Giant Bomb suddenly features some strange, RPG-like leveling system with quests and stuff. I am not even sure I need that on my favourite gaming site, but who am I not to post a blog entry just to ... eh ... gain XP? Yeah. Oh well.

When I launched the Curse Client to update some addons for WoW and Runes of Magic today, I was greeted with this ad:
 

Beware, there be spoilers beyond this point!
 
Today, while playing through the dwarven part of the Dragon Age: Origins storyline, I came across something interesting. Besides the obvious things like spells* that work more or less exactly like their World of Warcraft counterparts (Cone of Cold like it's namesake, Living Bomb = Seed of Corruption, for example), there were three encounters that either looked or even played rather similar to existing boss fights in Blizzard's MMO.  
 
* EDIT: Ok, these spells are actually quite generic. I don't play many RPG games anymore, my bad. It wasn't my point anyway.
 
The first one was a room with 4 golems standing in a semi-circle. Approaching them activated them one after the other died. This is very similar to the last chamber before the final boss in Uldaman, although there's no gas to turn off, and the channeling altar is missing.
 
The second one was closer to the original. A long corridor with a line of golems standing along each wall. Stepping past a certain point would activate two of them, so it was required to proceed with care without activating them all by accident. This is almost exactly like the room after the second boss in the Halls of Lightning dungeon introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, where iron vrykul (think vikings) are lined up along the walls, and several of them randomly break lose to attack the group once stepping over certain points.
 
The last one was only by looks, but still quite apparent. A big room with blueish lighting and a pillar in the middle. On that pillar were four faces, one to each side. Approaching them would spawn ghosts, after a while, an anvil would glow. Touching it would inflict damage to the face opposite to the anvil, and the pillar would turn, showing a different face. The actual raid boss works different and only has three faces, but visually, this is similar to the Reliquary of Souls encounter in Black Temple, a high-end raid instance in the older expansion "The Burning Crusade".
 
I thought this was kind of a neat approach to give this roleplaying behemoth some kudos, even more because it's not totally obvious to someone who's not playing WoW a lot.

So I got Dragon Age: Origins this week, and while I'm not saying it's not entertaining, I also don't feel all that pumped about it. I bought the X360 version, which might have been a bad idea to begin with - the graphics leave to be desired, and so do the controls, but, you know, achievements. Thing is, I kinda hoped that it would be a dark fantasy Mass Effect, and it's actually advertised along these lines on the back of the box. Guess what, it's not. Some parts definitely look similar, but the game just doesn't captivate me as much as Mass Effect did. 
 
And I'm not even sure why. The story is interesting enough, and the dialogue boosts the trademark Bioware charme, with outstanding voice work even in the German version, but it just doesn't manage to hook me. While the first part - my human mage's origin story and the Grey Warden initiation - was quite a bit of fun, it was quickly diminished by - minor spoilers - the godawful "dream sequence" inside the Mage Tower. It just doesn't make any sense to me why Bioware had to include it. The whole game seems to be about a bunch of adventurers traveling and fighting together, and that's how the game functions well. But forcing me to play my mage, alone, without any of the other people, just totally threw me off track. 
 
Not to mention that "dream sequence" wasn't too well designed in the first place, but it was certainly worse with the absence of the constant banter and bickering of my fellow adventurers. Once I got out of there, I felt extremely relieved, but also directionless. Of course, I got plenty of tasks left in my quest log, but the next quest I attempted led me straight into a dead end in person of a dude trying to sell me DLC. While I actually do have a code to download that content for free, it just feels damn uncomfortable to get cheated like that (the original quest could have told me, and I wouldn't have bothered at that point in time, but that's probably the reason it didn't).
 
I'm not entirely ready to give it up yet, either. I'm pretty sure somewhere in that uncomfortable feeling there's a decent game I'd miss out on, I'm just having a hard time to get into it. Maybe it'll go the fate of Bioshock, which I really didn't like at first, and absolutely loved a bit later, playing through it within a few days time. I certainly hope so, for I feel like I'd be missing out, but can't exactly tell why that would be.

... I'd like Infinity Ward to rethink the single player campaign. Maybe do away with it and just sell the multiplayer, it should make no differences sales wise.
 
You read in reviews how the campaign is such an "action blockbuster movie", where a big bang happens every 45 minutes, and that's true. But a good blockbuster adds more than just action to the mix. A likeable hero, for example. Well-timed comic relief. Some quiet dialogue scenes. Modern Warfare 2 has little of that. Instead, you get a constant barrage of high-gear action that feels as exhaustive as it is empty. The whole thing is entirely forgettable, with it's usual template villains, uninteresting, onedimensional protagonists and "dramatic" scenes that hardly ever work. Even when some of the playable characters get killed off, you don't care, because they are so irrelevant as a whole.
 
That is not to say the action doesn't work gameplay wise - it's still very solid and does make you feel you're in a warzone - but it's just too much; you don't want to be in a warzone all the time. Take Saving Private Ryan for example - Spielberg doesn't just have his actors fight all the time, that would be boring and exhaustive. Instead, he mixes dramatic battle scenes with quiet dialogue and even some lighter moments. With Tom Hank's character, among others, you have a hero you can identify with. That's how you do blockbuster movies. 
 
Of course, I should have known this before, since Call of Duty 4 had exactly the same "concept" (the two games' storytelling has a very similar structure as well). So, Infinity Ward - just forget the single player. It's apparently not worth your time anyway.

So, Modern Warfare 2. German version, I was impatient and wanted it right now instead of getting the import later. Still rated 18, adults only. Lots of blood, uninspired voice acting, but that's not the point.
 
Right off the bat, the game lets me know there might be some offensive scenes, and asks me if I want to do away with them. Nah, while I dislike gore, I'm hardly ever offended by a video game. Well... until now, that is, but for entirely different reasons. Warning, there be spoilers!
 

"Borderlands, I adore you. You're Diablo for a generation raised on first person shooters."

 -- Cliff Bleszinski on Twitter