Right, so what about 'Dragon Age'?

Now I'm happy to report that Bioware addressed all of these concerns when they made 'Dragon Age'. You'll notice that I say "addressed" and not "fixed", since their way of addressing certain flaws seems to have been to smile and nod and do exactly the same thing.

Where this becomes achingly obvious is in the story. It's not that the plot is bad, it's just that it is so mediocre and predictable that it makes my mind bleed just thinking about it.

You see, there are these bad guys, right, called "Darkspawn" (Darkspawn? Are you kidding me?) who are all evil and stuff and want to take over the world. You are a good guy, who must stop them. It's that simple ? and that stupid.

That said, in true Bioware fashion, the story is actually told very well. This is largely due to the diverse dialogue trees and the excellent voice acting. That's right, I said excellent voice acting. There are some exceptions (particularly, for some reason, amongst the dwarves), but essentially every single character sounds absolutely superb.

I have become so used to laughably bad voice-overs that I was literally astounded that the designers didn't screw this up. The sheer scale of the achievement makes it even more astounding ? the entire population of the game is fully voiced- over.

While Bioware did very little with 'Dragon Age' to make its story more interesting, it has done way too much to address the complexity that plagued its older brother. 'Baldur's Gate's' gameplay was a sprawling colossus, with dozens of races and classes (even dual classes) making things very difficult to get the hang of. 'Dragon Age's' gameplay, on the other hand, is almost childish in comparison.

You can be a human, an elf or a dwarf as far as race goes. As for class, you can be a warrior, a mage or a rogue. Seriously, that's it.

Gone also are the dozens of spells and abilities, replaced by only a handful of either. While I understand the need to dumb down the gameplay, especially for the consoles, this seems to be an unnecessary gutting.

Yet somehow, it works. After about 20 hours of gameplay, I'm still thoroughly hooked. What's more, I've only completed one ? that's right, one ? of the game's apparently four main quests.

It's true that I do spend a lot of time faffing about with side quests, but the game is truly huge. It's worth noting though that it is also fairly linear. Unlike 'Oblivion', where you can wander aimlessly through a mostly empty world, 'Dragon Age' tends to force you down the particular path you've chosen to go. This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, but some might find it irksome.

One of the major features the developers have been pushing in the run-up to the release of 'Dragon Age' has been the "Origins" element of the game. Essentially this just involves a different starting story for all the characters and classes. It's interesting but hardly revolutionary, since it's been done in many other games, especially MMOs, and doesn't make much of a difference to the gameplay in the long run.

I must admit I've been harsh on 'Dragon Age', but that's simply because of the excellence we have come to expect from Bioware and the game's spiritual predecessors because, really, this is a very good game.

The graphics are awesome, even by modern standards, the story is well told and the gameplay is compelling despite being a bit simplistic. It is also extremely well polished. In all my playing time, the game has crashed exactly once and I've noticed very few bugs.

In fact, 'Dragon Age' is so good I can say with great certainty that it is my favourite game of the year. It is only after spending some time with Bioware's latest epic that you realise just how bad 'Sacred 2' and the rest of the RPG fare is. In fact, you will become quite angry at the generally poor quality of the games we have been forced to endure in 2009.

With Christmas just around the corner, when the trickle of terrible games that get released becomes a torrent, it's a thrill to know that there is still a development studio out there that does such good work. And with 'Mass Effect 2' due in January, there really is good reason for Christmas cheer.

9/10

Buy this game: PS3 | Xbox 360 | PC