Skyrim Review - Here be dragons. And a crap ton of other stuff!

The cart rolls into the Imperial camp. I look at my fellow prisoners and take solace in the fact that at least I’ll be dying alongside someone famous, the rebel leader Ulfric Stormcloak. Hey, if you gotta die then at least you can go out alongside a big shot and not just pickpocket Johnny Noname.

The first prisoner is brought forward and, with the sickening sound of meat and bone being cleaved, his head is parted from his body. I’m glad I had a light lunch.

As I stand around wondering how a Breton magician apprentice from High Rock ended up in such a fine mess I am distracted by a passing shadow and the sound of giant flapping wings.

I look up and see something that I know is impossible, but yet there it is. A dragon!

Oh, I don't think these carts are going to Disneyland...

During the chaos of the dragon attack I escaped my captors. Though all sanity in my body screams for me to get out of Skyrim as fast as possible, I feel compelled to delve further into the mystery of the returning dragons. The splendid city of Whiterun is my first port of call and I soon find myself talking to the Jarl of the city himself.

By an incredible coincidence I am around at the exact moment that reports come in of a new dragon attack. Bolstered by some unknown source of courage, I volunteer to help repel the dragon and join a small force of guards, heading out to kill a dragon (I wish I was back at the warm inn studying my arcane books, what madness is this?).

We manage to kill the dragon. Well “we” mostly being the guards. My contribution was mostly approaching the dragon as it was distracted by the guards, briefly draining all my magic resources for a magical flame attack and then running behind the nearest rock to hide.

As the dragon lay dead on the ground something incredible happened. White light erupted from the dragon and shot straight at me. Panic filled my very being, but I quickly realized that I was somehow being… empowered by this light. I have no idea what happened but some of the guards claimed that it showed that I was something they called “Dragonborn”. I don’t know what to make of all this…

Skyrim is a game that you don’t play as much as you *live*.

When Skyrim is at its best it feels like you are walking through Lord of the Rings helping citizens in need, slaying mighty beasts, crafting mighty armor or going on epic quests and saving the world.

A look at Skyrim's Civil War questlines - Commentated video of Fort Amol assault

I mentioned in my last Skyrim Journal post that I have been playing through the civil war quest line. After deciding that Ulfric Stormcloak was an Elf hating racist bastard I joined up with the Imperials and set about maiming and murdering Stormcloak soldiers where ever I found them.

I followed the quest line and I quickly discovered that there is a pattern to the way that the civil war quest line works. You'll be sent out to an Imperial camp where you'll be given a couple of missions, such as blackmailing a local person of power into helping the Imperial cause or freeing some captured soldiers.

Standing back and performing the role of human artillery is quite fun during a fort assault

After these quests you'll finish up the area by assaulting a fort filled by enemy soldiers. This ends up as fairly large battles where you'll be supported by 5-10 allied soldiers and your goal is to simply murder every fool that is crazy enough to not run away when you start throwing fireballs in their general direction (turns out most of the Stormcloaks are crazy fools).

Zero Punctuation Skyrim Review

If you're not already familiar with Zero Punctuation then now is a good time to jump on board and check out his extremely funny game reviews.
He's just had a go at reviewing Skyrim and the results are, as usual, really funny. You can check it out in the video below

The Escapist : Reviews : The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Video Review

While this is not the most informative review of Skyrim that you can find (but really, do you need a review of Skyrim? Just buy it already!), it more than makes up for its lack of finer journalistic qualities with its buckets of humor.

I really recommend checking out more of Zero Punctuation's stuff.



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Unnecessary Censorship Makes Skyrim Dialogue Sound Very Dirty

Skyrim is mostly a pretty serious and proper place. Sure there'll be the occasional drunkard that makes a slightly salty remark, but for a brutal medieval society they sure don't swear a lot.

So that's why good fun can be had by putting in completely unneeded censorship bleeps at certain key parts of the dialogue, with hilarious results.

Check out this video from "Normal Difficulty"

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Further travels in the land of Skyrim - The clothes makes the wizard

Please note that some spoilers of Skyrim content may appear in these posts. I will try to avoid delving into the quest stories and plot details, but I may refer to quest outcomes, so if you're picky about avoiding any potential spoilers you will probably want to avoid reading any further.

In my last Skyrim journal post I was still just finding my legs in the cold fantasy winter wonder land of the Nords. Since then I've sunk in another good 10 hours of skyrimming (that sounds downright inappropriate, actually) and I've gotten a much better grasp of the game and world by now.

So come and join me for more tales of Erasmus the daring Breton Mage, hero of a civil war and slayer of many a retarded dragon.

When we last left off I had made my way across half of Skyrim to join up with the mages of the College of Winterhold. I quickly submerged myself into the dusty halls of the college, determined to rise in the ranks and improve my ability to burn things with magical flames.

I won't spoil the storyline of the Winterhold quests, but I will say that I found the quest chain to be a tad on the predictable side, with ancient magical artifacts and an antagonist that could only have been any more obvious if he had been tying a women to a railroad track while twirling his curled mustache.

I made my way through old and peril filled dungeons and proceeded to cleanse my enemies with fire, which was made easier by the presence of my new conjured flame bolt flinging Atronach, unearthing a mysterious device of unknown origin. That said device turned out the be of incredible potency and of interest to the aforementioned obvious antagonist should come as little surprise. Cue a mad dash to prevent the evil misuse of the ancient artifact and a search through yet more old dungeons to find yet another ancient artifact to stop the use of the first artifact (next time you find something immensely old and powerful in a ruin let's just leave it there, alright? These things never turn out well).
I eventually managed to stop the nefarious plans and found myself being hailed as a rather cool guy by the mages of Winterhold, who decided to award me some sweet sweet new robes.

