GAME OF THE WEEK:18 cert, Bethesda Studios, Xbox 360 (also Playstation 3, PC) ****
Arise, noble warrior. You shall take up arms against tyrannical rulers and oppressive dragons. You will customise your abilities in magic, weapon forging and combat, but you will probably spend ages traipsing across digital landscapes.
The story begins with your character’s head on a chopping block. Moments before the axe falls, the town is attacked by a dragon and you escape. Soon you’ve established yourself as a budding warrior, one who’s uniquely qualified to address this rising dragon crisis.
This being an open-world scenario, you can carry out your narrative in a linear fashion, or put it off while doing countless side-quests and distractions, from magic training to freedom fighting to property purchasing.
Skyrimis bursting with detail. Sonically or visually, no game this year has been as immersive; look up to the sky and you'll see beautiful constellations, glance at a brook and you'll see leaping fish, take a stroll through the towns of Skyrim to spend time with the organic, credible communities. This is capped by fabulous music, from chiming, ambient hums to a booming, operatic battle score.
The game adapts to your playing style – more swordplay makes you more powerful in that area, for example. And you can choose your ethnicity: I picked a wood elf for his ability to communicate with animals. It’s filled with tasks I was happy to do (fight monsters, go on epic quests) and more mundane duties (forging weapons, mixing potions), but you can focus on what you enjoy.
Alas, like many RPGs, there are just a tad too many long walks. Yes, you can skip to places you’ve been to before, but get a puzzle wrong and you may find yourself wandering the same area again. It’s not for those cursed with a bad sense of direction.
Skyrimis a humbling game, a weighty work with its share of blood, brutality, beauty and adventure. Like the best RPGs, it's grandiose, and makes you feel like you're part of something bigger – a central part of an epic story.
