Who likes video games?

[Ronulus]

I've clocked 31 hours into Skyrim and beat the main story at about 23 hours. I have to say this is easily in my top 5 games of all time (only behind HL2 and its episodes). i'm playing at the lowest graphics settings possible and i get around 20-30 fps constantly with stuttering into the single digits for several seconds every minute or so. This is better than I expected from my laptop, so i'm happy with it.

The story is excellent, I could actually understand what was happening which is rare for most video games that i play. The UI is pretty good except for when i read books because when i get out of reading one my mouse stops working on the UI and i have to either exit or use the arrow keys, but this may be fixed in a patch in the future. The voice acting is excellent.

I haven't felt this thrill of discovery since I played Pokemon Ruby, and thats saying something because I love that game.

If you were only considering it, stop considering and just get it. It doesn't really matter which platform you get it on, but if you have a powerful PC then get it for that because it will have lots of mod support in the future.

9.7/10 I'm only rating it down because.....never mind 10/10. Only the perfection that is Half Life 2 can beat the fun factor of Skyrim.

I'm too distracted by sidequests and joining guilds. I am 43 hours in and not even half way done with the main quest.

 

[Fox McCloud]

I'm too distracted by sidequests and joining guilds. I am 43 hours in and not even half way done with the main quest.

This is me. I didn't complete the main story in Fallout: New Vegas until most of the side-quests were done....that said, I should have waited until I completed all the side-quests, to be honest.....if you beat the story, then do the side-quests, the game feels like it doesn't have any resolve and you feel like you have way less incentive to actually play it.

Overall, amazing game, so far....I still think New Vegas is better, but I'm a bit more partial to modern themes.

 

[Deinonychus]

Glad everyone else is liking Skyrim! It's pretty fun so far. I have two characters, a male Argonian and a female Khajiit. The Argonian is my main guy, the overall good guy. My Khajiit on the other hand joined the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

 

[V3n]

I broke down and bought Skyrim.. Female dark elf 'battle mage' casting spells with my left hand, chopping enemies down with my right.

I'm about 12 hours in and don't even feel like I've even scratched the surface yet!

 

[HiddenSanity]

I've been hearing about Skyrim lately, but haven't got enough time to play anything, well, other than an occasional round of Angry Birds . I'm pretty curious though, and hope that I can give that a try one of these days.

 

[Kludge]

I'm about 12 hours in and don't even feel like I've even scratched the surface yet!

I'm probably in over 30 hours by now, and still have a huge list of things to do. If you have a quest involving Aftland, go! Blackreach is fantastical. Minor spoiler here, but important: don't finish the quest in Markarth where folks come up to you and demand you stop snooping around until you've done everything else related to the city -- guards'll end up KoS. I'm still working up to killing off the entire city guard so I can finish quests there.

I ended up retiring my melee-oriented character. Just couldn't get the hang of it. Went for a pure caster, with another caster as a companion. Works surprisingly well. Of course, I never realized there's an awesome set of melee gear waiting at the Greybeard temple until I got up there with my caster. Playing through it more, I see there's plenty more Skyrim has to offer to make a melee character more competitive than what I was finding starting off.

Anyone finding crafting at all useful? I couldn't find incentive to blacksmith as melee. Enchanting took too much effort to collect soul gems, and there're just waaaaaay too many alchemy ingredients (but I guess it'd be fun if you're into Doodle God). Staves also generally seem useless since only a caster'd use (unless you're into pausing the game a few times during combat) and though I've found maybe 6 staves, all the effects are unimpressive. Also getting stuck in the environment a lot, but luckily the command console fixes that quickly enough. It'd really suck to get stuck on a console, though. I'm also having trouble with having way too much vendor fodder and not enough merchants to buy the junk, and too much gold in general. Crafting, currency, and merchants can be great mechanics, but I'm not really seeing their use. If you want to so strongly encourage adventuring in dungeons for gear over all else, why bother including the rest? It doesn't seem like they really thought through how the added mechanics improve gameplay, instead of being a checklist feature.

Edit: On second thought... maybe the "useless" features are there more as a platform than something to add to the game out-of-the-box. Bethesda games always have awesome mods by the community. Having all the bones in there makes modding easier and, for the users, easy-to-use. I'm not sure I ever played a Bethesda game without immediately installing a few major mods -- this may be the first, so maybe that's why I think so many mechanics seem disconnected and irrelevant.

 

[Stevo_Chill]

it appears that bethesda has created all of tamriel, and its already in the game.
http://www.gamesradar.com/whats-behind-skyrims-invisible-walls-all-tamriel-apparently/


Just how much of The Elder Scrolls' world of Tamriel is built into the code for Skyrim? All of it, it seems. Play the game long enough and you're bound to venture to the edge of the game's map – but rules are there to be broken, and console hacks are just a more advanced school of magic (just ask our pal Tyler Wilde). So what would happen if you were to, say, turn off the PC version's clipping and stab eastward? Oh, you'd only have all of Tamriel to explore.

Finland's Jesse (via Game Informer) has posted a series of images recounting his adventures beyond the borders of Skyrim, showing the wide-open road past Stendarr's Beacon and into the province of Morrowind. “There are still trees and grass, despite no one being able to go here,” explains Jesse; “Gradually the foliage thins, and the textures become poor, but... there’s quite a long stretch between the gate and the texture fading.” Terrain remains beyond this point, enabling viewing of a rather sparse Vvardenfell and Red Mountain.\



The game's terrain also includes recognizable recreations of signature areas from Oblivion, such as the island housing the Imperial City.

