Review Skyrim!

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

<p>Skyrim has been released and of course the web is getting flooded with perfect reviews. A sample:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ausgamers.com/games/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/review/">Ausgamers, 10/10:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p><span>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It&rsquo;s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I&rsquo;ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few), it delivers on so many varying and engaging levels, it really is unparalleled. Simple things like moving from one destination to another quickly become a day-long event in the real-world, because you&rsquo;re constantly peaking over each knoll, tree-line or riverbed to make out whatever it is that&rsquo;s invariably caught your periphery. Moreover, almost all of these points of interest become major moments in the game, from a player&rsquo;s perspective, in that whether or not they have anything to do with the main quest-line is irrelevant. What matters is the exploratory experience, and this is something Skyrim has in absolute spades.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>...</span></p>
<p><span>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game that will keep hardened gamers playing for months, maybe longer if Bethesda&rsquo;s expected DLC is anything to go by, and right now I can&rsquo;t see myself walking away from the game with anything less than 200 hours of gameplay under my belt. For newcomers, it&rsquo;s an amazing entry point because it doesn&rsquo;t force the series&rsquo; lore down your throat and has a streamlined interface that&rsquo;s easy to manage, but difficult to master (you can also just brush up on said lore through the game&rsquo;s massive library of game-world books). It&rsquo;s easily the best looking and feeling of the developer&rsquo;s lineage and just a thrill to play, really. I can&rsquo;t sell it much more than that.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span>If you can only buy one game this holiday season and want your absolute money&rsquo;s worth, there&rsquo;s no looking past what is arguable the industry benchmark for sandbox and emergent gameplay with player-choice at its helm, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. A work of sheer genius.&nbsp;</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you feel like reading more idiotic drivel along those lines, I can refer you to <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/105659-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-reviews.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#18451">here</a>&nbsp;or <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#18453">here</a>.</p>
<p><span><br /></span></p>

 

[AlaCarcuss]

And yet it's already been topped.

The new Zelda game (Skyward Sword) is getting perfect 10's all over the place.

 

[J_C]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It’s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I’ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few),

A perfect game yet it has flaws. Contradiction much?

has a streamlined interface that’s easy to manage, but difficult to master

It's difficult to master alright, because the HUD is a piece of shit.

 

[kofeur]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It’s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I’ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few),

A perfect game yet it has flaws. Contradiction much?

has a streamlined interface that’s easy to manage, but difficult to master

It's difficult to master alright, because the HUD is a piece of shit.

this

 

[Satan]

and more than half of the codex will play it

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ah, Skyrim has been released.

The gaming press waited in the starting blocks endlessly for this one, and now we will see if the wanking competition can reach a new level, or if Oblivion was already the peak. Expect to see lots of 10-11/10 's.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I can't wait for 2016 when The Elder Scrolls VI: Hammerfell (or whatever it will be called) gets released and the reviews start streaming in with ZOMG!! BEST GAEM EVAR, SKYRIM WAS SO SHIT!!!! THIS IS SO MUCH MORE MAJESTIC!! like they're now crawling out of the woodwork and claiming they never liked Oblivion.

Oh, gaming journalists, you so silly.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I started to read that article above, but it is simply not possible.

Only one thing comes close to the ductus of this encomium: memories of East Germany, when one of the Young Pioneers had to come to the front and say something about how great Socialism was.

 

[thesheeep]

Will buy it sooner or later.

Oblivion was a bad game made mediocre by mods.

Seems as if this one is at least mediocre (maybe even good for what it is???!!!) and may be made good by mods.

 

[Burning Bridges]

There are, actually, some things that I like more than Oblivion. And years ago, I liked Morrowind.

But with idiot UI in its second implementation and the general retardation of the fanbase I would never ever expect this to be turned into a good game.

 

[commie]

Only one thing comes close to the ductus of this encomium: memories of East Germany, when one of the Young Pioneers had to come to the front and say something about how great Socialism was.

The difference was that Socialism was indeed great...


Don't worry too much about the paid reviews though. In a few months ME3 will come out and be the greatest RPG ever and so on. It's fucking retarded but is the way of the world...

 

[felipepepe]

So, take out the "+2 PR Bonus" and it's a 8/10 game.

Sounds plausible, I think that Skyrim with a interface & no health regen mods will be quite enjoyable. Not as an majestic deep cRPG, but more as a sandbox fun, something like the "Just Cause 2 of cRPGs".

 

[kris]

Simple things like moving from one destination to another quickly become a day-long event in the real-world, because you’re constantly peaking over each knoll, tree-line or riverbed to make out whatever it is that’s invariably caught your periphery. Moreover, almost all of these points of interest become major moments in the game, from a player’s perspective, in that whether or not they have anything to do with the main quest-line is irrelevant. What matters is the exploratory experience, and this is something Skyrim has in absolute spades.

It certainly is. you can even do it over several days if you want a longer hike... Oh, he was talking about the game, well they really have to do something special to make me in any way WOWed about it. Is not like a game can compete with the real world in beauty, in fact I think the ones that make gameworlds could learn quite a bit from the real world. Because all I seen in "fantastic" enviroments in games seems to be made by people who only seen postcards from nature.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Its like talking with a chat bot that knows the words you use to speak english, knows how to put together grammatically correct sentences, but still has no idea of what the words *mean*.

Easy to learn but hard to master applied to UI design (and other inappropriate places) could be the codex meme to replace majestic if someone would figure out a catchy way to repeat it.

 

[Roguey]

Prestigious Personal Console Reviewers:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/10/the-e ... im-review/

Your first dragon kill is a profound, weird moment. I rushed to the crashed carcass to loot it, then looked up. The whole town had come out to stand around and stare at the body, a thing as vast and alien to them as a T-rex in a museum.

