Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

First off let me start by saying i've never played an ES game before, but I saw everyone raving about this and decided to jump on the bandwagon. Anyway... Skyrim is a tough game to review; the numerous pros are offset by a few rather large cons - namely being the sporadic game freezing and lag. (Yes, there I said it.)

Let's start with the good points. The game is immensely huge not just in terms of map size but also in scope, there are an infinitesimal number of quests to do, ranging in difficulty and length. If you're not careful your quest list can become full rather quickly, and you soon learn not to ask everybody you pass what their problems are in fear of receiving another one. Of course you can take all the quests and finish them at a later time if you so desired but that can lead to problems which will become apparent later on - the dreaded lag. When and if you get around to starting the main storyline and not just randomly clearing out dungeons like I did - which you could very easily spend the entire game doing by the way - you'll soon be slaying dragons and before you know it you'll be at the last main quest. It is however easy to get carried away with other quests and eventually you'll completely forget which one forwards the main storyline, that's not a bad thing though.

On to the map; it's a beautiful fantastical world of snow-capped mountains, giant subterranean Dwarven cities, rolling plains and yet more snow. Yes, snow... there's lots of it, my only gripe is that your character doesn't leave footprints in it, for a game with this much snow I thought it would be a given. Anyway I digress, the map is vast and varied enough and very nice to look at in an aesthetical way.

Gameplay wise you'll never be short of things to do, whether it's collecting butterflies and plants to make potions, creating and improving weapons with enchantments or just encountering random events in the world there's always something going on, be it mundane or unbelievable.

Now on to the bad stuff (LAG!) The lag and game freezes do get annoying after awhile, the lag I think occurs mainly after playing for long periods of time when the console is hot and struggling for breath, this can easily be solved by turning off the console and letting it cool down (assuming you have the willpower to switch Skyrim off for a few hours.) It is also advisable to turn off autosaving as this seems to cause slowdown and freezes too. If you have a lot of other games on the PS3 deleting some of the ones you don't play anymore to free up HD space will make the game run smoother. The freezes I cannot explain, they do not occur at set intervals or after playing for a certain amount of time, they are completely random. They can happen after playing for five minutes, on the other hand you could play for four hours and be fine. They can happen on load screens, during gameplay... anywhere, but they are fairly common i'm afraid to say. It's doubly annoying if you've turned autosave off to cure the lag problem and then forget to save after two hours of adventuring only to lose all your progress. Save often and hope for the best is all I can say.

Skyrim is a great game with a few rather annoying errors in it. It pulls you in and eats away hours, days, weeks of your life (i've had it a month and clocked up nearly 200 hours.) Once it's eaten all your free time up it'll spit it back out in your face by crashing when you least expect it. It is mesmerisingly malevolent, like a siren luring you in only to dash your hopes against some pointy rocks further down the line. That's the best way I can describe it.

TL;DR

BIG MAP! +
LONG STORY! +
LOTS OF THINGS TO DO! +

CRASHES! -
NO FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW! :( -

Make your own mind up.