end, however, Mr. Donovan was right: who wouldn’t want to leave that planet?

NBA Playgrounds, at its best, provides some over the top arcade experience that can be highly entertaining, hilarious and even addicting to play. With a presentation and technical foundation that’s as solid as fun, NBA Playgrounds is easy to pick up but hard to master and makes for a worthy addition to any library of arcade sports games.

In the end, the positive aspects of Expeditions: Viking outweigh the problems. Creating such a complex, detailed, and varied title is an ambitious undertaking, and it’s exactly what’s needed for gamers who don’t want to rely on “enhanced editions” of classic games to find a good role-playing experience. Expeditions: Viking, however,is more than just an RPG; it’s also an epic journey through history — a field with surprisingly few entries. Why rely on adventures from DnD or fantasy realms, if history can be presented in such an intriguing way?