See you in 6 months England…
Hmmmm. I hate to be one of those guys who declares that gaming is brainwashing minds, but The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sets a new level of immersion, one that perhaps was made to highlight just how unextraordinary life is. As my palms burn with fire atop snow battered mountains on screen, I glimpse out my window and witness a torrential downpour battering an OAP. I could be slicing away bandits and saving rabbits from wolves, not blankly staring at Microsoft Word trying to encapsulate the past 40 hours of questing. It has grasped me into its glorious world and, if it wasn’t for the lack of Domino’s Pizzas and new episodes of House, I probably wouldn’t come back. 
Skyrim is a nation torn in two, and everywhere you walk there’s tension mounting in a political tug-of war. The Stormcloaks have caused a rift amongst the inhabitants by assassinating the High King, and the Empire is losing it’s hold on the region. If the power struggle isn’t worrying the inhabitants, it’s boring them to death, and some much needed horror comes in the form of the rebirth of dragons tearing up the land no matter who the inhabitants support as Civil War looms. Skyrim needs a hero, and it’s convenient that you’ve stopped by. As you step foot into Skyrim and catch your first glimpse of the horizon busting landscape, it can be quite overwhelming. Mountains spiral high that yearn for a climb, the snow coated lands crunch underneath every step, and should you get sick of jogging, you can take a glistening downwards stream to speed you up, with salmon slapping your face as you ride the waves. Should you get sick of the freezing cold wastelands, summery plains await filled with farms and mills to visit and even work on, whilst boggy marshlands home to constant downpours blurs the line between game world and reality even further if you live in the UK. Small villages are filled with locals who comment on your progress as you stride through and each major capital feels unique in design with architectural flair and back-stories. Become attached to a particular town, and you can work up to become its Thane, potentially making you a house-owner and adding even more activities to your list.
Amongst the additions that have made gamer’s weak at the knees for the past year; DRAGONS!
Almost as quickly as you enter, your quest log soon fills to the brim with tasks from slaying bandits to playing tag with the local kids. You can choose to dig straight into the main story and find out how the Dragon’s have re-emerged, you can join a faction and finally unite Skyrim under the influence of the Empire or the native Stormcloaks, or you can simply wander and let adventure find you. Every time you embark on a quest, several more seem to find you, meaning the overly-ambitious and thorough could find their in game hours reaching into high double digits before they even glimpse into the main storyline. Guilds occupy every corner of the map, from the noble yet bloodthirsty ‘Companions’ to the shadowy assassins of ‘The Dark Brotherhood’, there’s plenty of ways to make your mark on the land becoming as glorious or as infamous as you want. The world is an impeccable beauty, and all the more immersive when you spot a deer, crouch down and watch it have a drink whilst shushing to everyone around you admiring the cuteness. However…everything isn’t necessarily vowing for a pat on the head, rather a jaw around your face/sword in your chest/arrow in your eye/Vamperism in your veins. Thankfully, you can now apply extra doses of carnage on foes thanks to your use of a second hand. Swords and shields are so last century, as more tantalising opportunities open up like wielding dual-maces and turning both your palms into spouts of lightning are introduced to your imagination. As such, you can create some tactical combinations to help you out as you traverse the land, allowing the experimental to wield a spell in one hand and melee weapon in the other if they wish. As your avenues of execution have increased, you’re permitted to dabble in such various feats of inhabitant slaying in any which way you like. Rather than halt you at the starting block and force you into dwelling on libraries of skills pick from and limit yourself to, Skyrim gives you the chance to tinker with each attribute evenly until you figure out the warrior you want to be. A variety of 18 skills are split into three categories. The Warrior for more brutal brawling based attributes, The Mage for magic classes and The Thief for stealth based skills, and each unique skill such as ‘Lockpicking’ or ‘Destruction Magic’ improves the more you use it. You may think as you enter that you’ll be bounding around dual knifing everything to extract enemy torsos, but you soon find that you actually prefer hiding in the shadows before lighting up whoever should stumble upon you with 3rd degree burns. It’s a much more natural method of progression and improves on Oblivion’s system ten-fold as you won’t be face-palming yourself for mistakes made right at the beginning. 
