Skyrim Becomes First Western Game to Nail 40/40 Famitsu Review

CarlMin

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Sorta can't help but feel that this says more about that reviewer than Skyrim.
 

Kopikatsu

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LilithSlave said:
It feels much like a rhythm game where the key to winning is hitting the right chord(battle formation) at the right time and knowing just when to heal, just when you use more magic, and just when to use more physical attacks(which is simple, because most of the time you want to start a battle with a mixture of physical and magical, in order to push it's "limit" or whatever you call it, then switch to all physical while it's in the air and do much greater damage. And heal a little or heal a lot depending on how much the opponent does damage to you).
Isn't that an improvement over most JRPG's usual system of Buff > Attack > Heal > Rebuff > Attack > Heal > Cont? Functionally it's the same, but practically XIII's battle system is more visually appealing/faster paced. Even the linearity is pretty standard. Most games try to pretend like it isn't all that linear, but many are. At least XIII is up front about it. Also, it's set up in such a way that grinding isn't necessary at all unless you want to do all of the post-game content.

OutrageousEmu said:
K84 said:
OutrageousEmu said:
All others, though, its likely just honest opinion, and for Bayonetta, that honest opinion was "boobies".
Boobies make sense, but what about that Nintendogs perfect score?

That aside, Skyrim deserves it, great game.
I just said, a bribe. Disregard any and all perfect scores for Nintendo games from Famitsu, and the reviews more or less make complete sense....well, I say more or less. I've heard theres a bit of controversy about the Peace Walker review, as the game supposedly contains a minor promo for Famitsu's parent organisation, which you could argue may have influencced the review more than it should have.

That said, they also gave a near perfect review to Modern Warfare 3, so maybe they're just whores.
Is Modern Warefare 3 a bad game? When you factor in it's similarity to it's predecessors and market oversaturation, sure, but on it's own merits? It looks rather solid. (I haven't played it myself)
 

Hal10k

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CarlMinez said:
Sorta can't help but feel that this says more about that reviewer than Skyrim.
Famitsu doesn't actually use one reviewer. Four seperate reviewers each play it independently, and give it there own score out of 10. These scores are all added together to give a total score out of 40. 40/40 means all four reviewers gave it a perfect score.
 

TheScientificIssole

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YEAH! 'MERICA, YOU DONE IT AGAIN!
Really only seventeen games have made 40/40 in 30 years, and Skyrim
OutrageousEmu said:
That said, they also gave a near perfect review to Modern Warfare 3, so maybe they're just whores.
Modern Warfare 3 doesn't deserve anything under a 90%. Its a solid game. Not original, but solid.
EDIT: Meh, 85%?
 

GeorgW

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Aug 27, 2010
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Agayek said:
GeorgW said:
I've played the game for maybe 10-20 hours, have yet to experience a single bug. Everyone's experience is different, but for a Bethesda game, it's remarkably bug-free.
There's a large number of re-creatable bugs. None of which are game-breaking in any way, shape or form, but they do tend to get annoying. The most annoying one is the menu interface on PC. It's rather easy to "desync" the mouse from what you're trying to click on (so when you click on something on the list, it actually selects something else) and occasionally break the menu entirely so you can't click on anything. Generally, I've seen it happen when scrolling the mouse wheel and moving the mouse at the same time, though the arrow keys can also cause it.

I've also had giant dragon skeletons randomly fall from the sky to land in front of me when I walk out of a cave or the like. Or quest NPCs that say "go meet me at X" and then stand rooted in place and nothing but a console command will allow you to progress through the quest chain. Things like that are a bit silly.
That first two are allegedly going to be fixed in the patch. The third I haven't heard of, sounds ridiculously annoying.
I haven't encountered them, partly cuz I haven't played on the PC. As I said, each player's experience will be different.
Still, when was the last time Bethesda published a game with this few game breaking bugs?
 

chinangel

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Denariax said:
AugustFall said:
Denariax said:
HOW. Is this worthy of a perfect score? I was fine with the crap in Oblivion and Morrowing, with its entirely unimmersive gameplay that could only be improved with playermade mods. But this game was horrid. I played on a PC, and from that the default control scheme, the one that you'd expect to be done right considering it was made for PC's like Oblivion and Morrowind, but apparently wasn't because the WASD setup no longer functions, and the completely humiliating intro that has you handcuffed and sent to death (again, I might add, but this time with less care) only for 'gasp' something to intervene.

