The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3)

 Ok, I know this review is late – but that’s because I’m still playing it! The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action RPG developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks on November 11, 2011. There was a lot of excitement about this game and the critics’ reviews were high; very high (92-94 on Metacritic.com depending on the platform). There has been some panning of the game on PS3, but on the whole, the gaming community itself has also responded with much love for this, the fifth installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise. As for me, like I said, I’m still playing it. I’m well over 150 hours in and still nowhere near an ending that I can see.

The basic plot and concept of the game is that your character is one of the fabled dragonborn – the only ones who can truly kill a dragon. You start the game as a prisoner of the Empire and are guided into the open world. And please understand me when I say that Skyrim is both truly an open world and an immense one. As your character progresses in power through the main story and all of the side content, he is inexorably drawn towards a confrontation with more and larger and deadlier dragons. This game has a lot to offer, but it’s really all about the dragons and we all know it.

I hear that Skyrim plays much better on PC, but for games like this, I truly enjoy playing them from my easy chair on my large TV screen. Yes, the load screens are slow on the PS3 (and on the Xbox 360 or so I hear), and yes, there has been at least one patching snafu (i.e., dragons flying backwards and elemental resistances not working), and then there was that whole memory file size thing on the PS3 (as in there was no limit and so it so big it made the game crash after a few hours). But in spite of all that, it’s still a fantastic game.

The sound and graphics and the game’s score are all three top-notch. I haven’t seen a better looking video game in quite a while. The vistas in Skyrim are breathtaking. And the sound and music work together to both build and ease the tension as you move from one encounter to another. The textures on the monsters and on your character are likewise rendered extremely well. The amount of detail that went into Skyrim simply staggers my mind.

Yeah, yeah, I know. All of that is nice, but is it fun? Hell yes – killing dragons is fun, Virginia! The first time you fight a dragon it’s exciting and a bit fearful. The second time still get my blood pumping. And so does the third and the tenth and the hundredth! And the firs time I fought two dragons at once, my wife just stared at me because I was grinning like kid in a candy store with fat wad of cash. Dragons in this game are angry and mean and they want to hurt you! And that’s only part of why killing them is so very satisfying.

In the end, I’m going to give Skyrim a whopping 9.66 out of 10. Yes, there are a few minor issues (like the encumbrance rules, which suck), but there is some much packed into this game that it simply overpowers all of its flaws. There are so many hours of gameplay and replayability in this game that it’s just sick. Skyrim is totally worth the asking price. If you don’t have this game on one platform or another, then please, just go buy it. It’s totally worth it.