Dragon Age DLC round-up.

Gareth

Dragon Age was released towards the end of last year and won the hearts of many RPG fans. Since then Bioware have slowly trickled out plenty of DLC for the game to keep players revisiting the universe they’d so lovingly created. But is any of it worth your cash? Read on as Gareth describes what you’ll be in for if you drop the readies on these bits of downloadable content.

Stone Prisoner – Warden’s Keep – Return To Ostagar – Awakening
Darkspawn Chronicles – Leliana’s Song – The Golems of Amgarrak – Witch Hunt

Stone Prisoner

This initial DLC was released with the game itself. One of the first cases where if you bought the game first hand you’d find a code inside which would let you get this DLC for free, where as if you bought a second hand copy or rented then you’d have to pay 1200 MSP (£11.99 PS3, PC). Certainly not worth 1200 MSP (a lot of full XBLA games cost that much, or 800 and the massive GTA DLCs cost 1600), but you get a whole new character who has their own personal quest, plenty of dialogue and links into some of the main quests as well.

Shale the golem is the character you get, a fan favourite. Shale is a warrior, of which there are plenty in the game, but ‘it’ is an amusing character to have around and there are two achievements attached to this DLC. You can purchase the game new for about £13 these days so do that rather than spending the extra cash on this.

Warden’s Keep

This DLC was also released at the same time as the game but had to be bought for 560 MSP (£5.49 PS3, PC). Players are greeted by a character in their camp who asks for help with a quest. In order to accept the quest you have to buy the DLC (the future of in game advertising?). A bit of a cunt’s trick, but also of great annoyance was that this DLC contains the only method for storing any goods you want to keep without carrying them around with you in your limited inventory in the form of a party chest.

The quest itself is quite interesting and enjoyable, the Warden’s Keep being the old home of the Grey Wardens. It takes less than an hour to complete however, but does contain the previously mentioned storage chest, a very good weapon, six new abilities (two per class) and two achievements so is arguably worth the price.

Return To Ostagar

This DLC had a troubled release, with it being delayed, then uploaded to Live and then taken down again due to bugs, but was finally released two months after the release of the main game. You return to Ostagar from the beginning of Origins’ main story to discover [spoilers!] what went wrong [/spoilers!].

You can take Alastair with you as well as others to hear their take on what’s happened, though this DLC is a little light on actual story telling. You’ll mostly just be fighting your way through darkspawn, collecting a decent set of armour and a few good weapons over the course of an hour or less. At 400 MSP (£3.99 PS3, PC) it’s one of the cheaper DLCs for Dragon Age, but it’s still arguable whether it’s worth it. The equipment is quite good and there’s an achievement in it, but that’s about it.

Awakening

Unlike your usual DLC this is a full expansion, similar to the two GTA DLCs. Dragon Age Awakening can be bought for 3200 MSP (£31.99 PS3, PC) on Xbox Live or for considerably cheaper on disc. As you’d expect from a full disc based expansion this DLC is more than the simple one hour long quest that most of the other DLCs are. Altogether this DLC will probably take you about fourteen hours, as you import a character or create a new one as they rebuild the Grey Warden’s defences after the end of the main game.

Doing this involves doing quests around the base itself (which will upgrade as you complete quests) and helping out civilians who will then contribute to your base. You’ll recruit a few new characters, an old one and unlike the other DLCs this feels like a true extension of the main game. You’ll make important decisions, have conversations with your party to make them like you more (or not), give gifts, have random encounters on the road, you can now level yourself up to beyond level 30 and there are eight new achievements. There is also a decent story element here. It’s not worth 3200 MSP however, but if you can buy the disc version for about £13 then you’re in for a treat.

Darkspawn Chronicles

Darkspawn Chronicles is a little different to what you’d expect from a Dragon Age DLC. Released for 400 MSP (£3.99 PS3, PC), you take control of a darkspawn army as you replay the final battle from the main game from the enemy’s perspective. As such there is very little story telling (indeed, this is more of a ‘what if’ story) and no puzzle solving. You simply play as a Hurlock Vanguard as he takes control of other darkspawn to create a party to defeat the city guard and Grey Wardens.

There is an item up for grabs which you can import into your main game, three new achievements and the ability to play as the enemy is an interesting one, but again the run time of this is very short at about an hour and as it doesn’t play to the main game’s strengths (character development and choice) you have to decide whether the concept alone is worth the price of admission for you.

Leliana’s Song

Costing 560 MSP (£5.49 PS3, PC), Leliana’s Song takes place before the main game and puts you in control of Leliana. During this DLC Leliana is an Orlesian Bard and you’ll follow her and her crew to discover what exactly happened to lead her to the Chantry and eventually your team in the main game.

Again this DLC is relatively short (just over an hour) so whether it’s worth the cash is your call. Leliana was a fan favourite in the main game and this DLC develops her background well and I actually preferred her personality in this DLC. There are a decent amount of conversations, a few enjoyable quests which aren’t as straight forward as the usual DLC fair, a new item which you can import into the main game and you’ll meet a couple of new characters to boot. One of the better DLCs simply because of the additional back story, it brings three new achievements with it.

The Golems of Amgarrak

Released recently for 400 MSP (£3.99 PS3, PC), turns out The Golems of Amgarrak is the penultimate DLC for Dragon Age: Origins. You can import a character (including a high level one from Awakening) or create a new one and it involves going into the Deep Roads with a dwarf to help find an investigative team who have previously gone missing. This is totally combat based, with only a minor puzzle element and two conversations spread over the hour long stand alone mission. To extend the play time of this DLC Bioware have made it very difficult (though obviously you still have the ability to change the difficulty) and have introduced the first achievement to be dependent on difficulty (defeat the boss on Hard or higher).

Easily the weakest DLC yet, as it doesn’t link into the story at all, doesn’t give any back story, doesn’t give you a different perspective on anything and there is very little character development at all (despite containing two new characters). It does introduce three new achievements though.

Witch Hunt

Just released this week and supposedly the final DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, Witch Hunt will set you back 560 MSP (£5.49 PS3, PC). The story of this DLC follows your Warden from Origins (or a high level one from Awakening, or a brand new one) trying to find Morrigan after [spoilers!] she disappeared at the end of the main game [/spoilers!]. You will revisit many areas from the game and other DLCs and there are little nods to moments or characters which is a nice touch. There are a couple of new characters who are underdeveloped as we are used to now, one returning character from the main game and four new achievements. As this is the last DLC the ending tries to tie up some loose ends from the main game whilst hinting at a few story threads for the sequel due early next year.

Although no where near as weak as the last DLC, again this one is a disappointment. There are no new areas to visit and there is little real story until the last ten minutes which is basically just a conversation which you will probably be able to find on Youtube already. Plus there are reports of the DLC misreading (or possibly just ignoring) your choices from the end of the main game, meaning things will be mentioned which didn’t happen to your character and so although you’ll get an ending, it won’t be your character’s ending. Whether just over an hour of gameplay and some closure is worth over £5 though is up to you.

A very mixed bunch, for sure. None of these are must buys. The main game is incredibly long by itself so unless you’re going for the max, achievements-wise, or simply need more Dragon Age in your life then you aren’t really missing much when it comes to these downloads. Saying that, I did enjoy Awakening (if you can get it for a reasonable price, not 3200 MSP) and Leliana’s Song a lot and the Warden’s Keep DLC proved useful in all my playthroughs. Witch Hunt does set up a bit of story for Dragon Age 2 but I’d suggest waiting for it to be discounted before picking it up as it’s quite a lot of money for what you get.

Assuming you got the Stone Prisoner for free with a new copy of the game the others aren’t particularly worth it in my opinion, with Bioware seemingly forgetting what made Dragon Age such a great game in the first place when making the majority of these DLCs.

Resident Evil 5 DLC: Lost In Nightmares/Desperate Escape

Rich

Despite the fact that it doesn’t hold a candle to Resident Evil 4, I quite liked Resi 5.  Sure, it was marginally less scary than the average Twilight movie but it was still a top-notch action game with echoes of the series’ former glory.  Of course, Capcom shouldn’t feel too bad, after all Resi 4 still hasn’t been topped.

Arriving almost a year after the original retail release, the Gold Edition of Resi 5 has just hit the shelves and it includes the very recent DLC episodes ‘Lost In Nightmares’ and ‘Desperate Escape’.  Given that the Gold Edition just gives you unlock codes on the Xbox 360 (the PS3 has them on the disc), you’d be better off shelling out the 400M$P per episode.   So should you bother?  Well let’s find out in what kids are already calling PEOWW’s sort-of-review of said DLC.

Lost In Nightmares – 400 M$P

It's got teeth instead of a face. Someone at Capcom is eating too much cheese before bedtime.

Lost In Nightmares is, excitingly for those of us who were there at the beginning of the series, set in a mansion.  It’s not the mansion from Raccoon City but it’s pretty very similar with stairs ahead of you, a dining room to the left and similar corridors to the right.

As soon as the episode starts, the tension is racked up.  Simply being in there makes you nervous and the emblem/crank puzzles make you constantly look out for that first zombie that you interrupted mid-snack in the first game.  Windowed hallways make you expect bats, lickers and undead dogs and the goreshadowing ammo pick-ups reinforce your paranoia.

Sadly the whole thing is an illusion.  After half an hour of walking on eggshells and solving basic puzzles, you drop down underneath into a dingy cell block where you are greeted by the occasional zombie or beefed up mutant guy.  Fight or flight is an option as you can simply run past them until the next area where you inexplicably lose all your guns and have to trap said mutant guys under big spike traps.

Follow that up with a fairly tedious boss battle and you’re left feeling pretty unsatisfied by the whole caboodle.  The obviously tacked-on search for stars to shoot (for an achievement, naturally) doesn’t help you shake the feeling that Capcom have played you with promises of a nice mansion and all you’ve got in romp in dirty basement.

Ramping it up to Professional difficulty and doing the whole thing in co-op does make for a more satisfying journey through this episode (although the final battle ends up being something of a chore) but with the whole thing clocking in at under an hour on your first playthrough, even the 400M$P seems a little steep.

Put simply, if this was already in the game it’d be your least favourite part of it.

Score:  4/10

Desperate Escape – 400 M$P

Bullet-sponge chainsaw-wielders fuck off!

Desperate Escape, like the previous episode, fills in the gap between two chapters in the main game.  This time it follows Jill Valentine and Josh Stone (a soldier not a shit soul singer with a transatlantic accent) as they bid to escape the majini and acquire the helicopter which shows up in the final chapter of the main game.

Instead of the old-school feel of Lost In Nightmares, this episode is pretty much the same sort of thing we saw in the main game.  Tons of well-armed majini stand between you and freedom and you’ve got to blast your way through them.  As with LIN, the whole thing clocks less than an hour’s worth of content but multiple playthroughs are required for getting the achievements and with so many baddies to blast through (and no bullshit ‘oh I’ve lost all my guns’ moments) you won’t mind a second and third go at it.

The episode is roughly split into three sections – a standard shoot out through a military camp, a rocket-showered larger area that requires you to take over missile turrets in order to blast through security gates and finally a timed survival siege on a small rooftop.

On Professional difficulty all these parts are difficult but the final siege is absolutely balls-hard in an uncompromisingly savage kind of way.

Again, this episode doesn’t offer much in the way of new stuff but it’s a nice challenge, reasonably priced and, given that it has been released a year after the main game, it doesn’t feel like a rip off.  In some ways, this is the model for how DLC should be.  Unfortunately, it’s a little too unremarkable to really get anyone too excited but it offers a meaty challenge and an excuse to dust off one of the better games of last year.

Score:  7/10

Borderlands: The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx DLC

Rich

Wow, you’ve caught me at a bad time.  All this week I’ve been either playing this, the latest DLC for the game that broke my heart, Borderlands, or the last one (Mad Moxxy’s Shitty Arena Battles) and frankly I’m sick to fucking death of fucking Borderlands.  However, this DLC does carry a few positives (which by default makes it the best B’lands DLC so far).

Billing itself as the “BEST. DLC. EVER”, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, is a collection of missions set across a number of locations linked by a crumbling highway system.  The reason for Gearbox’s self-congratulations are that this DLC finally ups the level cap (from 50 to 61) and adds a few new weapons (albeit no changes to the standard archetypes) and vehicles.

It came from the desert...

Unfortunately, as with the other DLCs, everything in this package is an excuse for massive amounts of CHORE.   You’ll need to complete this DLC (and the others) a few times if you want to hit level 61 for a start.  Then there are the missions which are scattered around in no particular order and involve plenty of searching, backtracking and repetition.  Also, none of the areas in the game have teleports so you have to trudge everywhere and, for some ridiculous reason, the map still doesn’t show you unhighlighted mission markers in your current location.

That said, there are some highlights.  The prison mission is hilarious, thanks to some excellent voice acting from the prisoners, and the Circle of Duty arena missions are vastly superior to anything we saw on Mad Moxxy’s Underdone thanks to the arena being less cluttered and because of the introduction of vehicles and rocketmen.

Midgets on skags are the mindkiller.

For the most part though, it’s just another grind.  There are lots of missions but these rarely go beyond the standard fetch quest template laid out by the main game.  Also, the DLC pulls what can only be described as the biggest cunt’s trick ever.  One of the locations has a giant bullet in it and pressing the use button next to it will drain your account by around seven million credits.  Considering that you can only hold ten million this is unacceptably shit.  Especially as you get nothing for it apart from an achievement called ‘The World’s Biggest Sucker’.

This is made even more galling by the fact that the DLC’s end boss is a level 64 uber-bastard (on both playthroughs) and has vending machines that sell top-level gear in his lair.  Which would be useful if the cunts at Gearbox hadn’t just nicked two thirds of my fucking cash.  Instead I’m shooting him with a fucking peashooter. 

Now, I’m asking nicely… please… just stop.  I hate Borderlands now.  I loved it once but now the party’s over.  Everyone I’ve played with online hates it as well.  The DLC has ruined one of the great games of 2009 and it needs to stop.  Also, haven’t you got Aliens: Colonial Marines to finish?

Score?  Fuck off out of ten.  Maybe a fuck off you game-ruining bellends out of ten, depending on how much you care about achievements.

Borderlands:  Mad Moxxy’s Underdome Riot DLC

Hot on the heals of the occasionally amusing but ultimately not very good Zombie Island DLC comes Mad Moxxy’s Underdome Riot, the latest downloadable expansion to Gearbox’s rather lovely Borderlands.

As with the previous DLC, this costs 800M$P and is accessed via the fast travel system in the game.  Zip over to the Underdome location and you’ll find yourself in a large lobby area with the three vending machine types and a bank that holds any extra equipment you may have.  Arguably that’s a feature that could and should have been in the main game but then I’ve never really felt a need to store items especially as most of the guns in this game aren’t up to much and the 45 storage slots I have in my inventory are more than enough to keep me going.

Mad Poxey mer like...

Once you’ve bought, sold, deposited and arranged your inventory you can take part in either the short tournament or one of the three larger ones.  A tournament sees you – and up to three co-op buddies – facing off against wave after wave of enemies in the now-standard Horde/Firefight fashion in one of three locations.

The small tournament has five waves per round (with the fifth always being a boss wave which recycles bosses from the main game) across five rounds per location, of which there are three.  Given that the locations are bland and interchangable, this really just means 75 waves of enemies.  Inbetween waves there are supply drops of health and ammo and after each boss wave new guns are also dropped (although in 99.99% of cases these are worse than the ones you are already carrying).

Irritatingly your attempts to snag some extra resources are often scuppered by a big grey box that tells you which random effects will be in play during the next round.  These range from faster enemies, no shields, increased damage from various weapon types and the like.

If you are killed during a wave you have to sit out the rest of it in the penalty box which is located high above the arena.  You can still help out though as the game will let you shoot from your new vantage point.  If you and your buddies are all killed you will go back to the first wave of the previous round.

At first the DLC seems pretty decent with the battles being suitably tough and intense.  The added difficulty increases your need to work together (at least staying near enough to heal each other) and the pace never really lets up.  Unfortunately, after a while it starts to drag.  Then, after another while and another while and another while and so on, it really overstays its welcome and you begin to hate it.  Then you start one of the larger tournaments and realise you’ve got to survive 100 waves of enemies and at this point you realise that Gearbox have made this as simplistic and uninteresting as possible.