Maybe I find most people to be generally retarded, but come on. This was no better than half the trash I saw this year.
People have different taste than you therefore they are retarded. Way to perpetuate the pretentious gamer stereotype.

Anyway. Hopefully this sells well in Japan as well, good positive reinforcement for Bethesda to keep up the good work. Hopefully that wouldn't convince them that yearly releases are a good idea.
Also spending the time to make a PC style PC version wouldn't go amiss.

Edit: Also of all the complaints this game may warrant I haven't run into any problems with WASD... Care to elaborate?
I was running on a non-updated game; it may have something to do with that my 360 controller set up specifically for Mugen cancelled out all the other controls even after I took the controller out and reset the game.

I'm pretentious, yes, but the problem is, I try to have validity behind my pretentiousness. Games that recieve an ungodly amount of hype (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Modern Warfare) go directly onto my 'Skeptical' list.

I also like to play my own sort of game while playing this. I attempt to go into games, keeping that sole game as its own existence. No prequels, no sequels; even if they exist I don't put them into the context of that game. Now; after starting the game, around the first few minutes, I had no idea why I was doing any of the things I was doing, and slowly stopped caring. I could say that it was a survival instinct, but if it was a survival instinct I wouldn't have been set up falsely accused of being something I have no idea the existence of, and would start out from a completely different position, something the game completely fails to do without additional mods. Its around that time that I just give up on the game. Even if it gets better later, that does not in any way warrant a perfect score. Ever. If I'm allowed to write off Final Fantasy XIII for not making any sense at the beginning, even if it 'gets better later', then I can do the same for Skyrim.

I have games I like that emphasize story over the rest; Alice: Madness Returns, for example, was my favorite game this year because it was able to keep gameplay, and story, separate and still engaging. Sure, the beginning seemed weird, but in the first hour you're able to figure out that this is, indeed, a sequel to another game; it could have even been a sequel to the books themselves and would still make sense. With Skyrim they don't give you that information and seemingly expect you to just figure stuff out on your own.

The biggest flaw Skyrim has is its inability to make sense. Why in the hell would a guy hunting dragons need to loot brooms from someones house to sell for random equipment that he then sells later? If the game promises choice, then why am I not allowed to set fire to villages and run around laughing at the burning headless chicken? You can say that you can, but has consequence; what if I don't want consequence for having fun? And that's why Skyrim just flew off the deep end of boredom, and I went back to beating Megaman Maverick Hunter X for the 13th time.
It kinda seems that you went into the game not wanting to like it. The game has to fit your idea of 'good' otherwise its crap. Sorry, but it makes your opinion hard to take seriously.

and it seems that you're just jumping from skyrim thread to skyrim thread trolling. This almost entirely negates your entire opinion. Honestly, if you don't like the game, then why do you keep going to other threads? Ostensibly just to complain about it?
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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Soviet Heavy said:
ChocoFace said:
VincentX3 said:
I wonder what the word "Dovakhiin" sounds like in a Nordic Japanese accent?
DOVA-KUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!
]
Oh god i'm picturing it now:
Every woman in Skyrim is wearing one of those "sexy" catsuits
All the characters have huge eyes
The dragons have tentacles.
No, the bears will have tentacles.
Wouldn't the Daedra have the tentacles since they're TES version of demons?
 

Agayek

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GeorgW said:
That first two are allegedly going to be fixed in the patch. The third I haven't heard of, sounds ridiculously annoying.
I haven't encountered them, partly cuz I haven't played on the PC. As I said, each player's experience will be different.
Still, when was the last time Bethesda published a game with this few game breaking bugs?
It definitely varies by person, and the game is so huge that there really isn't a way to test everything in a reasonable amount of time, so as long as the game allows me to continue I really have no issues with the bugs. The only real problem I've ever had with it are the bugs that force me to use console commands to continue. The Forsworn Conspiracy chain in Markarth bugged out and the guards wouldn't arrest me, so I had to use console commands. Similarly, the opening quest for the Thieves' Guild bugged and Brynjolf stood around in the Riften market distracting everyone, even after the quest had been completed and he had just told me to meet him at the Ragged Flagon.

Some people don't find any bugs, some do, there's really no way to tell, but it's really about par for the course for Bethesda games. From what I've read and my own experiences and that of my friends, it's no better or worse than Oblivion or Fallout 3.
 

