The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Ragdollmaster]

I'm certainly getting Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3 because, in my opinion, it's better developed and simply funner to play. Yes, part of that has to do with the fact that DICE have been making enormous progress between games with their engine and content while CoD has stayed essentially the same since CoD4. It's kind of strange to see how a company can pump out what's basically copy-pasted content and still rake in huge sales. On that note, I can't blame them. They found a formula that sells well and is popular. I don't really like it; I feel like they've traded in quality for sales. Sure, the game industry is a business and they've got to make money, but it seems like all of their programmers and coders aren't really doing anything anymore. They may as well be making DLCs. I find it hard to imagine how they can be passionate about something like that. Sales and popularity isn't everything. I don't "hate" CoD, but I'm not going to throw my money away to get the same experience over and over again. I also got tired of the rapid reflex-based "use this set up of perks and equipment or you will die" breakneck gameplay in Black Ops. I didn't find it fun, more frantic and extremely competitive, with luck, reflexes, and cheap exploits being much more important than skill or teamwork. I kind of view it as the Justin Bieber of the game world- there are millions of screaming fan girls who love it, think it's the best thing ever, and want to marry it, and if you say otherwise to them, they'll turn into enraged, fire-breathing beasts from the fifth layer of hell.

Now for something on-topic, I really love spellcasting using Destruction magic. The long spouts of fire and lightning remind me of level 3 Plasmids from Bioshock 2. Really love dual-wielding spells as well, makes me imagine that being a mage is much more badass in this game than it was in Oblivion. I'm kind of trying a bit of everything- some archery here, sword-and-spell here, sword-and-shield there, giant two handed weapon there, and so on and so forth. Really fun game. I'm actually enjoying the combat for its own sake, which is more than I could say for Oblivion. Crafting and refining stuff is cool, too, once you buy, loot, or steal some materials for it. It's a nice touch to the game.

[Zhukov]

Oh God, Metacritic. Just... don't even get me started. I hate that place in so many ways.

Eh, fuck it. Rant mode engaged.

In concept, it's actually a pretty neat idea. Aggregate the numerical values attached to reviews in order to provide a neat and simple indicator of the critical reception of a given product. Groovy.

But somewhere along the way it all went horribly wrong. For a start, some folks in the industry abuse it. I've heard of developer contracts in which bonuses or profit shares were made conditional on Metacritic scores. Basically, "If this product does not score (eg.) 85 or above, we'll pay you less." Granted, this is not the website's fault, but they do enable it.

Then there is the user review... thing. Take every frothing fanboy or spiteful prick and give them a voice. Great idea. Ever notice how, especially with high-profile games, the user scores are almost all 10s or 0s? Those people aren't giving an honest evaluation of the game, they're just trying to influence the average as much as their one vote will allow.

This "metabombing" practice is the perfect illustration. It's spiteful, it's childish and I hate it, and not just because I'm a fan of the games getting bombed (eg. Portal 2). I couldn't give a flying shit about MW3, but this business still irritates me more than it should.

Oh, and if you're feeling excessively happy and want to see something depressing, try actually reading some of the user reviews. Yeesh.

[Freshbite]

Basically, "If this product does not score (eg.) 85 or above, we'll pay you less." Granted, this is not the website's fault, but they do enable it.

Are there actually examples of producers following that guideline? I've never heard of it before, and it just sounds absurd.

Ever notice how, especially with high-profile games, the user scores are almost all 10s or 0s? Those people aren't giving an honest evaluation of the game, they're just trying to influence the average as much as their one vote will allow.

I have, that's one of the main reasons why I rarely trust a user based score, but on the other hand, it fells as if the "Critic Score" could easily be influenced. I trust the User Score on Gamespot much more than I do anywhere else, it seems as if (atleast some of) the users there can provide a rational explanation to what they're rating the game. There are still the oblivious 0- or 10-rating users, but ignoring them, you can actually find a decent review from there.


Then there's the method we all know to trust. The amount of seconds in a 'Zero Punctuation' review when Yahtzee is not on a complete offensive verbal havoc.

[Renegade_Turner]

Also, I notice you ignored several paragraphs of criticism to pick on the shortest and least fleshed out point you could find.

Yes, because that one point was particularly foolish and short-sighted. And I couldn't have been arsed responding to the rest of it.

And yes, I am complaining for the sake of complaining. Why else would I do it? But no, I don't love doing it. I'd rather be getting immense enjoyment from the game and ecstatically praising it. That's much more fun.

I'm skeptical, somehow.

Anyway, I've played enough of Skyrim now to comment fairly on it. I'm on level 14. I love it to bits so far. Having a hard time finding a place to fence my stolen goods, which is a problem because I generally am a greedy kleptomaniac in these games...everything has my name on it, and if it doesn't, I'll use a sticker. Gotta have all the stuff. Oh god I have problems.

Damn I thought Oblivion was big...this place is HUGE. Finding it very tough so far even on the average difficulty...bears make shit of me instantly.

[Ragdollmaster]

Have you found/joined the Thieves Guild yet? In Oblivion, you had to fence stolen things through them, or, if your Mercantile skill was high enough, you could sell stolen things at ordinary vendors, too. I imagine you could use either of those methods in Skyrim.

