I think it is about time I step into this argument myself...
First off, I will say that I pretty much detest the entire use of the word "videogamey", particularly when people turn around and then go on to say "it is videogamey because it reminds me of WoW" or something like that. There are so many different kinds of videogames out there that statements like that baffle me. If you say "videogamey" but mean "it resembles WoW", then you can at least be courteous enough to specify "it reminds me of MMOs like WoW" rather than lump the countless varieties of videogames out there as all being the same thing as WoW.
I mean, look at some of the variety in videogaming... On one end of the spectrum, you have stuff like Pac-Man and Space Invaders that are all gameplay with no story or text whatsoever, and a lot of button mashing and quick reflexes. On the other end of the spectrum you have the Visual Novel genre that is insanely popular in some parts of the world, which are all story with very little in the way of actual game mechanics. One game in the latter genre, Lunar Legend Tsukihime, has more written text than The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings combined, and a later game by the same creators, Fate/Stay Night, has three times that amount of text (on a side note, these are both "adult" games). Trying to equate Pac Man and Fate/Stay Night under the same descriptor of "videogamey" that is supposed to carry some kind of meaning would be absurd, since they bear no point of similarity in the least.
Anyways, now that I have finished ranting about the pointlessness of the term "videogamey", let me actually try to say why the statement "4E is like a videogame" rings false for me in a very specific manner.
Whenever someone compares 4E to a videogame, the very first thing I think of is the Tactical RPG genre of videogames, since it is easily the genre with the highest degree of similarity to D&D's combat mechanics. Yet, let me take the time to examine something that can actually occur in one of those games, and reveal some of the inner workings of their mechanics.
Let's look at a character named Ike. He is a skilled swordsman who has (for the purposes of this discussion) 50 HP, 29 strength, 32 skill, 28 speed, 16 luck, 26 defense, and some "skills" called Aether, Adept, Wrath, and Resolve. I will explain what these stats and skills do in just a moment, so bear with me.
Ike moves to attack some guy who is wielding an axe.
First, Ike's Attack Speed is calculated. Because Ike has a Strength higher than 20 (the Weight of his sword, Ragnell), he has no penalty to Attack Speed and thus uses his base Speed stat as Attack Speed. This is 28.
Attack speed is calculated for the enemy (let's say it is 26) and compared to ike's. 28 - 26 = 2. Since the result is less than 4, Ike cannot double-attack.
Ike makes the first attack. First though, d100 is rolled twice. The first check is higher than 28 (speed), so Adept does not activate. The second check is higher than 16 (Skill/2), so Aether does not activate. Ike's HP is full, so neither Wrath nor Resolve activate.
Now the attack calculation actually begins. Ike's Accuracy is the base accuracy of his weapon (80 for Ragnell) plus twice his skill (32*2=64) plus his Luck (16). Since I will assume his Biorythm bonus is zero at this time, and I am ignoring a few other minor bonuses that I don't want to deal with, I just need to add the Weapon Triangle bonus (+10) because Ike is using a Sword against an Axe user, getting a result of 170. Let us say that the enemy has an Avoid value of 80, so we get the difference (170-80=90) to get Ike's Hit rate: 90%. Now we roll d100 twice and average the results (note this particular oddity). Let us say we roll a 47 and a 91, the average of which is 69. 69 is less than 90, so Ike hits.
First, critical hit chance. We add Ike's weapon's Critical rate to half of his skill (5 + 32/2) , to get 21. We subtract the enemy's Dodge value (I will say 19) to get a critical hit chance of 2%. I roll d100 and get a 26, so no critical hit. On to damage.
We add Ike's Strength and the power of his weapon, plus a Weapon Triangle bonus (you remember that one?), to get 29 + 18 + 1, so attack power is 48. We subtract the enemy's defense score (let's say 24), to get 48 - 24 = 24. Ike does 24 damage with his attack.
Now, under the rules of this game, the enemy gets a free counter-attack. For the sake of my sanity, I will omit the details of this one, other than saying that Ike's Avoid rate is Attack Speed*2 + Luck + a bunch of bonuses I don't care about, so it is 72. His Dodge rate is his Luck score, which is 16. Ike's Defense stat is 26, but his sword Ragnell increases his defense by 5, so his real defense is 31.
Let us say that the attack hits Ike, and deals 20 points of damage, bringing Ike to 30 HP.
Now, we bring in another character who uses an ability called "vigor" to reactivate Ike so that he can move again this turn. Ike then moves to a different square and stands next to a guy called Nasir. Nasir has an ability called White Pool, which increases Ike's Magic (useless) and Speed by 5 while Ike stands next to him. At this point, Ike attacks that same enemy again, hoping to finish him off.
First, Attack speed is calculated again. Ike's Speed has increased, so he now has an attack speed of 33, 7 higher than his opponent's attack speed, and gets two attacks. In this case, it is resolved as attack, counter-attack, then second attack.
I will skip past the first attack and say that Ike misses (it happens).
