Dragon Age: Origins

It's hard to review Dragon Age: Origins for one very, very important reason: its value depends entirely on how positive you are about role playing games. It's not simply because it is a RPG, but because it's so close to the Platonic Ideal of a RPG that it's damn near an archetype of the genre.

The story is a little fantasy-by-numbers. A kingdom overrun by "darkspawn" enlists you, the player, into its secret society of specially trained knights to free the land, with about a billion side quests thrown in. You can decide to be either human, elf or dwarf (with all the Lord of the Rings options that implies), which changes certain elements of the setting. But generally it's all about doing quests, customising our character's abilities, upgrading weapons and trading items. While the action is fluid, a lot of the game is the inventory-shuffling that should be familiar to anyone who's ever played a BioWare-designed RPG (especially Mass Effect). If this is your sort of thing, you're going to have a lot of fun; honestly, expect 30+ hours per game (assuming you don't dawdle on the side quests). Anyone not already into RPGs, however, should probably start elsewhere.

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