The Elder Scrolls series has long been the king of single player RPGs coming from the western market ever since the release of Morrowind. In my personal playthrough of the newest installment, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda keeps to this legacy with a vast interactive world that is not only beautiful in countless ways, but engaging and likely to be the biggest time-sink of any gamer who manages to get their hands on a copy. Likely to also be one of the toughest games to borrow from your friends for the same reasons.
Graphics
The Graphics of the game may not be the most mind blowingly detailed compared to games like Crysis, but given it’s free form nature and single map, open world and expansive reaches, it all comes together in an astounding way. You may often find yourself finding scenic overlooks and staring into the horizon for quite some time to take in the breathtaking visuals. PC players rejoice, as with mod support and a large, already hard at work modding community, you can find a brevity of mods that further push the graphics capabilities of the game.
Playability
I honestly find the gameplay of the game just close to perfect. Granted there have been many bugs that cropped up in the release version, I personally have run into few that actually damage the gameplay. Given my understanding of the complexity of the game and how hard these projects can be to get polished on release given the dynamic possibilities, I still feel that the errors that come up are quite bearable. Anything that’s got you down in this sense is likely to be washed away as soon as you get into your first Dragon Fight which have a way of playing like a full budget movie each time. If this wasn’t enough, with hundreds of locations, hundreds of quests and what seems to be many miles of detailed landscape, there is countless hours you can sink into Skyrim just trying to find and explore everything. Full mod support is on the way, and again, do yourself a justice and make sure you get a PC copy eventually if you don’t already have one.
Sound
Epic. Simply Epic. From the intro song at the menu to the background music when you learn new shouts, fight dragons, participate in significant quest events, you will feel almost godlike thanks to the supporting track. The intro track has already been ripped from the game and distributed amongst some people I know as a sound for their ringtones, which should give you just some of an idea of how cool it is. Talk about making the hairs on the back of your neck again.
Overall
This game makes me love being a gamer geek all over again. More addictive, satisfying and potentially more content through mods than World of Warcraft which really speaks volumes as well. Genius.