I will also skip the counter-attack again, and say that Ike was hit again for 20 points of damage (the enemy is WAY too lucky today, but that happens too). This is particularly odd because Ike's increased Speed improved his Avoid rate by 10. Anyways, Ike's HP is now at 10.
Now the follow-up attack. First, we check Ike's skills. First, now that Ike is below 30% of his health, his skills Wrath and Resolve finally activate. Resolve increases Ike's Skill and Speed by 50% (counting the White Pool bonus, they are now at 48 and 49 respectively), and Wrath increases his critical rate by 50. Rolling d100 twice again, we see that Adept activates (with activation rate increased by White Pool and Resolve's effects to 49%) but Aether does not. As such, Ike now attacks twice consecutively (for a total of three attacks in this battle phase).
Recalculating Ike's Accuracy rate (96 + 80 + 16 + 10), it is now at 202 (32 higher than before). The enemy only has an avoid value of 80, Ike has a final hit rate of 100% and can't miss.
Next is critical hit rate. Because of Ike's increased skill and the effect of Wrath, the new critical hit rate is 24 + 5 + 50, so 79%. A d100 results in a 14, so Ike scores a critical hit and deals triple damage.
Ike's strength and the enemy's defense have not changed, so the damage is triple that damage value (24*3=72), so Ike deals 72 damage. This is complete overkill, so the enemy dies and Ike doesn't need to resolve the attack he earned with Adept.
Alright, that was a bit too long, but I really do have a few points to make concerning all of what I just described. First, I want to mention that every single mechanic I just described came from the videogame Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which is actually a pretty close comparison to D&D, far closer than 97% of the videogames out there. In fact, Path of Radiance describes a band of characters who progress through three tiers of power and go from fighting to save a country to fighting a god in a terrible struggle between Law and Chaos. It is a game that owes quite a bit to D&D and the many concepts and mechanics it introduced to the world of gaming. Yet, if you examine the mechanics I described above, I think it is clear that it is still something very different than D&D.
Look at the kinds of mechanics being used above.
1) It has a lot of calculation and a large number of random numbers (dice rolls). A single attack requires five or six d100 rolls, and attacks tend to come in groups of two, three, or more (with Adept and a Brave Blade, a Swordmaster can easily attack eight times). These kinds of calculations can be done in the tiniest fraction of a second by a computer, even though it has taken me quite a lot of time and effort to make them all, even though I cheated and didn't actually roll dice. This kind of thing is common in videogames.
Put simply, videogames very frequently use extremely complicated "hidden" math that is completely invisible to the player. Because ease of use is not a factor, videogames continue to evolve in the direction of complexity and ever-greater sophistication. Look at the way Hit score is rolled, using an average of two numbers. it creates a distinct advantageous result of favoring strong characters (PCs) over weak characters (NPCs), but is too time-consuming to be implemented in a high speed RPG like 4E D&D.
2) Videogames often favor random chance over choice. Look at the skills like Adept and Aether (Ike's "instant win" super-critical). A very common thing in videogames (especially MMOs, actually) are effects that have a random chance of occurring every time you activate an attack, rather than effects that you activate by choosing to activate them. Again, this is a severe difference from 4E D&D, where Adept would be an Encounter Power and Aether would be a Daily Power.
3) One thing videogames really favor is the ability to completely recalculate stats in the middle of battle. The White Pool, Resolve, and Wrath skills all do that in Fire Emblem. In some extremely popular games, characters even change class in the middle of battle, changing their stats and abilities entirely within a single moment. Meanwhile, 4E dropped all the effects from 3E that had this exact consequence.
4) In Fire Emblem, all enemies are built using the exact same mechanics and classes as the heros. Every. Last. One. Again, a point where 4E D&D is diverging from some of its closest videogame cousins.
I could probably go on quite a bit. In many ways, the very fact that 4E D&D is supposedly aiming for "gamism" is actually differentiating it from videogames, which have always continued to hold "simulation of reality" as a high ideal, and often pursue and develop "simulationist" rules. "Love values" and "Factions values", for example, are a major sign of this mindset. You won't see something like this in 4E D&D, but I have played videogames where a character can get a ridiculous bonus to attack power because he just watched his girlfriend get knocked unconscious (and the girl who is his girlfriend is decided based on hidden calculations of who uses what potions on whom and other such minor actions in combat).
Anyways, I also think it is worth noting that everything I just talked about was a matter of analyzable mechanics and mathematical game elements. If you say something is "videogamey", I will analyze it on those merits, not something vague and ephemeral like "feel". I don't care if it "feels" like a videogame, if its mechanics don't resemble those of a videogame, then it is not like a videogame to me, and you won't be able to convince me without talking mechanics.
Final conclusion: 4E is a noticeable divergence from videogames, away from older editions of D&D which resembled videogames slightly more.
WoW Warriors mostly have stuff like Mortal Strike, Heroic Strike, Cleave, Shield Block, Shield Bash. Pretty stock stuff really. The maneuvers you mention definitely have a descriptive flair and spur my imagination. Then again, so do a lot of the powers in 4E *shrug* To each their own.
