SkyRim ReView

   I'm amazed at the nearly unanimous critical acclaim Skyrim gets. First of all, the game is broken and unplayable past a certain point on the PS3. This issue was present in previous Bethesda titles and since hasn't been addressed. I'm a pc/xbox player, so this doesn't bother me much.. but how can a broken game get a 100%  score in most reviews? 

I was tempted to find out. Here's what I've seen so far: 

Compared to the rest of the TES series, Skyrim is a hack&slash arcade game with elements of stealth gameplay, character development and questing. There's lots of exploring too. 

The landscape consists of only 5 settings - grassy tundra, snowy tundra, caves, dwarven ruins and towns - 

which though smartly interweaved, get boring all too quickly. 

There isn't much variety in the enemies you'll encounter, they're the typical dull fantasy assortment: zombies, rats, spiders, skeletons, bandits, trolls, wolves and an occasional overgrown/mutated humanoid. Oh yes - and backwards flying, forward exhaust propelled dragons. (did I say the game was bugged as hell?) 

What I found as much unrealistic as funny, was that the population of bandits roaming the game world outnumbers the population of towns and villages 10 to 1. Every stray piece of architecture scattered around the landscape is full of fur laden criminals and thieves. 

The game boasts nearly 250 quests in nearly half as much locations spread across the land. Most of them lack depth though and seem to follow a simple fetch & kill pattern. Pair that with repetitive dungeon design and a limited texture pack, and soon all the excitement gives way to boredom. Grind, grind, grind and then some more. 

The visuals are simply dated. Although the game's graphics are in some ways a huge improvement on Oblivion, they look less impressive then most 3-4 year old triple-a games. The texture pack is noticeably low-res, the geometry is unrefined and the animations are sometimes worse than in the former TES. I blame the current stagnation in visual quality on the console market - every AAA game that wants to sell has to run on 7 year old hardware. Back in the 80's hardware was a limiting issue too. It inspired developers to be innovative and to create simple yet entertaining games, to put story and gameplay mechanics first. This isn't true for the console market, sadly. Sequels, familiar characters, dated graphics and little innovation. 

Some of the voice acting is terrific, the game boasts names such as Michel Hogan of Battlestar Galactica fame. But then again the dialogues are stiff and unrefined. Some of the acting is obviously done by pure amateurs and probably wouldn't pass quality checks in a mod or an indie game. Above all else, I like the Schwarzenegger impersonation the soldiers make. 

The score is where Skyrim truly excels. The second I heard the first battle theme, I thought of Total Annihilation. Turns out I was right. 

Stability. As of 1.2 the game crashes every 2-3 hours. I've seen occasional visual glitches, but most of the time it seems okay. Some quests fail to trigger, which might be a game breaking event, so save often. Other than that you might get stuck in objects or terrain. Some of the glitches are remediable via console commands on the PC. 

Difficulty is varied. The enemies are intended to get stronger as you level, but that doesn't really work well. First of all, I instantly changed my difficulty setting to 'master', because on the lower settings I killed everyone with one swing.. with everything maybe except a dagger. On the higher settings it doesn't get better, though. I still killed everything with as much as two or three swings. The only noticeable change was they killed me in one or two swings too. So it's a choice between damn easy and exploit-hard (circle strafing and using the AI's terrain unawareness and blatant disregard for safety to your advantage). 

Many might have contemplated the apparent size of the moon in Skyrim. Simply put it's too big and too close. This kind of understanding of physics might explain why objects which you can interact with in the game completely lack mass... (eg. a wooden cart acts as it was made of paper). A moon (or more correctly a twin planet) this size, even with minimal albedo would make nights virtually nonexistent in Skyrim. And given that you can see the northern lights, why is the day and night the same length, as it was the equator? I know it's a gameplay choice in a fantasy world, but the scale of inconsequence is astounding. You might say it's nitpicking, but in my opinion small discrepancies like that take away from the overall mood. You don't FEEL like it's the north. 

Yet overall the game is somewhat entertaining. Some of the quests are really fun. They do lack the depth seen in Morrowind and Oblivion, and some might say they feel more arcade. But the main quest line and a few of the major side quests are a thrill. 

Potential replayability is at first glance high. There's many quests, the map is huge and the skill trees are plenty. After a while it gets clear though, that most of the spells are useless and it doesn't really matter what kind of weapon you swing around as long as it's reasonably lengthy. 

All in all I'd give it a solid 70% I've had more fun with it than with Oblivion and the latest Fallout installments. Even though I have the above mentioned objections, I must say it is less dull. The game isn't unfinished - it is unpolished and needs some serious bug fixing - and that depends on how quickly the developers loose interest and move on to TES6/Fallout4. Let's see how Bethesda handles this.