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All bugs aside, I had a lot of fun with Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening. Ok, so the writing wasn’t quite as good. Alright, fine–there wasn’t enough talking and decision-making for the amount of combat the game throws at you. I’ll concede that the game is far, far buggier than I would expect from Bioware, even in an expansion. But it was obviously rushed, so some bugs are to be expected, and will hopefully be fixed if they haven’t been already.

But on the bright side, players get to delve back into Ferelden for the second-greatest adventure you can find in the kingdom, and chances are if you’re interested in the game you’ve already finished the first at least once.

Chances are also quite good you’ve also read a number of reviews far more thorough than this. So, to cut to the chase–I’ll confirm what many of those reviews conclude–if you’re into the game, you should definitely give it a shot. If you haven’t played or didn’t enjoy the original, then there is no reason you should play or would enjoy this one either. But if you’re one of those people, I really think you should give the first game another look–it’s truly a deep and rewarding experience.

A word of caution–I did run into a couple of game-breaking bugs. Spoilers follow. Check the Dragon Age Wiki’s Bugs page for full details. Mainly, be careful when and how you complete the Amaranthine smugglers quest, because it can break other parts of the game and ruin your experience as it did mine (the quest ended early and all of the guards in Amaranthine hated me even though I meant to help them). Additionally, toward the end of the game when I chose to help Amaranthine instead of the Keep, the game map indicated the keep was destroyed by darkspawn, while the ending credits confirmed it remained standing strong thanks to the defenses I purchased. All in all, it ended well, and you wouldn’t have had a chance to go back there in the game anyway.

Bioware, I want more large Dragon Age DLC!

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Although the style of game differs greatly, certainly the spy setting and overall feel are in many ways similar. One way in which they are similar is that when you are seen, if you do not kill that person immediately, or if you do and are seen or his body is discovered, then you will almost inevitably trip an alarm that causes everyone in the area to react differently.

Where the difference comes in between the two in the system is the way in which the enemies react. The mechanic works well in Splinter Cell–when you’re seen, the enemies in the direct vicinity will begin to search for you. If you stay hidden for some time, they will eventually start to patrol again and not really pursue you. This is realistic–they won’t know where you are as long as you’ve moved since the last time they’ve seen you. This is aided by the fact that you always see a ghost of where the enemies last saw you. This system lends itself well to this style of gameplay, and it works great.

Alpha Protocol handles alarms differently. If you are seen, then the enemies in the direct vicinity of whoever spotted you will immediately rush you and attempt to sound an alarm if he is near one. If you kill him first, then like Splinter Cell you may have gotten away clean unless someone else saw him die or finds his body. Once the alarm sounds, however, the system gets clunky. Every enemy on your map seems to rush your exact location and directly hunt you down as if they have psychic powers of some kind. This lasts until you turn off the alarm or, almost always, until you clear all of the enemies out, since there’s a somewhat slim chance of finishing a hack without getting shot by one of the many enemies who knows where you are.

Once you turn off the alarm, you can suddenly hide again. It’s this mechanic I feel is broken in Alpha Protocol. You should be able to hide out an alarm… if you’re hidden, you’re hidden, whether or not something–or someone–has triggered an alarm. Yes, everyone should be much more alert, and expect you to be around every corner, but they should not know where you are at all times whenever the alarm is triggered.

Anyway, that has really been bothering me lately, and when I was playing Splinter Cell: Conviction this evening again, I realized I was quite impressed with the way they handled it.

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It’s been several days since the start of Aion‘s Open Beta, following closely their highly-successful Closed Beta, and I must say–so far, so good! As is expected with an MMO launch, and even more-so a Beta launch, Aion has had, and continues to have, its fair share of issues.

The number of people pounding the game login servers, Aion’s Open Beta forums, and NCsoft’s Account site brought each of those services to their knees for a while. These issues were cleared up in a matter of a couple of hours for most people.

Next, there was random spikes of terrible and debilitating latency upwards of several seconds that prevented some users from playing the game for periods of time. Most of these issues have been resolved, but there are still reports of random lag throughout. I’m sure the developers will continue to tune their servers up until and continuing after the official launch in less than two weeks (September 22).

Some players were unhappy about some of the changes made to the game (PvP damage has been lowered significantly, many balance changes have been made, etc), but the general consensus is that almost all of them have made the game better and more fun overall.

In the Closed Beta I focused on the Asmodians, and thoroughly enjoyed leveling my characters. Now, in the Open Beta, I am focusing on an Elyos character, attempting to experience as much of the game as possible from the other side of the Abyss before the official launch.

I can’t comment yet on PvP or any sort of end-game experience, but working my way up to it has sure been a fun ride, and is thus far recommended for any MMO player looking for their next fix–especially WoW players wanting something a bit different that has a similar charm to it.