Review: Skyrim

Thursday, December 01, 2011

I haven't played Skyrim to far in yet. I've been waiting on the contruction kit to get released. My first impressions of it weren't very good. I saw it as being developed very lazily, in that there were few improvments over Oblivion. Mostly just the graphics were made more modern. The issues I always had with Oblivion are, horrid looking character models, lack of (online) co-op, finding the quests and characters engaging, horrid UI for a PC game, etc. Skyrim improved on these issues very little, and in some cases not at all.

With the ugly models, well, thats why I'm waiting on the CS to get released, so I can play it without the poorly modeled characters distracting me and pulling me out of the immersion into the game.

Its probably because I've played MMOs to much over the years, but any time I play either game, I do so with some sort of nagging feeling in the back of my mind. Its not completely clear what that feeling is, but my guess is that it just feels like I'm playing an MMO, but I'm the only one on the server. It's kind of a eerie feeling. That and I would find the game SO much more enjoyable if I could just share my experience with someone else.

While not very much better, I did find the story more engaging in the early parts of the game then I did in Oblivion. Quests were easier to find, the main quest line was easier to stay on/follow. I've always felt these TES games could do with a better, more cinematic feel type of approach to the quests and stories. And with Skyrim its closer to that, though could still use a lot of work.

Besthesda is extreme lazy with the PC version. Despite a significant amount of players using the PC version, they just half ass port the console interface and controls to the PC, and nothing ever feels right. Granted, the UI and controls are better this time, but that's just because there better for consoles too (most likely). No effort was put into the PC version to make it better.

I haven't logged in a lot of time. Maybe 10 hours. And as of writing this, I haven't really played it for a few days. Any time I'd otherwise invest into it has been spent on Oblivion. It turns out that Oblivion runs a LOT better for me then it used to. I have virtually the same comp, just a better video card. Seems the video card upgrade is enough, because I can now run Oblivion with everything on max and at a decent very playable frame rate. When I last played Oblivion before there weren't nearly as many mods out as their is now, and a lot go a long way towards making it more playable. Still though, I won't let myself get to involved in that. I'd like to put more time into Skyrim first, before I go back to Oblivion.

So,. while not living up to its epic hype, and certainly not worthy of a game of the year honors, Skyrim seems nice and worth playing if you haven't. But if you would have the same issues with it as I do, I'd recommend waiting a little bit. At least until there are some mods to fix the models, and maybe the UI.