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Back when Skyrim was first released a couple years ago, it was the only thing that my friends would talk about. They would spend hour after hour playing the game and I really had no idea what all the hype was about at the time. I?was probably one of the few who did not get the game, nor did I really care. It wasn't just Skyrim, up until about a week ago I have never played a single game in the Elder Scrolls. It wasn't because I didn't like them, it was because I never knew about them, and this led to me having almost no interest in the newest game. In my entire life, I only had one encounter with the Elder Scrolls, this encounter was in the form of the main theme for Oblivion which was featured on the Greatest Video Game music soundtrack by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I didn't like it as much as the others since I never played the game but I did like it and since then, I have began to respect the music of the series, which is beautiful.

One day a few months ago, I was with a friend at the Gamestop in Rockefeller Center and I had some money to blow. I really wanted to get the new Sim City game so I went straight to the PC game shelf and that was when I saw a copy of Skyrim. At the time, I did not think the price was worth it, but I decided it was time to finally find out what the game was about. I ended up staying in that Gamestop for almost two hours talking to some of the employees about the game. By the time I had left the store, I knew a lot more about the game and the general concept of it seemed interesting to me. But still, I couldn't get the game at the time because I could not afford it and because the copy in the store was a disk, which my school laptop did not have a slot for. I left the store that day and completely forgot about the game, I never thought of it again until recently.

Fast forward to the middle of June when the Steam Summer Sale was going on. There was this awesome vizzed user who decided that he had extra money and was able to buy Steam games in exchange for Viz. I loved the idea, so I right away went on Steam to find some of the cheapest games that I would like. It turns out that on that day, Skyrim was only five dollars, so I put it on the list of games that I might get and at the end of the day, I was able to get Skyrim and two other great games for just 58 thousand Viz. It was in Viz and it was cheap, so I figured that I would have nothing to lose by buying the game. The game still wasn't really high up on the list of games I wanted to play, so of course I played the other two games first. However, I did manage to download the game and idle on the start screen for a bit listening to the great music that night. The next day, I fully submerged myself in the game for a few hours so I could get a good feel for the game.

That day, while I was playing the game, I called my friend and told him that I bought the game. He told me that the game is a lot of fun and that he still has a copy of the game for the PS3 that he doesn't play anymore. He also told me that he would give it to me if I wanted to try out that version. At that point, I was really wishing that he told me that sooner, but I was really glad that he made this offer because I was running into problems with the PC version. I don't have a mouse for this laptop, so it was very hard to move around and everything was much slower, and the left mouse button on the keyboard was terrible. On average, I have to press the button five times in different locations for an action.?Because of this, I wasted about 10 or so minutes just trying to get my first kill. I asked him, he gave me the game, and since then I have spent about 20 total hours playing the game, and I loved it. With the new controls, I was able to fully understand what the game is like, and though I am nowhere near the end of the game, I have had a lot of fun playing and have done a lot. So far, I'm going to have to say that this is one of the ten best PS3 games that I have ever played.

GRAPHICS 9/10

The graphics of this game are amazing, they are not the best but they can still be considered as top notch for a PS3 game. In my opinion, there are some times when the game looked a bit fuzzy, but other than that, the graphics are spectacular. The game is developed and published by Bethesda, who used their own engine software to create the game that was made just before the release of Skyrim. This is one of the reasons as to why the graphics are so great, because instead of using some other engine that may have some sort of limitations, the developers were able to control freely what was going to be put into the game, and this worked to their advantage.

The setting is beautiful, the creatures look amazing, and even all of the characters have a good amount of detail put into their creation. A great deal of effort had been put into this project to make sure that the graphics came out good and I think that they did a great job and that all the hard work had paid off. I would have to say that behind the newest Grand Theft Auto game and a handful of other games, Skyrim has to have one of the 10 best graphics for a PS3 game. Because of all these aspects, I am going to give the graphics portion of the game a 9 out of 10.

SOUND 10/10

As I had mentioned before, this game series has some spectacular music, but that's not all that you have to take into account when you are talking about the sounds of the game because there is much more than just that, a lot more actually. First off, you have the voice acting, which I feel is one of the best when it comes to such games. I like the voice acting because it is edited along with the other sounds of the game so it becomes much clearer. In my own experience, most games I have played that have a lot of voice acting, the quality usually isn't that good. In most games I have seen, the voices either don't come out that well or are sometimes drowned out by other noises of the game. In this game, I have not yet seen that, all I have seen is a perfect balance between the different sounds. What I also like about the voices from what I have seen so far is that there are a lot more emotions. Usually in games I have played, if you hear somebody screaming, it just sounds like somebody in front of a microphone screaming because that's what the script says. True, that's really what all games are, but in this one, it feels as though the actors put so much time into getting into character for every single sentence. If somebody is getting hurt, its going to actually sound like somebodies getting hurt, not like some guy who is just pretending. This kind of voice acting is what makes the game better, it causes you to experience the drama and suspense at a greater level, and that's wonderful.

