Skyrim Review and Happy Turkey Day!

I like skyrim. I really do. That would be Elder Scrolls 5, for those of you keeping track. I didn't even start playing the Elder Scrolls games until 3, so I'm not really sure what the first 2 were even about, but since Morrowind and Oblivion, it's been an ok series of games.

I say "ok" series because I'm not completely sold on it. Morrowind was too weird for my taste. Travel between towns was accomplished by giant dinosaur rides, at least as far as I could tell, and maybe the game was way too open ended for me to figure out what to do next. I know that's generally a good thing for a game, but I had the damnedest time trying to figure out where to go or what to do to advance the plot, so I generally just ended up killing everything in sight and then quitting and remaking my character. Only to end up doing the same thing with the next guy.

Oblivion was nicer in the sense that you got a solid plot to work through, and everyone generally agrees that it was a very good game. My problems with it were that the companion AI generally sucked, so you pretty much had to wander the scope and breadth of the lands yourself, and all the dungeons were pretty similar. And yes I know, for an RPG, oblivion was a great game and all, but for some reason I could never get past the mage missions, because once I was the Archmage, no one seemed to care. Just felt odd to me.

Skyrim is another improvement in the series, and as I understand it, has the highest metascore of any game ever, a 95.

Let me take a break to explain metascores here. All the gaming magazine and website reviews for a game are totaled and averaged out of a possible 100. So if a website gives a game 4 out of 5 stars, for instance, that's an 80. Bioshock garnered a 94, I think, and was the previous title holder as far as I know. Most of your average games get around a 70 to 80 score, meaning most people liked them but there were flaws. Personally, if I am browsing for games to purchase and I have access to the metascore data (which isn't always accessible because the score is based on reviews, so newer games may not have them yet), I won't get a game with under a 70 score. Games that low are generally just bad. Sure, there may be a few nice parts, but it's either monstrously difficult to enjoy it due to horrendous bugs, or the game itself just blows. Stronghold 3, for instance, managed to get a metascore of 48. Meaning less that half of the people out there who make their living off of giving good reviews to games, could barely stand it.

My first experience with stronghold 3 was rather quite funny. I got the game off Steam (without any research into how good the game was) and for some odd reason, the default language was French. Now as any gamer will tell you, bugs that stop you from playing a game you just bought are the WORST kind. I couldn't even decipher the menu system, since it was all in french (and I don't speak french), but after multiple tries I was able to stumble into the tutorial. There, some french adviser was babbling away, telling me to do things, but since I had no clue what he wanted, I decided to try to figure out how to play on my own. First was camera controls, which were basic enough. The french guy screamed FANTASTIQUE! with enough excitement that I figured he was having an orgasm, so i guess I was doing it right. After figuring out a couple more things, the french guy stopped screaming in pleasure, so I had no idea what to do next. Even after i managed to get the language back into english, the game was worse, because I quickly realized there was no skirmish mode and a ridiculously dumbed-down campaign that firefly studios (FIREFLY STUDIOS IS DA DEVIL!) was trying to pass off as "something to hold us over until the next game in the series." Personally, I think a score of 48 was being generous.

Now, skyrim seems to have earned its 95. Sure there's a few bugs (no game seems to ship without them nowadays) but they aren't too bad. Like any RPG, saves are a must, and skyrim is nice enough to keep 3 autosaves running for you at any given point, so if you screwed something up bad enough, you have 3 past points to return to to try and make it right. And that's on top of any points where you manually save it, so you got yourself covered in the event of getting stuck along the way. The game itself is beautiful. There's mountains, running water, waterfalls, various kinds of vegetation, and I think if they'd done a better job of filling in animals and sounds, it'd almost feel real to me. The game is very quiet. Unless you happen to be standing near a waterfall, you are tromping through absolute silence. I'll be heading across the landscape on my way to a quest, and if I even hear a cricket chirp, it'll be a surprise. No birds, no trumpeting elk or bugling moose (although you see them occasionally), and only a bit of wind noise to keep you company. Of course, if you're near people, it's different. You hear their voices just fine, as long as you are facing them. Turn a little bit to the side and it's like your hearing aid goes out of whack. I know this is an effort to make noise seem directional, and i applaud the attempt, but noise does carry to some extent, so having to face people and try and read the subtitles makes me feel the sound system was designed by the hearing impaired. Which is fine, but I'm not hearing impaired, so why should I suffer?

