To say that the expectations are high for Neverwinter Nights 2 would be a massive understatement. Not only is it the sequel to one of the best role-playing games ever to bear the Dungeons & Dragons license, but it’s also been developed by some of the creative talent behind such other revered role-playing games as Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. The good news is that Neverwinter Nights 2 lives up to its pedigree by delivering a captivating story full of exciting twists and characters who you’ll grow attached to out of fondness or, perhaps even better, complete loathing. It’s not without a few frustrating technical shortcomings, but overall Neverwinter Nights 2 is a great role-playing adventure that just about anyone can enjoy.

If you’re familiar with the Red Faction series, then you know Mars as a dangerous place where the regimes are oppressive and the building codes are lax. In Red Faction: Armageddon, alien infestation replaces armed uprising as the series takes on a new tone. This third-person shooter may tell an unremarkable tale and lack the freedom of its open-world predecessor, Red Faction: Guerrilla, but Armageddon serves up a fresh new batch of creative mayhem with extensive destructibility and a devastating array of weapons and powers. Blasting your way through hordes of aliens and wreaking merry havoc on the overrun human infrastructure is an entertaining endeavor, but it’s the ingenious and versatile magnet gun that takes the thrills of destruction to new heights. Whether you’re soldiering solo in the single-player campaign or staving off an enemy onslaught with friends online, Red Faction: Armageddon provides a lot of great ways to indulge your destructive desires.

Loosely based on the same Greek myth that inspired the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-oriented role-playing game in which you assume the role of King Jason of Iolcus and go in search of the legendary Golden Fleece. All manner of monsters stand between you and your prize, and doing battle with them is a lot of fun. The same can’t be said for all of the time you have to spend wandering around and talking to other characters, unfortunately, and the wildly inconsistent frame rate makes even the stop-motion special effects in the aforementioned movie look silky smooth by comparison.

Hack-and-slash role-playing games have long been better fits on the PC than they have been on consoles. There have been exceptions to that rule of course, and now Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is making another appeal for genre fans to kick the mouse to the curb. The Ascaron Entertainment game makes its debut on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 just over six months after it first arrived for the PC, but this doesn’t seem like a port. This is actually a slight refinement of the earlier game, and the improved interface and the often overlooked couch-comfort factor make it easier to enjoy the epic length of the adventure. There are still too many problems with the monotonous quest design and the unwieldy size of the game world for this to be a top-shelf action RPG, but it’s a little closer to that status than its PC cousin.

Have a lot of spare time on your hands? If so, Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic might be the game for you. The latest addition to Ubisoft’s venerable submarine simulation franchise is so confusing and unfinished that it would be less of a hassle to join the Navy and get firsthand experience underwater than to figure out what’s going on here. While the game has strong points and shows potential if you want to wait for developers and modders to (hopefully) fix the current problems, at present you have to do everything the hard way. The opening tutorial mission teaches you nothing about how to captain a sub. Key functions have been stripped from the interface in favor of clumsy commands and giving orders to the crew in person. The new morale system for crewmen is broken. And let’s not forget the generous assortment of design quirks and bugs, which are joined by an obnoxious copy-protection scheme that requires you to be online at all times. There are a few glimmers of hope, but much of the time this is one of the most grueling experiences below the waves this side of Das Boot.

The Sims Medieval brings some irony to this popular series of life simulations. Whereas the proper Sims games make the mundane aspects of everyday life interesting, this Renaissance faire spin-off takes interesting concepts and makes them mundane. It’s initially entertaining, fueled by the peculiar charms that have always made these games so delightful. But eventually, the pleasures of calling the local bard a lack-witted cur are undercut by the sensation that you’re just treading water and never really getting anywhere. Of course, you could say this about those previous Sims games, but their joy came from your ability to make a life as worthy as you liked. Just as your little digital people built relationships with each other, so you built relationships with them, and the stories you played out in the game were born of your own imagination. In The Sims Medieval, you don’t play out your own stories–you play out someone else’s. And you do so over and over again in a weird computer-game version of Groundhog Day. The first 10 hours or so are pleasant ones, and some worthwhile ideas work out rather well. But in the end, The Sims Medieval lacks imagination–and it lacks the tools to let you flex your own.