Check out my baller new robe and metal face mask. I'm like a medieval Doctor Doom!

Procrastinating the advancement of the main storyline even further, I decided that I should get involved in the civil war going on in Skyrim. The Imperial forces are fighting for control of Skyrim against the rebellion of Ulfric Stormcloak, who is all about the proud independent traditions of the stoic Nords. Practicing the old religious beliefs and honoring the old warrior ways of his people. Oh, and being mad racist and hating on everyone who is not a Nord.

Skyrim Journal 10 Hours In - I'm a wizard. You burn now!

It's been a week since Skyrim launched. Way too much stuff has being going on for me to play it anywhere near as much as I would like, but I have gotten in around 10 hours with the game by now. Of course, 10 hours of Skyrim is really just scraping the very outer layer of the near bottomless content pit that Skyrim offers.
It's kind of crazy, when you think about something like the Modern Warfare 3 campaign, which offers around 6-7 hours of gaming to complete. Skyrim is a juggernaut of a game that promises to munch down all my free time with some with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

My first week with Skyrim has really just been about getting my bearings in this overwhelming world. I've done a little bit of the main story line, but I was quickly distracted by a deluge of side quests that saw me finding dead bodies and listening to the tales of old crones.

The initial city of Whiterun can keep you occupied for hours. There's just so much to do!

When playing these big RPG games I normally tend to focus on just the main quest line and supplement a little with side quests. It's not that I hate doing side quests, but I really enjoy following a story, and most often I'll get sucked into the main storyline of a game and find myself blasting through it and missing a lot of content. But with Skyrim I feel more compelled to do other things than just the main quest. Perhaps it is because Skyrim feels so much like a real world, and you can't help exploring a lot and wanting to peak just around the next corner in case there is something cool there.

Skyrim early hours impressions

I have been looking forward to Skyrim a lot. I was so keen on playing that I decided to stay up until midnight between Thursday and Friday and wait for the game to unlock, just so I could get in a couple of hours of play before I had to head to bed (stupid work making me get up early in the morning!).
Unfortunately I discovered too late that apparently Skyrim was going to be unlocked at midnight GMT and not local time (I'm in GMT +1), so it was 1am before I sleepily got into the game.
So I only got a brief amount of playtime in on Thursday night, and with a busy weekend I was only able to play a couple of hours more.

Skyrim - For all your fantasy fetish needs

But still, I have already seen enough to tell that I think I'm really going to like my stay in Skyrim.

Skyrim the most anticipated game of November on Light Speed Gaming

Our poll for the most anticipated game for November has ended.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Skyrim was the winner of this contest.
More surprising is how big of a winner it was. The below snapshot of the poll results demonstrate the size of the humiliating defeat that this dragon exterminator simulator managed to inflict on the defenseless competition.

70% of the responses were for Skyrim, while the mega franchises of Uncharted, Modern Warfare and Zelda managed to scrape in just a single vote or two.
It's interesting that Skyrim has such a strong appeal, as it is perhaps not as flashy and easy to market as something like Uncharted 3 or Assassin's Creed. I was actually expecting Skyrim to take it, but I had assumed that Assassin's Creed in particular would give it a run for its money.

However, this is good news, as I am about to hit you up with some impressions of playing Skyrim, and it looks like I have an interested crowd for that subject!

Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey. Stay tuned for a "Game of the Year" poll, and make your favorite game the "Reader's Choice Game of the Year" for Light Speed Gaming!



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Skyrim Review Round Up

The time for donning your horned helmets and losing yourself in Skyrim is upon us!
If you haven't already laid down cash for a preorder and you're still sitting on the fence, wondering if this latest entry from Bethesda can sufficiently slate your dragon slaying thirst, then wonder no more!

Reviews are now up of Skyrim, and it's looking rather well:

Gamespot (9/10)
IGN (9.5/10)
Giant Bomb (5/5)
Joystiq (5/5)

So across the line it's top marks for Skyrim. Even if the game does still feature some of that open world jank that we've become used to suffer from Bethesda open world games. The favorite bug I've seen so far are the flying mammoths that spawn in mid air and plummet to their doom.
Maybe one of the programmers was inspired by the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Gamespot video review after the break

Looking ahead into Q4 2011 -5 games that I can't wait to play

The fourth quarter (October to December) is traditionally the big release window for video games.

Like a large blob of ketchup suddenly dislodging, it hits me every year with equal measure of surprise and makes me go "oh crap, how the heck will I find time to play all of this stuff?".

Q4 of 2011 is no different.
Sporting mega titles such as Zelda, Gears of War, Skyrim and Rage it is enough to fill a hardcore gamers mind with equal amounts of jubilant glee and deep despair (empty wallet says hi).

For a more detailed overview of every big game coming out in Q4 you can check out this list IGN made

Skyrim alone could eat all your gaming time from November and out

As both time and money are resources that needs to be considered, I have tried boiling the games to get in the next three months down to just five.

This should hopefully let me actually complete all the games that I get, and also it means that I do not have to give my girlfriend a home made present for Christmas (you can only really give someone so many crappy clay ashtrays. Especially when they don't even smoke)

So without further ado here are the games that have made the "do want" list: