BitMob - What Role-Playing Games Can Learn from Battlefield.
Why can't RPGs have both? No matter how great Fallout 3, it's not a good action game. Too often, RPGs that aspire to be such games produce third-rate results. Reviewers praised Mass Effect 2 for its shooting, but I can't help wondering if they were all secretly thinking: "...for an RPG." More importantly, though, Shepard moved with weight and banked around corners like a human.

BitMob - Satire at Dawn- Deathspank Versus the Game Industry.
However, Deathspank has a glaring flaw. If we now take a step back, as Gilbert did, and observe Deathspank for what it is, perhaps we won’t be clever enough to derive humor, but what we can see is the shallow nature of its commentary. While Deathspank does poke much-deserved fun at the nature of game design, it doesn't bring enough new ideas of its own to resolve these issues it so happily ridicules.