Also, there's multiple ways to do just about any quest, and I'm not even sure of all of them yet. You can use spells to get things done, armor and blades, giant hammers, or just sneak your way past, assassinating anyone as you please. One of the first things I noticed was that there was no open lock spell, so lockpicking skills are required to get any phat lewt. Which was kind of a letdown to me personally, I mean, I haven't got far in the game yet so maybe there is one? But I am cheating like a whore (as usual) and there's no apparent spell tome for learning anything called "open locks," so as far as I can tell, you'd best learn to be a thief if you want to get gold. I don't know about you, but if one of the biggest selling points is being able to play it any way I want, and I don't want to learn lockpicking, I'm fairly certain i'm going to have a hard time with getting chests open. Of course, they aren't all locked, but since I've only been in a few dungeons at the lowest of character levels, I am sure things will only get harder.

I've heard you can make a living in the game selling the proceeds of your work... like woodcutting and smithing, and it appears you can craft things quite easily, but selling them is another matter, as you have few merchants willing to deal in what you have to offer, and each merchant may only possess 1500 gold to barter with. Given that your average spell tome (one spell each) is several hundred gold, it'll cost you a merchants entire stock in gold just to purchase a few different spells. Weapons are cheaper, of course, and if I wasn't playing in god mode, I might need them, but that also seems to lean you towards fighting your way through the game with blade and shield, and again, for a game that is supposed to let me play the way I want, that's giving one side an unfair advantage. But hey, I'm cheating, so I personally don't need to worry about that.

Another problem I've noticed is that once I've cleared a cave or whatever, it's marked "cleared" on my map. Now, in oblivion, dungeons reset every 3 game days, so there'd always be new things to kill, and I'm not sure if the same thing will happen here, but if all those places I visited are now empty permanently, then this game is not as open-ended as I thought.

Yet another problem is finding places. The quest tree gives you some assistance, and any quest you are after is basically clearly marked on your map, but the map is not very detailed, and actually getting there might be very difficult. I have yet to try out the stables/carts to other towns thing, so maybe that's how I am supposed to be getting from place to place, but actually running there is long, dangerous and often nearly impossible. I fired the game up yesterday, hopped down off a low town wall and instantly died because I forgot I didn't have god mode on, so dropping any kind of distance is fatal in this game where the mountains and large rocks are EVERYWHERE.

For those interested in the story, well, to sum up, the territory of Skyrim, home of the Nords (vikings), is in the midst of civil war when Dragons decide to make an appearance. Which is weird timing, because your character appears to be Dragonborn, which, to the nords, means the same thing as "chief Dragonslayer." Personally, I would have thought Dragonslayer a better and more imposing title than dragonborn, which seems to imply I hatched from an egg, but what do I know? In any case, There's apparently unlimited dragons in this game, which does not equal unlimited fun, but it'll give me something to play until something better comes out.

Now, as everyone knows, I do a grateful thanks every year around this time, mostly for the chance to eat myself into a tryptophanic coma, but also for various other things. This year, I am thankful I have the free time to enjoy the holiday season (a roundabout way of saying I am still unemployed), thankful for skyrim (otherwise my free time would be very boring) and thankful for the tattered remains of what was once my family, who have somehow managed (through various psychoses) to fuck up everyone's lives in addition to their own. Way to go! Dysfunctionality at it's best. Not even sure I have a place to eat turkey at tomorrow at this rate, but hey, i'm thankful I'm not out in the cold freezing my balls off! At least, not so far.

Happy Turkey Day!