Denariax

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chinangel said:
Denariax said:
AugustFall said:
Denariax said:
HOW. Is this worthy of a perfect score? I was fine with the crap in Oblivion and Morrowing, with its entirely unimmersive gameplay that could only be improved with playermade mods. But this game was horrid. I played on a PC, and from that the default control scheme, the one that you'd expect to be done right considering it was made for PC's like Oblivion and Morrowind, but apparently wasn't because the WASD setup no longer functions, and the completely humiliating intro that has you handcuffed and sent to death (again, I might add, but this time with less care) only for 'gasp' something to intervene.

Maybe I find most people to be generally retarded, but come on. This was no better than half the trash I saw this year.
People have different taste than you therefore they are retarded. Way to perpetuate the pretentious gamer stereotype.

Anyway. Hopefully this sells well in Japan as well, good positive reinforcement for Bethesda to keep up the good work. Hopefully that wouldn't convince them that yearly releases are a good idea.
Also spending the time to make a PC style PC version wouldn't go amiss.

Edit: Also of all the complaints this game may warrant I haven't run into any problems with WASD... Care to elaborate?
I was running on a non-updated game; it may have something to do with that my 360 controller set up specifically for Mugen cancelled out all the other controls even after I took the controller out and reset the game.

I'm pretentious, yes, but the problem is, I try to have validity behind my pretentiousness. Games that recieve an ungodly amount of hype (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Modern Warfare) go directly onto my 'Skeptical' list.

I also like to play my own sort of game while playing this. I attempt to go into games, keeping that sole game as its own existence. No prequels, no sequels; even if they exist I don't put them into the context of that game. Now; after starting the game, around the first few minutes, I had no idea why I was doing any of the things I was doing, and slowly stopped caring. I could say that it was a survival instinct, but if it was a survival instinct I wouldn't have been set up falsely accused of being something I have no idea the existence of, and would start out from a completely different position, something the game completely fails to do without additional mods. Its around that time that I just give up on the game. Even if it gets better later, that does not in any way warrant a perfect score. Ever. If I'm allowed to write off Final Fantasy XIII for not making any sense at the beginning, even if it 'gets better later', then I can do the same for Skyrim.

I have games I like that emphasize story over the rest; Alice: Madness Returns, for example, was my favorite game this year because it was able to keep gameplay, and story, separate and still engaging. Sure, the beginning seemed weird, but in the first hour you're able to figure out that this is, indeed, a sequel to another game; it could have even been a sequel to the books themselves and would still make sense. With Skyrim they don't give you that information and seemingly expect you to just figure stuff out on your own.

The biggest flaw Skyrim has is its inability to make sense. Why in the hell would a guy hunting dragons need to loot brooms from someones house to sell for random equipment that he then sells later? If the game promises choice, then why am I not allowed to set fire to villages and run around laughing at the burning headless chicken? You can say that you can, but has consequence; what if I don't want consequence for having fun? And that's why Skyrim just flew off the deep end of boredom, and I went back to beating Megaman Maverick Hunter X for the 13th time.
It kinda seems that you went into the game not wanting to like it. The game has to fit your idea of 'good' otherwise its crap. Sorry, but it makes your opinion hard to take seriously.

and it seems that you're just jumping from skyrim thread to skyrim thread trolling. This almost entirely negates your entire opinion. Honestly, if you don't like the game, then why do you keep going to other threads? Ostensibly just to complain about it?
Because I have fun ruining other peoples fun.

EDIT: That was mild sarcasm. Its not that I went into the game knowing I was going to hate it; I take at least an hour to rid myself of any previous thought I had about the game. I went into Duke Nukem really, really wanting to like it and didn't even end up buying the full game because of the demo. I went into Skyrim slightly skeptical, but hoping that if there were any mild problems that I noticed, that they could be fixed with playermade modifications. The problem isn't that there aren't small problems in gameplay, but major problems in the overall experience that detract from the experience as a whole. Heck, I thought I was going to hate Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but found it quite fun after the first mission.
 

Denariax

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Edited more info after the post, just a heads up.

But I'll put it here too.

"That was mild sarcasm. Its not that I went into the game knowing I was going to hate it; I take at least an hour to rid myself of any previous thought I had about the game. I went into Duke Nukem really, really wanting to like it and didn't even end up buying the full game because of the demo. I went into Skyrim slightly skeptical, but hoping that if there were any mild problems that I noticed, that they could be fixed with playermade modifications. The problem isn't that there aren't small problems in gameplay, but major problems in the overall experience that detract from the experience as a whole. Heck, I thought I was going to hate Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but found it quite fun after the first mission."
 

