It wasn't the promise of new lands to explore to dragons to slay that brought me back to Neverwinter; it wasn't even (at first) the opportunity to try out new classes. No, after an absence of several months, it was the opportunity to use the race-changing feature to transform my humdrum human great weapon fighter into a gloriously-bearded dwarf that sent me back into the arms of developer Cryptic's Dungeons & Dragons online role-playing game. And against all expectations, I embraced it, if only for a little while. Neverwinter's combat still excels all these months later, and the time since launch has given it a semblance of an endgame it previous lacked.

Seconds in, I could see that Neverwinter's combat had retained its sense of power and explosive immediacy. My great weapon fighter, newly shrunk to dwarven size, swung his blade with a flick of the left mouse button and exploded in a frenzy at a touch of the tab key. Neverwinter's focus on action lacks the novelty it once commanded in the days before . In a genre that's increasingly overcrowded, Neverwinter manages to establish itself as a game that's never fully boring, never too eager to rifle your pockets, and, well, never quite fun enough to stick around in for too long.