I think Skyrim alone has my agenda booked for a few years and I wish I was joking but I'm not.
It's hard if not impossible to review the game without comparing the game to its predecessor, Oblivion. And in many aspects the game feels and plays much like Oblivion 2.0 than a truly new game.
The graphics and animations are a much improvement, and gone are the outdated and dreadful faces from Oblivion. That is not to say that Skyrim is a next-gen game however. Graphically it's a very pretty game especially in its depiction of the wild northern wastelands. Unfortunately animation-wise melee still feels artifical and clunky. The game's incorporation of finishing blow cinematics helps that somewhat, especially on larger foes such as dragons but often it's not very seamless when it comes to normal foes.
Unfortunately what Skyrim does not succeed in improving from Oblivion, is its stupid AI and pathfinding. NPC's either have an IQ similar to that of Skyrim's temperature. or they were all dropped on their heads as an infant and then promptly used as some kind of Nordic basketball substitute. This is even worse if you manage to have a henchman. If you play as an archer they will invariably run in front of you to a point where an arrow magnet would drop to its knees for in worship. Half the time they will run away to fight some thing (god knows what) half the map away. At some point I noticed my companion Lydia had been absent the last few hours I played. Probably chasing some vampiric butterflies or a similarly retarded aberration of the mind.
To be honest your henchmen are so stupid that they only have one practical use: As a glorified mule to carry *my* dungeon swag.
And then of course there's the crashes, errors and the often-hilarious infamous Bethesda glitches. As mentioned before at some point I lost Lydia, and later I decided to have a go at marriage. I obtained the quest to attend my own wedding ceremony. Piece of cake I thought, and I set the waiting timer to 24 hours.
I was greeted by two men spawning at the door, with in their midst a naked woman's corpse: Lydia
"Honey, I can explain" I muttered to myself as I saw the dooming "You have failed the quest" dance in front of my eyes.
Luckily I was able to drag her corpse to a side-room, including a priest telling me "To stop that" during my blasphemous act, and try the wedding a second succesful time.
And then there's the character that got an arrow stuck in its head which was more relentless to remove than a hobo from an atm machine:
The game's biggest flaw though is its User Interface. A UI is supposed to be practical and intuitive. Those are exactly the values that Skyrim's UI is lacking. On the contrary it's clumsy and unresponsive. It's so bad that it becomes impossible at times to click on the right item in your inventory.
Another failure is how the game introduces "Favorites". They are like a custom skill bar except you need to press "Q" and then move your cursor to the right magic skill or item. This also pauses the game.
So, why not use a skill bar in the first place with an integrated hotkey ability?
Beats me.
Overall though Skyrim is a lovely and addictive game. Where Bethesda truly outshone itself in however is the complexity of Skyrim's open world. Skyrim is a northern landscape encompassing glaciers, vast white mountains and tundras. It's an immersive world that at this point can't be equalled by any other game. It's definately the best installment so far in the Elder Scrolls saga.
It's a game where you are encouraged to explore and investigate and be rewarded for that by finding new dungeons, a great amount to detail to Skyrim's beauty and the ability to create your own story.
Skyrim is a game where each gameplay is vast and unique. It's a game that even with its many flaws, and at times even thanks to its flaws, is a game of beauty, unrivalled in its genre.
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