Welcome to day two of games with across the board review scores. Yesterday, it was Thief. Today it’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Once again, we skewed higher in the spectrum in our review, noting the game has the “same presentation quirks as the original,” with awkward (potentially infuriating) stealth sections.

• Game Trailers (83/100): “The combat system is sufficiently deep and gives you enough mobility to manage varied groups of enemies. The timing for blocks and dodges doesn’t always feel intuitive, but the more time you spend with the system, the more it grows on you.”
• Gamespot (70/100): “Lords of Shadow 2 should have been a much shorter game.”
• Game Informer (60/100): “This shambling monstrosity is composed of chunks from other, better games. Rather than blend them together into something new like its predecessor attempted, this one just feels like a patchwork mess.”
• Eurogamer (50/100): “Sharpening the disappointment is the fact that the team at MercurySteam has already made a good game, and perhaps had an opportunity here to make a great one.”
• Edge (40/100): “Lords Of Shadow 2 is clunky, ugly and deeply misguided. … MercurySteam says this will be the final game in the Lords Of Shadow saga, and on the evidence of this cluttered, bloated and forgettable mess, it’s just as well.”