[Grayswandir]

I've played Skyrim all the way to the first town. Unfortunately, it has yet to hold my attention and keep a grip on it and shake it around (yes, I know this is only the first hour, blah blah blah). I have this main quest I could go do or I could go do all these little tasks that these people in the town want. Needing money, even after dumping all the goods I found on dead bodies (that I made dead) in the tutorial area, I wandered around and now I have a quest to go find a gold dragon claw in some far off mountain.

So far I'm not finding the combat any less interesting than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, although I miss the humor and in-jokes. The combat feels simple, but I haven't really unlocked anything yet.

Zhukov has a point though, the lack of character animation during face-to-face conversation feels really weird sometimes. They just glare in your direction and stand idle while they scream about how angry they are at you, the gods, the neighbors, their cat, etc.

Besides save the world, my underlying goal is to get every book in the world and store them in my house. Unless I can find some other meaningless trinket to just fill my house with.

PRO TIP: Do not go into the first town, murder the first chicken you see in cold blood and expect everyone to just walk by. I got the entire town pissed at me and they all came after me with pitchforks and swords.

[Freshbite]

[...] NPCs trying to direct your attention to "That thief over there", while sitting completely still and never breaking eye contact.

I just noticed that, it was ugly.

PRO TIP: Do not go into the first town, murder the first chicken you see in cold blood and expect everyone to just walk by. I got the entire town pissed at me and they all came after me with pitchforks and swords.

A similar thing happened to me in Fallout 3. I went to the first town (Megaton?), wandered round for a bit, accidentally lockpicked the backdoor of the local bar, beat down the owner when he started attacking me (For reasons I found unknown), the entire town hated my guts.

[alpineodin]

just played skyrim today, i like it. im having a little issue since i chose archer. and that is that i cant take them down before they get to me since i have to get close because idk if they are hostile or regular people. and they usually are bad

[Zhukov]

Played it a bunch more.

(Damn housemate keeps selfishly hogging the game he payed for with his own hard-earned cash, the bastard. I keep having to lure him away with baked food and my Steam account.)

Yeah, I feel slightly sheepish saying this, but... it's growing on me. Rather rapidly, in fact. I still stand by what I said earlier, the animation is archaic and the melee combat leaves much to be desired, but I was being needlessly vitriolic. I could cheerfully nitpick Skyrim to hell and back, but there's a lot to like here.

My stubbornly non-typical stealth orc is coming along nicely.

Also, having same problem with getting rid of stolen stuff. I noticed that one of the higher speech perks lets you fence shit off if you pay for the privilege. I'm guessing there are shady traders somewhere that will take it off your hands as well.

It's really too easy to steal shit, even if you don't resort to this sort of thing:

[Ragdollmaster]

I love the set up of the perks, really nifty.

I seem to have this bad habit of killing people on mountains in such a way that they invariably are sent tumbling down the cliffside and I have to scramble after them for the loot. Doesn't matter if I melee, arch, or magic them to death, they just want to screw with me one final time.

Really loving the game. I got sucked into it for a good while and time passed unexpectedly fast, so much so that I forgot to eat >_>

EDIT: Also this.

[Freshbite]

Really loving the game. I got sucked into it for a good while and time passed unexpectedly fast, so much so that I forgot to eat >_>

First World Problems.

[Sandurz]

Wait, it's 11:30 already? I started at 7 0.0

[alpineodin]

Played it a bunch more.

(Damn housemate keeps selfishly hogging the game he payed for with his own hard-earned cash, the bastard. I keep having to lure him away with baked food and my Steam account.)

Yeah, I feel slightly sheepish saying this, but... it's growing on me. Rather rapidly, in fact. I still stand by what I said earlier, the animation is archaic and the melee combat leaves much to be desired, but I was being needlessly vitriolic. I could cheerfully nitpick Skyrim to hell and back, but there's a lot to like here.

My stubbornly non-typical stealth orc is coming along nicely.

Also, having same problem with getting rid of stolen stuff. I noticed that one of the higher speech perks lets you fence shit off if you pay for the privilege. I'm guessing there are shady traders somewhere that will take it off your hands as well.

It's really too easy to steal shit, even if you don't resort to this sort of thing:

heh... found that video on FJ and tried it out at the drunken huntsman because he has an imperial bow on the desk and he was selling it for 600g. so i put a cauldron on the mercs head and a bucket on the owner and picked it up. so now i carry around a bucket with me XD

[Ragdollmaster]

I actually screencapped this really early on, while escaping from the keep in Helgen.* Hurray, finishers

My only complaint so far is the equip system. Setting a spell to be dual-weld can be a nightmare. I don't understand why it's not just left click to assign primary and right click to assign secondary all the time; it only works like that when you're carrying nothing, and then the equip system goes retarded for some reason.

*On that note, seriously Bethesda? Helgen? Not like that name's already been used before. They're even pronounced the same. Yet you got pissy about Mojang's Scrolls.

[Freshbite]

Yet you got pissy about Mojang's Scrolls.

Not really, that was ZeniMax's doing. And I believe the story went down to prevent further confusion regarding project names, not specifically because they were 'scared' of people confusing the two in this case.