AugustFall

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Denariax said:
AugustFall said:
Denariax said:
HOW. Is this worthy of a perfect score? I was fine with the crap in Oblivion and Morrowing, with its entirely unimmersive gameplay that could only be improved with playermade mods. But this game was horrid. I played on a PC, and from that the default control scheme, the one that you'd expect to be done right considering it was made for PC's like Oblivion and Morrowind, but apparently wasn't because the WASD setup no longer functions, and the completely humiliating intro that has you handcuffed and sent to death (again, I might add, but this time with less care) only for 'gasp' something to intervene.

Maybe I find most people to be generally retarded, but come on. This was no better than half the trash I saw this year.
People have different taste than you therefore they are retarded. Way to perpetuate the pretentious gamer stereotype.

Anyway. Hopefully this sells well in Japan as well, good positive reinforcement for Bethesda to keep up the good work. Hopefully that wouldn't convince them that yearly releases are a good idea.
Also spending the time to make a PC style PC version wouldn't go amiss.

Edit: Also of all the complaints this game may warrant I haven't run into any problems with WASD... Care to elaborate?
I was running on a non-updated game; it may have something to do with that my 360 controller set up specifically for Mugen cancelled out all the other controls even after I took the controller out and reset the game.

I'm pretentious, yes, but the problem is, I try to have validity behind my pretentiousness. Games that recieve an ungodly amount of hype (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Modern Warfare) go directly onto my 'Skeptical' list.

I also like to play my own sort of game while playing this. I attempt to go into games, keeping that sole game as its own existence. No prequels, no sequels; even if they exist I don't put them into the context of that game. Now; after starting the game, around the first few minutes, I had no idea why I was doing any of the things I was doing, and slowly stopped caring. I could say that it was a survival instinct, but if it was a survival instinct I wouldn't have been set up falsely accused of being something I have no idea the existence of, and would start out from a completely different position, something the game completely fails to do without additional mods. Its around that time that I just give up on the game. Even if it gets better later, that does not in any way warrant a perfect score. Ever. If I'm allowed to write off Final Fantasy XIII for not making any sense at the beginning, even if it 'gets better later', then I can do the same for Skyrim.

I have games I like that emphasize story over the rest; Alice: Madness Returns, for example, was my favorite game this year because it was able to keep gameplay, and story, separate and still engaging. Sure, the beginning seemed weird, but in the first hour you're able to figure out that this is, indeed, a sequel to another game; it could have even been a sequel to the books themselves and would still make sense. With Skyrim they don't give you that information and seemingly expect you to just figure stuff out on your own.

The biggest flaw Skyrim has is its inability to make sense. Why in the hell would a guy hunting dragons need to loot brooms from someones house to sell for random equipment that he then sells later? If the game promises choice, then why am I not allowed to set fire to villages and run around laughing at the burning headless chicken? You can say that you can, but has consequence; what if I don't want consequence for having fun? And that's why Skyrim just flew off the deep end of boredom, and I went back to beating Megaman Maverick Hunter X for the 13th time.
Okay, why don't you take sequels and prequels into account? You don't read Return of the King and go, "Well they didn't explain anything. Who the fuck is Frodo and why does he have this ring?"
They don't have to explain everything because you were supposed to read them in order. If a game has a big fat 2 on the box odds are there is some content you're missing. Now some make an effort to clue you in but the fact of the matter is that a series is a series, as in a series of things with an order to them.
On to your next point about not knowing why you are doing what you are doing. It's a Role Playing Game. You do whatever you want to do. It's not scripted like most games; you choose how you want to act in any given situation. Why are you stealing brooms? The hell if I know that sounds like an odd thing to do. You have one and only one piece of preset info about yourself. You are Dragonborn. Why are you fighting dragons? You don't have to if you don't want to. I do it because it's fun and my character has accepted his fate. Your character may be different.
If you want to know more about the world then you can go find out. You can talk to people and ask questions. Explore in the hopes of finding people to answer your questions. Like you would and do in the real world.
It's not like other series in that your questions are answered in time. You learn about the Elder Scrolls as they become relevant to the plot, you learn why there are dragons and all that by playing the game. This is what makes the experience so immersive. Everything that happens in the plot happens to you. You witnessed the first dragon attack, you sought answers on who you are and what's going on. Your character has no preset knowledge of what's going on because you don't any knowledge of what's going on. You aren't guided down a set of hallways and you don't listen to your character's opinion of a situation. You choose where to go and you choose how you appraise things.

