Dragon Age 2 - Hands-On Preview @ Videogamer

Videogamer's Neon Kelly takes Dragon Age 2 for a 10 minute test spin on the Xbox360. I've got nothing good to say about this preview of Dragon Age 2 at all. I know you are all used to Dhruin's cool and calm demeanor, but after reading this preview I could neither be cool nor calm:

Come March next year, Dragon Age II may set a scaly, fire-breathing cat among the pigeons. The original game ruffled a few feathers back in 2009, thanks to the stark contrast between the PC version and its awkward console sibling, but I suspect that will be nothing compared to the kerfuffle this sequel could cause.

From which camp will the kerfuffle come from, Pc gamers or consolers? I'm guessing PC gamers.

In essence, BioWare has attempted to repeat what it pulled off with Mass Effect 2.

So it'll be Dragon Age FPS? I'm so giddy with excitement that I could just throw up.

Commander Shepherd's first outing was a sci-fi RPG with lots of shooting; his second was more or less a third-person shooter with lots of RPG mechanics bolted on; and now BioWare is aiming for a similar transition with Dragon Age II. Though Dragon Age: Origins was very much a hardcore Western RPG, this sequel feels like it's taken a step closer towards the door marked "Hack and Slash".

No words can fully express my feelings about this.

The pace of combat appears a lot quicker, for starters, and while Origins seemed to place a lot of emphasis on carefully queuing up a chain of attacks - zooming the view out to get an overview of the battle on the PC version - here the natural tendency is to get up in the enemy's face. The third-person camera loiters just behind your avatar's back, willing you to run up and give the nearest enemy a kicking. And so you do - hammering on one face button to dish out basic melee swipes, and then using the other three to use class abilities. The latter operate on a cooldown basis, and their colour-coded indicators are one of the few intrusions on an otherwise clutter-free HUD.

Button mashing is the new RPG experience.

It's hard to know what the hardcore fans are going to make of all this - the super-traditional approach was popular with a lot of people....

We will hate it because it guts everything that was even halfway decent about the game.

I have to correct this reviewer. Dragon Age was about as "super-traditional" as Bioshock was to System Shock 2. Dragon Age was better in keeping with some of Bioware's earlier work, but "super-traditional"? I don't think so.

After that I couldn't read anymore. So I skipped to the end:

After the last foe has been cut to the ground, there's a chance to catch up with Isabella for a quick chat. I'm happy to report that Dragon Age 2 retains the first game's habit of soaking its cast in buckets of gore, allowing for some amusingly odd-looking post-fight chats. Isabella's face and heaving cleavage are covered in blood, but she doesn't seem to mind: her purring words of thanks suggest that she's more than happy with the day's outcome, and before long she's dropping not-so-subtle hints about letting Hawke delve into her furry dungeon. For all Dragon Age 2's revisions, it seems that some things never change.

Hurray! They're keeping the blood. The blood was the best part of Dragon Age.

I should clarify that I don't hate this previewer. I hate the game he is previewing. Dragon Age was a step in the right direction. Not a gigantic step, but a small one that gave me some hope that maybe AAA games could appeal to both RPG fans and casual gamers. This game by all accounts sounds like a HUGE step backwards.