It's good when you get your review code from a company well before the game is supposed to hit the shelves (which would be right about the time it goes gold). It's good because a reviewer has time to truly review all of the game's finer points, and secondly, the readers get a timely article, giving them a few more bits of data on the product they're thinking of buying. So, my thanks to Microsoft for showing enough common sense and courtesy to do this. I wish many other publishers, some of which are notoriously tardy, would have enough foresight to handle things in this manner.

That said, I really did not have enough time to review Dungeon Siege 2. Sometimes, the line between reviewing a game and simply playing it for the very reason everyone else plays games - which is to have fun - is blurred, which is a good thing. Besides making my job a lot more enjoyable, it also offers the reader a valuable pointer as to whether they should buy the game or not (providing they are familiar with you or they care about your opinion). Fortunately for Gas Powered Games, "the line" *was* blurred with Dungeon Siege 2. To me at least, this is the single-most important thing when reviewing a game - and it will often influence the score to a good degree, tipping the scale in its favor even if many of the objective parameters suggest otherwise.