I finally received my copy of Matt Barton's Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games, and it was definitely worth the wait. Similar to the popular Gamasutra articles Matt wrote and the book was inspired by, the book is broken up into various Ages, such as The Dark Age, The Golden Age, The Modern Age, etc., though in a greatly expanded fashion. This is a logical and effective means of organization and helps guide the reader through the progressively more sophisticated - though not necessarily better - CRPGs over the years.

There is plenty of theory and before you get into the meat of the book, exactly what is and what isn't a CRPG is discussed in great detail. For the most part I agree with the definitions and delineations of the various related genres (adventure, RPG, MUDs, JRPGs, etc.) and I believe this can be used as the basis for future works by other authors. In short, the reader gets a clear picture of what exactly the author means by "CRPG" in its many forms and why some of the other games - even though they might exhibit several RPG characteristics - really fall under another classification.