It might look like the prodigy to modern gaming, but does it play the way a prodigy to gaming would? By all means, this is a fun game, i enjoyed my short 40 hours in the world of Skyrim, but many things began to irk me as I progressed further through the game. And I could not help feeling disappointment in having such a high expectation for this game. In fact, it was the only game i was looking forward to this season. So i write this review as a fan boy of Bethesda, I like the company, they have made quality games in the past, and i was expecting a certain level of quality in Skyrim. This review might contain spoilers, in which case i will leave those points till last, and will mention it as well. Regardless, Skyrim is a good game, it's visuals, appealing. This written review will be indepth critical analysis of the game, where as my video review will focus on what i loved about my Skyrim experience, so i do recommend watching that review for all the good things with the game.

My rating for the game is 8.9 out of 10. I understand other people would rate it differently, I'd love to rate it higher, but this game is simply, not perfect. It is awesome, just not perfect.

I'll start with introducing Skyrim. It is the next instalment to the Elder Scrolls Series which is set in the continent of Tamriel. The Empire was defeated some 30 in game years before the start of the events in Skyrim, by the Aldmeri Dominion, an Altmer faction which see themselves as the original rulers of this continent before Man came to it. The province of Skyrim has been plunged into civil war between the Imperial forces and the Stormcloak faction led by Ulfric Stormcloak. This civil was caused by the outlawing of the worship of Talos, a human God, and Patron of the Nords, also being the first Emperor, because it was on the condition in the peace treaty signed by the Imperials. You start the game as a prisoner just about to beheaded, when a dragon flies down from the mountain peaks above and disrupts the execution. From there the player goes through a tutorial where he emerges from the cave into skyrim as a free man, ready to pursue his ambitions.

Skyrim boasts, in my opinion, the best long distance rendering that i have ever seen. The horizon doesn't look like a flat painting, but it is an ingame location, and particularily a location you can step foot on. Playing on graphic card that should cover recommended specs, (i can only play on minimum without it causing overheat issues, crashing to desktop or the just plain annoying, black screen of death, for some odd reason), so i could not experience first hand the best graphics skyrim has to offer, luckily enough, I have friends who are also fans of Skyrim, and one thing i noticed when looking at a comparison between high and low settings is that there is little difference in textures, and shadows. Atleast the shadows were being generated properly, i said to myself, as i stared at my computer struggling to make proper shadows. Not to sound like I'm complaining, it did look great. Models were finely detailed, dragons looked bad ass, character models were high res. There was obviously more work put into models then terrain. Textures (atleast on my setting) of trees, water, rocks, buildings, didn't look that great up close, at a distance though, they faired better. I wasn’t impressed by these textures, it was like looking at a retextured Oblivion, New Vegas looked better.

To fit Skyrim on the 360 disc, it was heavily compressed, that being said, this compression of textures, meshes, and sound, does affect the quality. The game compensates for this by generating higher detailed textures as you approach them, and as you walk away the textures lose quality. Distance generation can be modified, something rare for a console port, in fact, having the ability to change visual settings already has made this one of the best console ports i've played. Which brings me to the next point, because it is a console port, this game has a fair amount of bugs and technical issues when dealing with the PC or ps3 copy. Just to launch the game, i had to change my default sound setting, and only then could i start the game. My first experience with Skyrim wasn't very enjoyable, as it remained unplayable for three days after release. I was plagued by constant crashes whenever I looked at the map, or it would hit me randomly within a few minutes to half an hour of playing the game, requiring me to hard reset my computer. I am unaware of what could be causing this, as it is only happening with Skyrim. Another issue in regards to visuals i was experiencing, was character models flashing, and flashing shadows. These graphic bugs did ruin immersion and the gameplay experience.

Another feature that Skyrim boasts is the huge broad range of things to do. I am a person who does enjoy doing things just as much as any other guy, but it got to a tedius point in Skyrim. Once you manage to become the head of almost every faction you come across, there is no real sense of accomplishment and this does not impact on the game. Even as Harbinger of the Companions, all i got was quests in regards to pest control, as Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, I got contracts which i guess... is alright, for Mage’s guild and Thieve’s guild, fetching quests. What surprised me was how short these major quest chains were, you rise from being the new guy to the highest position available in a few in game days, or a few quests. This is, what i believe, is the price to pay for having unlimited quests and a huge variety of things to do. There is no real choice in matters, and even then, your choices lack depth, despite being the last dragonborn, people arn’t aware of your presence, their dispositions don’t change when you become the leader of a faction, or even finish the main story line, not even a statue. Again, Oblivion and Fallout 3 delivered more in regards of quests and story then Skyrim did.

Skyrim is also the first Elder Scrolls game that uses the companion feature, taken from New Vegas, and in all honesty, it isn’t that great. Companions always get in the way, give your position away, and most of the time die at your hands. Pathfinding is mediocre, and the only real use i found for companions is as a mule to carry all my things. I stayed away from using companions, but in a short space of time, that being said, 5-6 hours, i did run around with Lydia as a companion, as well as Cicero. This brings me onto combat. Skyrim hasn’t improved much on the Oblivion combat system, the only major change to combat is the addition of death animations. Combat is better in Fallout 3 and in New Vegas, I was even expecting the damage allocation system to be introduced into the Elder Scrolls series, after all, shouldn’t an arrow to the head do more damage then an arrow to the shoulder? Combat is bland, there is no strategy, and enemy AI just runs at you and swing their weapons, if they have a bow or ranged magic, they do stand in the distance, but even then I have had occasions where these range enemies run at me head on.

The major difference between Skyrim and earlier Elder Scroll games is the removal of the stat system, and the introduction of the perk system. Each skill has a specific perk tree which improve upon that skill. This i found was an interesting addition, when the player leveled he/she gained a perk, and a choice to increase their health, mana, or stamina by 10 points. There is an addition of some skills, such as smithing, Speech accomodates both mercentile and speechcraft skill. As mentioned earlier, these trees build on the skill, for combat skills they add more kill animations, more damage, etc, same with shields, and armour. There are 251 perks in game, and 18 skills between them. There is a soft cap for the perks past 50, so you only get to allocate around that many perks. They have made it simpler then previous games, in the sense of skill allocation and leveling up. It means that the character starts as a blank state, and can be specialised in a specific direction.

The Ui in game resembles that of Apple products, it is tedious to work with on the pc versions of the game, as half the time the mouse was not being registered, and scrolling through the list does require some getting used to. It was a bid to make the ui simplified and efficient, and it is, i cannot argue with the result. It is aesthetically pleasing, it doesn’t suite the game though. For example, the journal has been simplified into a list of objectives, with no added information or fluff to it, this is a break from the Elder Scrolls tradition as the games were centered around fluff and lore.

This game had potential, but i cannot get past that feeling that Skyrim is a rushed console port. In which case, I would like to play it the way it was meant to be played, that is, on the Xbox, but after experiencing so much of the game, i cannot go back to it. In the minimal time i got a chance to play, i did experience the game with a mage, a rogueish character, and a warrior base character. Skyrim is one of those games where I recommend having multiple play throughs as a different type of character and not to do everything available on the first play through, the world is mean’t to be constantly thriving, things happen on the other side of the map from you, and you do experience events which, in all honesty, were awe inspiring. The game itself is a brilliant idea, but the execution could of been improved. I was hoping for a game that would create a new benchmarks for RPGs and open world games, sadly, it didn’t. This is one disappointed Elder Scrolls fan.