I am not surprised. Honestly, I think giving the game a 7 is actually on the high side. Right from the start when I played in the beta, I had this feeling something was missing. It looked fantastic, the visuals, sounds, the feeling of the lore surrounding my environment... but.. I couldn't get drawn in.

After just a few hours I felt (dare I say it) BORED with it. It felt like it was truly redone elsewhere with a reskin over top of "something else". (I know I'll get down voted for saying that)

I'm sad, i'm kinda angry actually. I had very high hopes, that for once, this would be a great game-to-movie tie-in. But it's not - It simply isn't deserving of anyone's $60 for a feeling that leaves you hoping and wanting more then that it offered here.

The bottom line is this: Visuals and sound, no matter how pretty, can and will never trump play-ability and immersion. They dropped the ball on this one... and that's a darn shame.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar was my first ever real rpg experience and my first ever encounter with the term "all-niter" as I would stay up thru the night till wee morning hours as a 13 yr old in 1985. I was hooked so bad! I was so mesmerized by the packaging of the Ultima series, the cloth maps, the spell books and manuals. Back in those days, we got all kinds of goodies. Now we are lucky to get a PDF file of the game controls, if that...

Interesting read but total overkill for gaming. Whats fast and new now will be old and outdated regardless if the card cost $1000 or $10,000. Save your money and get a GTX 670 ftw edition for 370 w/ MIR and enjoy it for the next 2 yrs or so. I buy a new vid card every 2+ yrs and sell the old one on craigslist to recoup a bit of the new purchase price.