The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review by: ender44 - 7/10
Here it is, skyrimSkyrim, just the name itself can make gamers everywhere turn their heads. Skyrim was released by Bethesda Softworks in 2011. Bethesda Softworks has released many popular games like "Fallout 3", "Fallout: New Vegas", and the elder scrolls series. Skyrim is the fifth game in the elder scroll series, and it plays in a similar fashion to the previous games. You control one of many races, each race having different abilities and appearances. This game takes a first person perspective but gives you the option to switch to third person. Skyrim is an adventure game with a huge expansive world filled with enemies and friends. Your weapons for combating enemies will be various swords, axes, and staffs that you find around Skyrim, your character can also use magic, this needing to be leveled up in the skills section.
Gameplay: As previously stated, this game takes place in a first person view, but you have the option to switch to a third person view. While your in first person mode, you take control of the two hands of your character. You have the option of carrying a two handed weapon, which do more damage than most weapons, but at the same time you have to use both hands and the weapon swings slower than other weapons. If you use a one handed weapon you can use magic or a shield with your other hand. You control each hand with the right and left triggers. In third person mode, you will see the back of the character. It is more difficult to pick things up and fight in this way, in my opinion at least, but its more useful for walking around the overworld, as its easier to see where your going. And this is a minor complaint, but whose idea was it to make Y the jump button! Its the A key in almost every single game that has jumping, so why confuse everyone! You don't need to have one key only for picking things up and talking to people, just make it the action button! This confused me for the majority of my play time, and its just annoying. And other tedious things are there, B brings up your skill menu, something you should really expect start to do. Otherwise, the gameplay is fluent, but monotonous. See an enemy, right trigger, dead. See another one, right trigger, dead. They could have thrown in some more difficult enemies, or made some other things you can do with your weapons. The only thing you can do with your sword is swing it, and that gets boring for things like dragons, which take a long time to kill, its just swinging and swinging.
Graphics: All I can really say is...meh. The game looks great, don't get me wrong, but the graphics don't excite me in any way. They could have done much more with the games overall appearance, and the final product left me a bit unsatisfied. I found them to be bland, and the graphics seriously made me bored. I would say the best looking thing about this game is the various characters. The different races all look fantastic, though most that you will see are just humans. The enemies especially, such as the saber tooth tigers, trolls, and dragons, all look great and made you feel like you were a part of a new world.
Sound: Again, not a huge fan here. The music is either as generic as it comes, or just downright boring. Sure, some of the battle tunes were alright, but having some nice tunes cannot be at the expense of the music for the rest of the game. As for overworld music, I can only remember some of it to be honest, I mean to say that it was either nonexistent for the most part, or just so boring I forgot about it. You get different lackluster tunes for different lackluster areas.
Addictiveness: This part isn't too high for two reasons, though one of them isn't really the games fault. The first reason I would be too likely to play this game again is the fact that it is the largest and longest game I have ever played. I would elaborate more on that, but I will handle it when I get to depth. The next reason is, its incredibly monotonous for me. You spend an immense amount of time in the lackluster overworld while you mindlessly hit the right trigger to kill enemies.
Story: Yet again, its pretty boring. This story is immense, so this is not going to cover everything that goes down. You pick and design our character, then your brought into the story. Your in skyrim, and as you are about to be executed for being mistaken as a rebel, a dragon comes into the city and starts spraying fire like there is no tomorrow. You escape executed and then you make your way to the city of whiterun. There you tell the jarl that dragons have returned to Skyrim. He enlists you and some various soldiers to find and kill the dragon. After doing so, you absorb the soul of the dragon and find out that you are dragon born, a group of people who speak the dragon language naturally. These people can also use various shouts, which you obtain from finding word walls and from absorbing the souls of dragons that are found randomly in skyrim. You meet the graybeards, who teach you various shouts. And there, there is still a lot of story to go through and its pointless for me to write it all out. The point of this game is to rid Skyrim of the dragons once and for all. And the story is great, seriously. Its huge and fun to watch. The monotony of the whole game can bring the story down, but its still great.
Depth: You wouldn't believe how long this game is. It took me two years to beat that whole thing, I got it a month after its release date and I didn't beat it until last week. I mean, I played it on and off, but the only game I have clocked more hours on is majoras mask, and I have beaten that game almost nine times! There are tons of weapons, characters to interact with (and about a third of them took an arrow to the knee), and enemies to fight.
Difficulty: Only one thing got me here. It wasn't misleading controls, or dragons, it was getting lost. I got lost in the overworld incredibly often, and its even worse in caves. The compass system is horrible and its so easy to get lost or have no idea where your supposed to go. And that's just bad game design, I don't want to spend hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go.
So yeah, Skyrim is an innovative and ambitious title, but when you look at the barebones of this game, there isn't much to see. I know plenty of you like the game, but personally I do not, so please don't post about why I should like the game or anything of such nature.
See ya
Graphics
7 Sound
5 Addictive
5 Depth
10 Story
8 Difficulty
4
User Notice 
