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I haven't been around of late because around September 7th, Bioware released two new DLCs for great games that I owned: Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2.
I thought I'd share my impressions on them.
Witch Hunt, the new Dragon Age DLC, costs about 7 USD. The premise is to find out what happened with Morrigan and tie up whatever loose ends you might have with her.
Dragon Age was a good game, but I wasn't fond enough of it to go splurge in DLCs or to go get the Awakening expansion; even Dragon Age 2 merely mildly intrigues me at this point - I guess the Dragon Age IP itself hasn't hooked me enough for me to look forward to sequel, even though I have good memories of the game. However, my first foray in the game had my main character hold Morrigan as his love interest so I was inclined to see how it'd be resolved.
After I reinstalled my copy of Dragon Age, I started out with another DLC named "Return to Ostagar", which revisits events early on in the game. Brief adventure romp that was enjoyable, if unfortunately buggy (had to check walkthroughs to know how to get around the bugs for proper completion - it was a bit lame to see that this not so recent DLC had never been patch fixed since).
After that, I imported my character into the Witch Hunt campaign. first thing I noticed was that my Warden commander's armor (from the Warden Keep free DLC) hadn't been imported along, leaving my noble male human stark naked aside from underwear. After reimporting my character in with some manageable 'emergency' armor (I stole Sten's juggernaut plate, heh), I went on the adventure the latest Dragon Age DLC offered.
I don't want to go into spoilers over the story presented, but frankly, the story offered is paltry. The playthrough of Witch Hunt was underwhelming, and did more than not match its hype - it was buggy and the plot was very shallow, with the adventure venues being recycled ones. When you do get to dealing with Morrigan, it turns out that few of your earlier choices are being taken into account (which is a big turn off considering the main lure of even getting this DLC) - all of that clocking in between one to two hours of gameplay.
By contrast, the short-and-buggy Return to Ostagar offered about as much action. The free Warden's Keep DLC held significantly better environments, story and interaction.
My advice? Don't bother buying the DLC. It's not even worth being curious about trying it out. Bioware usually provides quality content... but this is unfortunately not it.
* * *
Mass Effect 2's latest new DLC, Lair of the Shadow Broker, had severe birthing pains for PC users, as the hefty 1.5+ gig DLC (costing roughly 10 USD) was released late, then the version they released had a faulty patcher which made it impossible to actually go and play it. Within the day, though, folks at Bioware straightened things out and managed to get out a proper patcher executable.
Fortunately (and in contrast to Witch Hunt), "Lair of the Shadow Broker" offers 3 to 4 hours of gameplay that definitely lives up to its asking price and hype. The locales offered are top notch quality, the interaction and banter you get with your old squad member Liara are great (and sometimes humorous) especially if you've known her since ME1 and had her as a love interest; she's come a long way from the nerdy and awkward asari scientist you find on Therum and the DLC fleshes her out much more believably, building upon her more hard-bitten demeanor as her information broker incarnation in a manner I could now better relate with.
In my opinion, the gameplay experience Lair of the Shadow Broker delivers goes so far as to rival Mass Effect 2's exciting finale with the Normandy going through the Omega 4 relay to take out the Collectors (it's as good as Mass Effect 2 can provide). The mission also adapts fairly well to wether you complete it before or after the 'suicide' mission.
I think it was well worth the money (you can go to the movie theater with a bag of buttery popcorn and a soft drink for this much - but I'd consider this DLC a better investment). Just so you get the idea... when I started it, I was actually in a foul mood due to having had a bad day and having downloaded a faulty version earlier, but within 30 minutes I was hooked and I was quite enjoying myself.
I thought I'd share my impressions on them.
Witch Hunt, the new Dragon Age DLC, costs about 7 USD. The premise is to find out what happened with Morrigan and tie up whatever loose ends you might have with her.
Dragon Age was a good game, but I wasn't fond enough of it to go splurge in DLCs or to go get the Awakening expansion; even Dragon Age 2 merely mildly intrigues me at this point - I guess the Dragon Age IP itself hasn't hooked me enough for me to look forward to sequel, even though I have good memories of the game. However, my first foray in the game had my main character hold Morrigan as his love interest so I was inclined to see how it'd be resolved.
After I reinstalled my copy of Dragon Age, I started out with another DLC named "Return to Ostagar", which revisits events early on in the game. Brief adventure romp that was enjoyable, if unfortunately buggy (had to check walkthroughs to know how to get around the bugs for proper completion - it was a bit lame to see that this not so recent DLC had never been patch fixed since).
After that, I imported my character into the Witch Hunt campaign. first thing I noticed was that my Warden commander's armor (from the Warden Keep free DLC) hadn't been imported along, leaving my noble male human stark naked aside from underwear. After reimporting my character in with some manageable 'emergency' armor (I stole Sten's juggernaut plate, heh), I went on the adventure the latest Dragon Age DLC offered.
I don't want to go into spoilers over the story presented, but frankly, the story offered is paltry. The playthrough of Witch Hunt was underwhelming, and did more than not match its hype - it was buggy and the plot was very shallow, with the adventure venues being recycled ones. When you do get to dealing with Morrigan, it turns out that few of your earlier choices are being taken into account (which is a big turn off considering the main lure of even getting this DLC) - all of that clocking in between one to two hours of gameplay.
By contrast, the short-and-buggy Return to Ostagar offered about as much action. The free Warden's Keep DLC held significantly better environments, story and interaction.
My advice? Don't bother buying the DLC. It's not even worth being curious about trying it out. Bioware usually provides quality content... but this is unfortunately not it.
* * *
Mass Effect 2's latest new DLC, Lair of the Shadow Broker, had severe birthing pains for PC users, as the hefty 1.5+ gig DLC (costing roughly 10 USD) was released late, then the version they released had a faulty patcher which made it impossible to actually go and play it. Within the day, though, folks at Bioware straightened things out and managed to get out a proper patcher executable.
Fortunately (and in contrast to Witch Hunt), "Lair of the Shadow Broker" offers 3 to 4 hours of gameplay that definitely lives up to its asking price and hype. The locales offered are top notch quality, the interaction and banter you get with your old squad member Liara are great (and sometimes humorous) especially if you've known her since ME1 and had her as a love interest; she's come a long way from the nerdy and awkward asari scientist you find on Therum and the DLC fleshes her out much more believably, building upon her more hard-bitten demeanor as her information broker incarnation in a manner I could now better relate with.
In my opinion, the gameplay experience Lair of the Shadow Broker delivers goes so far as to rival Mass Effect 2's exciting finale with the Normandy going through the Omega 4 relay to take out the Collectors (it's as good as Mass Effect 2 can provide). The mission also adapts fairly well to wether you complete it before or after the 'suicide' mission.
I think it was well worth the money (you can go to the movie theater with a bag of buttery popcorn and a soft drink for this much - but I'd consider this DLC a better investment). Just so you get the idea... when I started it, I was actually in a foul mood due to having had a bad day and having downloaded a faulty version earlier, but within 30 minutes I was hooked and I was quite enjoying myself.
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