I tried shooting an ice bolt at it, just to demonstrate it was dead, and the force unexpectedly catapulted the whole thing violently into the distance. A beggar looked at me and said, “Oh sure, just throw your trash around.
...
While we’re on the negatives, physical combat hasn’t improved much. There are cinematic kill moves when your enemy is low on health, but whether they trigger seems to be either random or dependent on whether the pre-canned animation fits into the space you’re in. Too much of the time, you wave your weapon around and enemies barely react to the hits.
...
It fails where the previous games fail: it tries to make your mission feel epic by making it about a prophecy, then does all its exposition in the time-honoured format of old men giving you interminable lectures. The acting is stagey at best, painful at worst. And it adds a new problem: your dialogue choices are now written out in full, and your only options are to react like an incredulous schoolchild to every predictable development. It doesn’t make it easy to feel like a hero.
...
But then there’s an abysmal stealth mission that seems to work on a logic entirely its own: guards spot you from miles away, despite facing the wrong direction. And the boss dragons it keeps throwing at you never get any more interesting to fight – adding more hitpoints just makes the repetition even harder to ignore.
...
Among a lot of minor problems such as issues reassigning controls, there’s glitchy character behaviour that can break quests, and AI flipouts that can turn a whole town against you. And the interface isn’t well adapted to PC: it sometimes ignores the position of your cursor in menus. There’s an update due as soon as the game’s out, but there’s a hell of a lot to patch here. Next time, maybe don’t commit to a specific release day just because it has a lot of elevens in it?
...
The games we normally call open worlds – the locked off cities and level-restricted grinding grounds – don’t compare to this. While everyone else is faffing around with how to control and restrict the player, Bethesda just put a fucking country in a box. It’s the best open world game I’ve ever played, the most liberating RPG I’ve ever played, and one of my favourite places in this or any other world.

In case I’m not getting it across, this is a thumbs-up.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/elder-scrolls-v/1212121p1.html

I was actually a little bit concerned that this time around the franchise might end up dumbed down for the broader audience. Maybe I'm still burned after Dragon Age 2. All the depth we expect seems to be there, though. It just makes sense this time without having to read a sixty page FAQ while sacrificing a black goat at a crossroads at midnight.
...
Companions, on the other hand... Worst case, they're essentially a walking second inventory. Just don't give them anything important -- the game has a tendency to dismiss them when it saddles you with plot-specific NPCs, and tracking them down to get your crap back is already enough of a pain even if they're not lugging around your second favorite sword. It's also nice that you can speak to them and give directions like "go over there" or "stab that guy," but given that you need to bring up a conversation interface every time I don't think it'll see much use. It really could have benefited from another set of hotkeys.
...
I was less than jazzed with how Skyrim handled the PC interface. I like the idea of the Favorites system, but would have preferred to be able to assign specific weapons to the number keys or to generally have a different item interface instead of scrolling through rows of item names -- if you're going to make the game for PC, you might as well find more ways to take advantage of the hardware than simply tightening up the graphics. The interface works really well if you have a gamepad but I felt it was rather cumbersome with the mouse and keyboard.
...
It's worth mentioning that because of the nature of the open-world structure of the game, there are some silly bugs -- usually with NPCs -- that occur, but it's nothing game breaking in my experience. I've also noticed some flashy textures on water, but this could very well be the result of a video card driver update. These types of events don't take anything away from the game for me because I weight these against what the game allows me to do. With so many possible variables going on in the world, there is no doubt going to be a glitch or two that people will come across and that's OK.
...
I'm looking forward to continuing my adventures of the frozen north long after this holiday season, and it's without a doubt one of the best games I've played this year... if not one of the best role-playing games of the last decade.

Spy Guy says: It's great to hear that Skyrim has lived up to all of its potential and more. Personally, I can't wait for the mod community to get their hands on the game and start crafting out even more content. This is a great time to be a PC gamer for sure.

 

[felipepepe]

This is a great time to be a PC gamer for sure.

Bonus WTF since Gamespy said that. Apparently I remenber more of their history than thenselves.

 

[Gragt]

I was actually a little bit concerned that this time around the franchise might end up dumbed down for the broader audience.

No shit.

 

[Jaesun]

100000/10.

Majestic.

 

[Icewater]

Majestic new Skyrim footage,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt5aUdij ... e=youtu.be

 

[tindrli]

truly after 2 hours .. i could give max 4/10 and i was optimistic

 

[commie]

snip.

I love how the first guy actually criticises the game a bit yet it's still 94/100 at the end. I would have thought 'minor' things like the combat in an RPG and dodgy broken quests would be worth more than 6 points out of 100.

No, actually it makes me fucking sick how they get away with shit like this whereas if it was Larian or CDPR or PB, they'd be buttraped and maybe get 65-70/100 at best for doing stuff that Beth and Bio get away with over and over again.

 

[Jaesun]

Also, glad to see Bethesda ship a 100% bug free game, unlike Obsidian....

 

[MetalCraze]

Today 90+ are reserved for MAJESTIC games

Basically if it gets 94/100 it's 4/10 on a MAJESTIC scale

Everything below 90 is reserved for games that might actually be good.

 

[crufty]

I like it so far. Nice touches everywhere. Professional, well produced.

First hour is pretty good by my ultima vii standard. Leaps and bounds better then nwn. We shall see what happens next!

I could nit but wont.

I like the map.

Already, I like the sense of story and urgency. I hope it holds up.

If it lasts for six more hours it will be a better buy then gears of war.

 

[Serious_Business]

I enjoyed that