January 29th, 2012

Okay. So Skyrim has been out for a couple of months now and the full hype of the game has worn off, so its time to truly play it and see how it holds up. The new fighting system is a great improvement on previous games. Battles are now more free flowing and feel quite natural. The ability to now dual-wield weapons is a great idea, but it feels like the other weapon is there to look pretty while your main sword is tearing the local bandits a new one. If Bethesda could incorporate a way to make more than one weapon swinging at a time then the whole thing would fit together a lot nicer. The new magic setup seems to balance out the game now. In previous games you could make spells based on what magic you already know. This however lead to a character hoarding all their gold so they could make a spell that kills everything in a town at once. In Skyrim you now buy or find books that are leveled to the skill of your magic. This now means my faithful spell the "Elf-Raper" could no longer be made but allowed for magic to be an almost mundane thing. The stealth system seems to only have slight polish compared to the previous games. But that can be over looked as I enjoy being able to stand in the middle of the town square while sodomizing a local guard with a dead cat and his only response being something totally unrelated.

I have to say that I am quite disappointed at the character creator in Skyrim. This is mostly because i'm used to having Bethesda games give me a big detailed list of things to choose from. However in simplifying the character creator the game is a lot easier to start and get into. This allows new players a good start into the Elder Scroll universe without the hassle of looking up game guides or having somebody to hang over your shoulder for the first 50 hours of gameplay. I tested this myself and gave this game to a girl who is a light gamer. She played for a week without asking me what any of this stuff was. The first questions came soon after, but these were very in depth questions about the canon and the universe this game is set in.
A big problem that games seem to have nowadays is that the gameplay and the story are too segregated to make any form of connection. I am happy to say that Skyrim does have an even flow from one to the other. However the dialogue boxes can become bothersome at times, but I do not mind that because the NPC's aren't trying to stare me to death with lazer vision anymore. Through all of this I do believe that Skyrim will stand the test of time. If not for the amazing landscapes and the beautiful story then it shall be remembered for the amount of memes that have seemed to be birthed from it.

PS. If it weren't for the achievements then I would have ignored all the civil war side quests because both sides seem to be as stupid as two dogs flying a plane.