Happy 2010 everyone! First of all apologies for not writing anything for a month but I've had a broken wrist so it has been difficult to do anything. To start off the new year I'm going to be reviewing Dragon Age: Origins, if any of you are fans of the RPG category you really should consider...

When we first saw Dragon Age at E3, we walked away skeptical, grumbling at the rough graphics and odd focus on character interactions that bordered on high school level drama. Compared to the butter smooth E3 demo for Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age looked like it would end up being the black sheep of the...

Wonderfully detailed world; amazing story; memorable characters and party interaction

Dragon Age: Origins is arguably the year’s most highly-anticipated RPG release. Expert storytellers BioWare have made no effort to disguise the fact they consider Dragon Age: Origins to be the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, but the game also owes much to sister title Knights of the Old...

Ferelden is a vivid world and one that BioWare have paid painstaking attention to realising: flourishes are ready to greet you at every unexpected turn; The game has a sweeping mythical narrative that will soon engross the player.

Persistent scaling doesn't always work: The occasional fight is trivial, others will induce frequent reloading; Graphics smack of console friendliness; The game's gifting system is not particularly inspired.

Dwarves. We already know what dwarves are. Dwarves are short, but strong. They make for good warriors and live underground. We already ...

About 80 hours of RPG goodness; Memorable characters; An excellent combat system

Difficulty can be frustrating at times; Story feels a little generic at times; Doing it in your underwear

I believe 2009 to be one of worst years for PC gaming in a long time. While console gamers have fared better, PC gamers have had to put up with one poorly executed console port after another. Is there no hope? Where is our knight in shining armor? Look there! On the horizon!

Rich, deep setting; chess-like tactical combat; brings role playing back to the RPG

No multiplayer; player's character lacks a voice of his own; very challenging gameplay

Bioware and RPG's have the sort of bond that is nigh on inseparable, so when Dragon Age was first announced it quite rightly sent shivers through the gaming community. It's been a while coming and being granted the title as "successor to Baldur's Gate" expectations were obviously rocketing to over...

8 /10

Life is full of decisions. The outcome of those decisions will shape you and the people around you. It can bring happiness, sadness, joy and fear. Some decisions can be as easy as deciding what colour socks to wear, while others can be as hard as deciding who will live and who will die.

The characters exude life and soul despite the game's clunky animations and less than stellar voice acting – that's the power of Bioware's effective writing. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the environments: all the rote forests, castles and dungeons tend to blur into a single...

Bioware has quite a résumé as an RPG developer. They have released blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's been several years since Bioware built an RPG around the Dungeons & Dragons PC style of the genre – a style which they themselves set standards for with the Baldur's Gate series.