This is most likely why it fell flat for you. You said you liked Alice because it kept story and gameplay separate. This is counter-intuitive in gaming. Gaming allows you to, as a player, experience the story first hand. Why have a story in a game at all if it in no way reflects the gameplay? Why have gameplay at all if it doesn't enhance the story.

You're free to have your own preferences in gaming but saying that a game is bad for the reasons you have listed is short sighted and has no validity. It simply sounds like a bloated opinion of a game from someone who barely played it.
Again if you didn't like it then no, don't slog through it. But your opinion is not writ and being pretentious is not a good character trait.
 

DarkRyter

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Hammeroj said:
DarkRyter said:
Hammeroj said:
Wow, it saddens me to feel that I have standards far higher than supposedly 4 of the hardest-to-please critics.
Yes. You disagree. You obviously must have higher standards.
Because standards don't exist, or because Skyrim surpasses all of them?
Standards do not exist. There's no such thing as an objective measure of quality.

Whether something measures up to a standard is little more than opinion. Whether a standard is higher than another standard is downright arbitrary.
 

LilithSlave

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While it is true that other Final Fantasy games, and RPGs in general, really, including wRPGs, are pretty linear and the non-linearity is an illusion, the lack of options is claustrophobic this time for many gamers. And more options in a game adds to gameplay. Allowing people distractions from a main objective and allowing them to do more things is a good thing.

In other Final Fantasy games, you were allowed to explore more areas(which allowed you to often find bonuses which helped on your linear objective), talk to more NPCs, engage in side quests constantly, and a great many other things. There was a constant reward to exploring, and the typical logic of them and most jRPGs have been, "to succeed and get all of the good stuff, do the exact opposite of what you're supposed to(within reason) and explore everywhere except where you're immediately supposed to go". Which isn't actually that different from Oblivion if you think about it, only that jRPGs tend to restrict the amount of areas you're allowed to in comparison, setting the game and exploration in stages much like classic action-adventure games and platformers(there are many bonuses in Zelda games, but you're not allowed to explore everywhere at one time, so therefor the exploration and options come in stages instead of one big unbroken stage/sandbox). In Oblivion, you're immediately supposed to go help out Martin, but you can do a great many other things, like join a Guild or even go to the Shivering Isles and get an amazing sword, first. Which means getting an amazing sword, before storming the first Oblivion gate.

And to tie that in to Skyrim, I think that a part of the reason the jRPG is in decline, much as I love it, is because that Final Fantasy, the franchise everyone unfortunately associates with the jRPG, failed to appease people with enough options.

A good jRPG is a lot like a good wRPG, in my opinion, and a good wRPG, is a lot like a good jRPG. Good ones from both in terms of pacing generally meet each other halfway in terms of pacing. You just get the most out of gameplay and what the focus of an RPG is supposed to be that way. RPGs are supposed to be multifaceted games. And Final Fantasy XIII isn't very multifaceted. Chrono Trigger is a very multi-faceted game where reactions of NPCs and many other things differ, depending on your actions. For instance, you can often do a lot of things and exploring, before completing your main objective. That's part of the fun. And you can get different endings, depending on your course of action. Also, you can choose(and this is spoiler territory, go play Chrono Trigger right now if you haven't), whether to break out of prison, be saved by Lucca, and whether you're actually chosen by the jury as guilty or not. And just like Oblivion, your actions everywhere in the world, and how you progress the story, will affect how NPCs everywhere talk about you. There are many other examples, but you don't get such a thing in Final Fantasy XIII, and I believe it suffers for it.

I do not believe, that Final Fantasy XIII is as bad as everyone makes it out to be, however, and deserves a lot of respect. Even more so, I think it's a terrible development that the term "jRPG" evokes laughter and scorn from many Westerners now. I'm getting awfully tired of the unwarrented condescension and even scorn not just jRPGs, but Japanese games in general get now. You almost get the feeling that many people within the Western world begrudgingly played and praised and played Japanese games because they couldn't possibly lie then and say that Japanese games were bad, and couldn't get away with it, because in that state of the gaming industry, Japanese games were fairly dominant, and it was pretty much impossible to consider yourself a fan of video gaming and not like a Japanese game or two. But now that Japanese games have started to lose face, and people can get away with it, it seems like thousands of people are jumping at the opportunity to be patriotic about video games as they are every other aspect of their lives and laugh it up about Asian made games. I can bet that the current state of the video game industry and which games by which ethnicities are more respected, has pleased a great many people.

