The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

 Vast mountains, beautiful rivers and swishing trees? Yep. Skyrim. If you ever read my review of Oblivion which was posted a year or so ago, you'll realize that these sort of games, open world RPGs are my overall favorite. Many people may feel that games of this scape are too large, and don't allow for a good story (What? Really? No.), but I strongly disagree. Now, this game is nothing like the Fable games, or anything like a game of that class. Skyrim has more finesse and is filled with a LOT more epic moments and places. Skyrim also allows you to build your own story, look, everything. Your destiny is yours to control. Want to be a nameless, evil assassin, kill of kings? A gallant warrior rooting out all things evil? Or possibly a sneaky thief with tricks up his sleeves? You can be all that and more.

(My first dragon battle and eventual kill)

 The first thing to realize about Skyrim is that the game is not centered around the main quest. There are what seem like hundreds of side quests and that's not including the random miscellaneous quests that are given by NPCs. If you're not a quest guy, this game still holds miles of terrain for you to explore. The geography switches smoothly, from harsh, snow whipped plains and mountains to open grasslands and forests. Then from the snow and grass to rough hotspring landscape that is bleak and barren. No matter where you travel, the amazing graphics draw you to some new place. I found myself on an important quest when I saw a random windmill. The next thing I knew, I was miles away and battling for my life against some evil bandits. How I got there and where six hours went, I don't know.

Things have been fairly evened out from previous games. I no longer am struggling against seemingly weak enemies at the highest level, as in Oblivion. Skyrim does scale some foes to your level, but others are capped at different points (Ex. You're level 49, enemy is 30.). The scaling did lead to me falling dead many times with giants at a low level. They instantly scale to a super high level and I do believe they stay there (Pro Tip: Don't mess with a sleeping giant. Unless you are above level 20.) 

  The combat has been upgraded to a more realistic and useful setup. You may now dual wield swords (Oh. Yeah. Awesome.), or mix it up, with a spell in one hand and a sword in the other. Any combo works well and in battle, seems right. Sure, it still feels like you're swinging a Nerf sword, but the magic system is much better. Dual weilding spells makes you feel like a Badass. Archery feels the same, but a bit smoother overall. Back to the swords, they do feel like Nerf swords. Hitting enemies doesn't really stagger then and in real life, blood would be EVERYWHERE. Still, the kill animation added to Skyrim do hold up for this flaw, making you forget the sad battle beforehand as you skewer your enemy. 

 Skyrim's engine seems to be holding up well for such a big game. I haven't found any game breaking flaws, except for the one quest... Where the quest item literally fell through the floor. With to way to get it back, the quest is forever in my quest log. The NPC's haven't crashed on me, the game hasn't made enemies disappear. My items haven't gone missing, but my face has... The Arch-mages robes and masks don't mix. Bugs wise, I haven't seen much. The new 1.2 patch did add reverse flying dragons, which was an obvious bug, but I have full satisfaction that this will be fixed within the near future.

 The game's story (Main, side, lore, everything) is fully fleshed out. There are no inconsistencies that I have seen. The plots are scripted with beauty and the lore written with love. If you are even wanting to know more about the Elder Scrolls universe, you can dive into the mounds of in-game books! The only problem with the storyline, was that all of the faction quests seemed to be very short. The dark brotherhood left me with loneliness. *SPOILER* The entire guild died. Except for two people, leaving me to be leader of a small shadow of the real brotherhood. Happy? Nope. Oblivion's ending was much better. At least I had a much cooler base of operations there. The mages guild also looked to be really short. I found it strange that a newcomer to the guild stepped up to be the Arch-mage just after being with the guild for a short while. There were other, more high ranking people there. I didn't really do anything that epic either, just kill some Thalmor dude and avert some unknown danger... The most promising storyline was actually not the main, which is extremely short (At least in the time I played.). The best, seems to be the thieves storyline. It has a totally unexpected traitor, where as in the brotherhood's case I had a feeling that someone would rebel.

Overall, Skyrim is a exceptional game. It blends the deep experience of a... For the lack of a better word, a simulator and the levels and content of an RPG into one sweet, soft, cute, fierce and powerful package. This is probably MY game of the year. Yeah. I just went there and it's not even the end of December. Skyrim is worth it's price, for all the time I've put in it, I've at least doubled what I usually play with a game.
 Overall Score: 10.0
For more awesome Skyrim screenshots directly from me, go here!