The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Good
Well, I suppose the most obvious strongpoints of this instalment, as with its predecessor, are the graphics and the musical score. For a good dozens of hours (I think I spent almost 100 hours on this) I was so taken with the awesome visuals of Skyrim that I really did not mind so much all the drawbacks in the gameplay section.

I haven't seen any first-person action RPG looking as gorgeous as this one before on my trusty old laptop. And I didn't even play on the highest level of detail, so that's saying something. I remember how grateful I was that Skyrim would run at all on my computer, and was astonished to realise it ran quite fluently, even with the high texture pack installed.

Also, Bethesda finally managed to make the non-player characters look more vivid in their expressions and movements. This is a point which up to this instalment has prevented me to take a liking to Bethesda games (with the notable exception of Fallout 3 maybe).

The Bad
The story is a false pretense luring the player into the amazing atmospheric charms of the game. In the beginning I really thought I would make a difference or it would be a joy to discover everything there is and grow into Skyrim and its history.

In fact, there is ample opportunity to do exactly that. As usual, there is an abundance of history to be uncovered through the myriads of books lying around in places. Unfortunately, after having completed a couple of important story quests, I realised that no-one around me wherever I go really gave a shit about my achievements. Trespassing NPCs would use their same old lines over and over no matter what. And there's not even an option to prevent them from babbling away there shit, which is particularly annoying when you're in the middle of a conversation.

Although it is possible to configure some of the default controls, you still can't configure everything, and what's more confusing is that standard keys like E and TAB or R get different functions in different parts of the interface. Also, even if you change the R to the space tab, on screen it will still show the default key. That's rubbish and poorly thought out.

And then I've been really annoyed by the harvesting uselessness. I loved to harvest as much and as diverse a plant as I could, then finally got into the apothecary in Whiterun to discover she had only three recipes or so, and for these I was lacking two-thirds of ingredients. I mean, fuck that! I sold everything I had to her and ditched this aspect of the adventure.

The Bottom Line
Appealing FPRPG, but gets tedious after a while.