Seen it all before and better.

After the refreshingly unchoresome RPG antics of Borderlands it is a real shame to see the game spoiled with thoughtless, uninteresting DLC like this.  The whole thing seems to be there to punish you for liking the main game and expecting players to sit through hours of the same thing, and enjoy it, is asking too much.  Especially for the money.

Gearbox could have added more classes, quests, weapons, skills, mods, vehicles and enemy types.  Instead you just get the least interesting take I’ve ever seen on this game type.   I’m sure they achieved exactly what they set out to do but I honestly cannot think of a way they could have made this whole package less interesting.

Hopefully the DLC ends here (or at least the achievements will end on 1250) as I can’t see Gearbox adding anything meaningful in future installments.  We don’t generally score DLC but if we did I’d give this… well… fuck all, frankly.

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Borderlands:  Zombie Island DLC

Rich

Borderlands, which was only released about a month ago, appeared just as the world was gripped in Modern Warfare 2 mania.  Despite the gaming world’s attention being turned to Activision’s latest headline grabber, it managed to carve out enough of a niche for itself that it could well end up being a dark horse for coveted Game Of The Year awards everywhere.

Its mix of sharp FPS action and addictive RPG loot-grabbing created a different spin on both genres and was, for my money, a lot more fun than Fallout 3 (which is the closest comparison I can make).  Also, for an RPG,  it was the perfect length.  Not dragging itself out to 250 hours like Sacred 2 and the like.  Add to that some sweet cell-shading and four player co-op and its no surprise that we liked it so much.

Running around robbing banks all wacked off on Scooby Snacks!

One thing we don’t like too much is DLC that arrives suspiciously quickly after a game is released.  Indeed, day one DLC is up there with gamesaving, collectathon achievements andActivision on the all-time list of cunts’ tricks.  Zombie Island dropped about a month after the main game and whilst it feels like content that was held back for DLC purposes alone, it has just about enough charm for us to give it a chance and its arrived just as many of us have beaten the game.

The content, which is 800M$P, is accessed via the New-U network which will send you to the new area Jakob’s Cove.   This area is comparable in size with the Arid Badlands region of the main game and has several smaller areas to explore.  The problem, as the title implies, is that it is choc-full of zombies thanks to the experiments of the suspiciously-familiar Dr Ned.

The main storyline takes roughly 2-3 hours to complete which does pose some questions when it comes to value for money, although there are a few side-missions (thanks to the Cove having a bounty board).  Play time is artificially extended thanks to the ‘Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains’ achievement which I’ll leave you to discover the details of.  Let’s just say, it’s a chore.

If you choose to do everything the DLC has to offer, you’ll be looking at maybe six or seven hours’ play for your £6.80 which is okay but with more DLC lined up, you have to wonder just how much is Borderlands going to end up costing.

Green on green action for you Amstrad fans.

Other annoyances are that there is no increased level cap, no new equipment to play with (guns, shields or mods) and no new classes.  In fact all you really get is a bunch of reskinned enemies that make a b-line straight for you.  Given that they aren’t armed (although a few will spit acid goo at you) and a sniper can headshot them for a one-hit kill, it doesn’t make for incredibly interesting combat.  That said, they do have significant numbers and getting cornered by a bunch of them can be enjoyably intense (especially as there is only one respawn point which is usually annoyingly far away).

On the plus side, Zombie Island is even funnier than the main campaign and worth playing through just for the ending.  The graphics have a spooky, cartoony look taken straight from Scooby Doo and it looks great.  It’s kind of nice to get out of the Wild West themed main game as well and any excuse to jump back into Borderlands is welcome now that I’ve maxed out the achievements.

Is it worth the 800M$P?  No, not really.  But it is good content.  All that remains to be seen now is if 2K Games are going to push things forwards with the rest of the DLC, because if they can add some significant content, we’ll happily endorse it but if they intend to keep nickel and diming us with a bunch of side-quests like this, the good will that Borderlands is getting will soon dry up.

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