That's just the beginning, there's much more to the sound of the game than just the voice acting. Next, we have the sound effects themself, which are just as remarkable. Pretty much every little thing that takes place in the game has its own sound. Like I mentioned with the voice acting, the developers have done a great job with editing all of the sounds so that they all sound louder and clearer. When you have headphones that are as good as mine, all you have to do is keep the volume really low and the sounds will just eat you up, every little thing will make you jump like if you were watching an IMAX film, and my headphones aren't even gaming headphones. In my opinion, just these two factors would make this one of the greatest playstation games ever when it comes to sound, but there's still much more to the sound than just this.

STORY 9/10

The story of the game is remarkable. Like I had mentioned earlier, I am nowhere near finishing the game, so I have not been able to go through most of the story. However, what I have seen so far in the game is amazing and I am sure that there is much more to the game than what I have seen. The game begins with your character being driven to his death when at the last second, a dragon attacks the town and you manage to escape almost unharmed. There is so much for you to do when it comes to the story, and in addition, it’s as if you are also watching a movie because there’s so much dialogue that tell you what’s going on. Sure, I wanted to get right into the game, but half way through the opening scene, I was captivated in a way because the dialogue really pulled me into the game and made me even more eager to find out what was going on.

The story has a ton of stuff to work with, in addition to the main plot, there’s a bunch of quests for you to go on, and when I mean there’s a bunch, I mean there’s enough to take hour after hour out of your life.?I had only done a handful of quests, but the friend that I got the game from said that he must have gone on more than three hundred different quests. The dialogue mixed with the story itself mixed with the sheer amount of stuff that there is to do makes this one heck of a story and I love it. If it didn’t have such a good story, I doubt the game would have been so popular, and because of this I believe that the game deserves a 9 out of 10 for a score.

ADDICTIVNESS 10/10

As for addictiveness, this is the kind of game that you do not want to put down because there’s so much to do. There isn’t really much to say about this topic because the amount of awesomeness in this game should have already been made clear in the other portions of this review. There’s so much to do and it’s simply so much fun that some people might take as much time as they could to complete each task just to get the best experience out of the game. For addictiveness, I have to give this game another perfect score.

DEPTH 10/10

I don’t even have to talk about the depth first, we all know I am going to give this aspect yet another perfect score because the game is so broad. There’s a huge open world, a bunch of characters to choose from, and more than 300 quests to go through. The only PS3 game that I would say has more depth than this one would be Grand Theft Auto V, so that’s saying a lot about how much there is in this game.

DIFFICULTY 5

When it comes to difficulty, it’s pretty much 50/50. All you have to do is learn the controls and play a lot until you get the hang of the game. Once you get the hang of the game, you will be playing with nothing but ease. If you understand what you are doing, there are only going to be a handful of tasks that you really find challenging.

OVERALL 9.3

At first, I was very skeptical about the game and the series, but now after finally being introduced to the game correctly, I would have to say that it’s one of the 5 best PS3 games that I have ever played. It’s a very fun game and if you have not played it, I suggest that you give it a try, however, because of it’s huge amount of success, I doubt that there are really that many people left who have not yet played this game.

sonicthehedgehog57 :
Eniitan :
cnw64 : 

zanderlex : That was a good review for the most part, but that intro...kind of felt a little to extended (4 paragraphs) if it was just like 2 I could understand. But the actual "review" review was good. I've never played the Elder Scrolls series because those kind of games hold no interest to me, I have played Dark souls and games like that don't capture me as well. 

There is no reason for that intro to appear in front other than relating it to having good music. The intro part is only slightly smaller than the review itself and most of it is not relevant to the review itself. This hurts the quality and readability of the review and is an example of how "less is more". Imagine someone asking you "What do you think of Skyrim?" And you read this entire article to them. You wouldn't blame the listener if he asks: "What's the point of that whole story in the beginning?" because there's little connection to go with your analysis. You can take that whole story and take a couple of sentences that are relevant to the review while putting more focus on the reasoning behind your analysis(because a couple parts of the reasoning didn't make sense) and still be able to make it flow and get to the point. It can cut your word count by soo much (about 2/5th), and honestly, I would have rated this review higher that intro was gone.

This better not be an attempt to boast your word count. Do not try to do that again.

Like the others said, the intro is very long compared to the rest of your review. Other than that I didn't see any other things that weren't so good, so you just need to work on that.