So, it’s been around about a week since I embarked upon my epic quest to finish all 40 games sat on my shelf before I buy another… In this article, read about my early progress and how I’ve rapidly become bogged down by one of the longest and most challenging games on the 360 already!

RPG’s have been around for decades, featuring on just about every console since the ZX Spectrum. Early examples were often very basic (in appearance) text adventures such as ‘The Hobbit’ or ‘Lords of Midnight’ although as hardware moved on, so did the RPG genre. I still remember the first time I played ‘Eye of the Beholder’ on a friends dads Amiga once and being totally blown away by both its graphics and ambitious, complex gameplay. RPG’s have moved on a lot since then, but not always in the right direction for hardcore fans of the genre, so does Dragon Age II stay true to it’s roots, or pander to EA’s army of casual fans?

Chop, chop, chop. Flip da onions. Chop, chop, chop. Anyone familiar with rhythm action games released around the turn of the last century may remember being instructed to do just that by a certain Parappa the Rapper. Nowadays however, it seems practically every game out there involves the repetitive pressing of a single button to chop, chop, chop your way through countless identikit enemies. Onion flipping may have been replaced by the occasional cut scene or some other distraction, but as with Parappa all those years ago… This rarely detracts from the chop, chop, chop that American audiences seem to love.

As it’s now early 2010, I’m going to stick my neck on the block and say that for me, Dragon Age: Origins (DAO) was the game of 2009 by far. Naturally, I have already donned my ‘Flame Retardent Suit of Warding +1′ on because I know what Pixel-Junkies readers are going to say.