So what's all this extra terrain doing in the game? The most obvious – and likely correct – answer is that it's simply for the purposes of ensuring there's always something to see on the horizon, or dimly-visible under the map's clouded regions. However, if you'd rather believe Bethesda's built whole other landmasses into the title to be populated with DLC content later down the line, we're certainly not going to stop you.

Maybe one day, you'll be free to wander a fully-populated Morrowind – where the Dragonborn returned centuries ago, but they called him the Nerevarine and he didn't need fast-travel to get the damn job done.

 

[ShaneEnochs]

I know everyone is talking about Skyrim, but if I could just change topics real quick, has anyone played Star Trek Online? I had been waiting for about three years for its release, then I read a ton of bad reviews and decided not to buy it. It goes free in January, and I've heard they've updated it quite a bit, and I was curious if it's better now?

 

[Fox McCloud]

Anyone finding crafting at all useful? I couldn't find incentive to blacksmith as melee. Enchanting took too much effort to collect soul gems, and there're just waaaaaay too many alchemy ingredients (but I guess it'd be fun if you're into Doodle God). Staves also generally seem useless since only a caster'd use (unless you're into pausing the game a few times during combat) and though I've found maybe 6 staves, all the effects are unimpressive.

You do know you can favorite a weapon and quick change using the favorite menu, right? Just press Q. Furthermore, you can assign up to 8 favorited items/weapons/spells to the keys 1 through 8 to make even even easier.

In any event, enchanting, alchemy, and smithing all have strong synergy, though it's certainly time consuming to forge ultimate weapons. You can use alchemy to make +enchantment potions. Use that potion, then make +alchemy amulet+ring+headpiece+gauntlets...then use those worn pieces to make an even better +enchantment potion...you do this, in a circle for a while until you can make insanely powering smithing potions...then you use those potion(s) and forge these insanely powerful weapons. Furthermore, you can enchant these weapons with various attributes to make them even stronger, still (ie: fire damage, etc).

Problem is, you need 100 skill in all three to do crazy stuff like that >>

 

[leemadison11]

I love gaming and i am a big fan of it. I feel it is so amazing that every new game comes with more and more better looks and performance. A scientific research has found that people who are into online gaming are more social, quick decision maker, have better reflex, better planners, more tactical and strategic, always goal oriented, determined to accomplish task and fast in analysis. I wonder who are those people who spread foul rumors about it.

 

[Kludge]

Furthermore, you can assign up to 8 favorited items/weapons/spells to the keys 1 through 8 to make even even easier.

That, I didn't know. How do I do that?

 

[Deinonychus]

That, I didn't know. How do I do that?

Favorite an item in the inventory by pressing F while highlighting the item. Then while in-game, press Q to bring up the favorites menu, highlight whatever item you want to hotkey, and then press any of those number keys.

 

[Kludge]

Favorite an item in the inventory by pressing F while highlighting the item. Then while in-game, press Q to bring up the favorites menu, highlight whatever item you want to hotkey, and then press any of those number keys.

Thanks!

 

[Kludge]

QD Inventory mod looks perfect. What's awesome about having a game which's just as much a platform is that anything a user dislikes can be modified to suit their preferences. Instead of trying to please one group of people with one game, keeping the game as modifiable as possible allows everyone to be pleased. SC II, for example, can be a FPS, turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, sim, board game, TD, RPG, and on -- you don't need to like Starcraft II out-of-the-box to enjoy Starcraft II.

There're also mods to remove the Bethesda intro (seems to be just replacing the video file with a blank), mods to allow remapping of keys Bethesda decided to hard-code, mods adding more recipes to blacksmithing, mods permitting death of children, mods changing the amount of gold merchants carry, and a ton of mods fixing or improving graphics in the game.

Bethesda's to release the powerful tools they use to create & modify content to the public for free next month.

Edit: Oh -- and just saw that Yahtzee has released his review of Skyrim. Haven't watched, yet. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5020-The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim

 

[Kluge]

Dunno why this fellow doesn't get more Youtube hits.

 

[Deinonychus]

Dunno why this fellow doesn't get more Youtube hits.

Neat video.

 

[2young2vote]

Anyone have The Old Republic? Is it worth the price of the game plus $15 per month? The environments look really boring but supposedly the worlds are huge so there might be fun places to explore that I haven't seen in videos and pictures.

 

[Kluge]

If any0ne's interested in a free, c0mplex MM0RTS, Bey0nd Pr0t0c0l had its s0urce c0de released a few m0nths ag0 and is n0w being h0sted by a c0uple f0rmer devs @ http://afterprotocol.com/index.php -- just d0wnl0ad the client and f0ll0w the sh0rt, simple instructi0ns. There're maybe 10-15 0f us active 0n it n0w, but it 0nly started advertising a c0uple days ag0.

 

[eduardo89]

I'm a huge gamer. I love playing snake on my old nokia phone. Also FarmVille is really good. My favorite game though is called Downhill Dilly, although its really graphics intensive for my computer.

 

[torchbearer]

can someone provide links to the best skyrim mods? i'm about to install my copy soon and would like to bling it out.
heard pov adjust was needed too.