As you level up overall, you earn perks a la Fallout 3, and can use these on your most effective skill to give you an edge with your preferences. These don’t have to be spent as soon as you acquire them, they can be stockpiled until you reach that point where you really want to craft your character into a definitive hero of Skyrim. It’s impossible to earn enough perks to fill the 200+ slots, and to the OCD amongst you who want to roam the game with god-like powers, it’s a tad disappointing. However, your options aren’t severely limited, and you have enough to mould your character into a specialised hero, and makes them all the more personal to you. Amongst the additions that have made gamer’s weak at the knees for the past year; DRAGONS! A much needed fiery cherry placed atop a sugary moist fantasy cake, it’s hard to imagine how the world was without these fiercest of lizards. Much like the world’s deadly critters, dragons pop up at any time and swoop overhead making your controller vibrate as the wind almost lifts you from the ground. As the beast lands and sizes you up as a snack, you can’t help but feel epic unsheathing your weapon and charging forth from its gaze and into its jaws. Although dragons can vary in type, from standard fire breathers to frosty ice ones, their attack patterns usually remain the same in each battle, so your tactics are never really called into question against the high HP monoliths. However, you heart still jumps in excitement (or sinks with dread) when one flies straight for your sword. Why the hell would you face up to the human gobbling tyrants? As a Dragonborn, you can extract the souls from defeated dragons and use them as an extra trick up your sleeve. Exploring the land and learning ancient words from stones. These shouts range from blasting assailants away, slowing down time or even summoning a dragon to fight along your side. Though basically uber-magic, they’re a handy life-line should you get into sticky situations and handy should you have not saved in a long while, and collecting more words to unlock more shouts and make them even more powerful can become rather addictive. 
Although the doors to Tamriel’s underworld were firmly shut in Cyrodiil two hundred years ago, one of the previous instalments’ plights have squirmed their way in; glitches. Floating mammoths, corpses sledging across flat terrain and a giant’s club striking down on my head so hard…that my body launched to the stars highlights some of my more confusing moments in Skyrim. The imaginative of you out there will most likely improvise some physics busting theory that would make sense in a fantasy realm. Although Skyrim screams forth epicness, it sometimes lacks the polish to take the design to the next level. Swaying your sword into the bodies of enemies doesn’t have any friction to it, it’s just like slicing through air, and there’s some slow down should you misbehave and force a whole town’s guard into attacking you. There’s thankfully no game breaking glitches lurking in save files, and these daft interludes don’t destroy the experience, but can certainly dent that phenomenal immersion that the game builds up so well. These rarely occur though, and patches are on the way to sort out the occasional bugs. Wander into any town, and you’ll notice the game engine has improved your social life…in the fictitious wonderland. No longer does you face zoom into others as you examine every uncanny valley feature on their face. The cast of voices have broadened, meaning you’ll be running into like-sounded citizens less often, and it feels like each character who dabbles in your inquisitions has a flair of persona behind them, all the more important should you grace the land looking for marriage. Even in a one-to-one, you can hear citizens strolling past talking about the current state of the nation, their fears about surrounding troll infested caves, their dismay as you litter the streets with unwanted garments and children debating how to dress a dog up as a giant spider. 
Although Skyrim strides past Oblivion whistling ‘Anything You Can Do…’, it still doesn’t hesitate to learn from its brethren in certain facets, namely the soundtrack. Peaceful and slight acoustic sounds pluck your ears gently as you do a bit of shopping, whereas dramatic booms and echoes emanate should you discover a cave, indicating a pretty nasty threat dwells deep in its depths. Face off against a dragon, and the big guns are brought out, with a booming orchestral choir chanting at your imminent victory whilst you strike down the beast with. The score perfectly tends to your every step, and if nothing else launches at you with its epic proportions, the soundtrack certainly will. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will leap out from the screen, latch around you and squeeze the life out of you until it has spawned it into its own world. Even if you were suspecting you’d be leaving the realms of reality for a while and kicked your job in for your imminent departure, your things to-do list soon turns into its own novel, and you soon find a new career of adventuring in the beautiful continent. With the land in destructive chaos thanks to the Dragons and in political turmoil down to the Civil War, every crevice of Skyrim feels like it’s screaming for a hero, and it’s incredibly hard not to answer the call. Skyrim can be a stellar action-RPG where you rule over the land with pride. Hell, Skyrim can be a book sorting simulator should you wish. The question isn’t whether it’s worth your money because it most certainly is. It’s whether you have the time to accommodate it.
The Bad: Rather bizarre glitches can occasionally infiltrate, Combat lacks some polish
Gold Y Award