And it's true. A lot of Westerners are looking down their noses as Western games and many Japanese companies know it. It's a part of all major video game magazines like Game Informer.

And I want jRPGs and Asian games in general to be more respected. Not just Japanese, I want to see more good games come out of Korea and China and for the "Korean grind fest" stigma to go away. But I'm not sure that I wholly disagree with the criticism leveled at Final Fantasy XIII.

I am certainly sympathetic to your claim, though.
 

DarkRyter

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Denariax said:
I'm pretentious, yes, but the problem is, I try to have validity behind my pretentiousness. Games that recieve an ungodly amount of hype (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Modern Warfare) go directly onto my 'Skeptical' list.
You let other people's opinion of things affect your own opinion of things?

That's an admission of humility, if I've ever seen one.
 

Atmos Duality

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Kopikatsu said:
Is Modern Warefare 3 a bad game? When you factor in it's similarity to it's predecessors and market oversaturation, sure, but on it's own merits? It looks rather solid. (I haven't played it myself)
I have played it. It's nothing special.

Hypothetically, if Modern Warfare 3 was the only game I ever played, I'd elevate and hype the shit out of it. Of course, I can make the same argument for a great number of modern games, including any of MW3's B-list and C-list knockoffs. (Naivety and ignorance are precisely why shovelware games and knockoffs exist)

Standards and contexts change though. I started gaming in the early NES-era, and it's impossible to not compare experiences (we're thinking on the margin when we do so).
This is proved by the fact that in the absence of nostalgia, very few old games actually hold up today. Few games actually have "timeless" gameplay elements.

One can claim this is "unfair", and I'll tell them that they're dead wrong. It's perfectly fair to compare experiences and especially compare competing games, because that's how WE, the gamers, are supposed to force some variety into our selection.
 

Denariax

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AugustFall said:
Denariax said:
AugustFall said:
Denariax said:
HOW. Is this worthy of a perfect score? I was fine with the crap in Oblivion and Morrowing, with its entirely unimmersive gameplay that could only be improved with playermade mods. But this game was horrid. I played on a PC, and from that the default control scheme, the one that you'd expect to be done right considering it was made for PC's like Oblivion and Morrowind, but apparently wasn't because the WASD setup no longer functions, and the completely humiliating intro that has you handcuffed and sent to death (again, I might add, but this time with less care) only for 'gasp' something to intervene.

Maybe I find most people to be generally retarded, but come on. This was no better than half the trash I saw this year.
People have different taste than you therefore they are retarded. Way to perpetuate the pretentious gamer stereotype.

Anyway. Hopefully this sells well in Japan as well, good positive reinforcement for Bethesda to keep up the good work. Hopefully that wouldn't convince them that yearly releases are a good idea.
Also spending the time to make a PC style PC version wouldn't go amiss.

Edit: Also of all the complaints this game may warrant I haven't run into any problems with WASD... Care to elaborate?
I was running on a non-updated game; it may have something to do with that my 360 controller set up specifically for Mugen cancelled out all the other controls even after I took the controller out and reset the game.

I'm pretentious, yes, but the problem is, I try to have validity behind my pretentiousness. Games that recieve an ungodly amount of hype (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Modern Warfare) go directly onto my 'Skeptical' list.

I also like to play my own sort of game while playing this. I attempt to go into games, keeping that sole game as its own existence. No prequels, no sequels; even if they exist I don't put them into the context of that game. Now; after starting the game, around the first few minutes, I had no idea why I was doing any of the things I was doing, and slowly stopped caring. I could say that it was a survival instinct, but if it was a survival instinct I wouldn't have been set up falsely accused of being something I have no idea the existence of, and would start out from a completely different position, something the game completely fails to do without additional mods. Its around that time that I just give up on the game. Even if it gets better later, that does not in any way warrant a perfect score. Ever. If I'm allowed to write off Final Fantasy XIII for not making any sense at the beginning, even if it 'gets better later', then I can do the same for Skyrim.

I have games I like that emphasize story over the rest; Alice: Madness Returns, for example, was my favorite game this year because it was able to keep gameplay, and story, separate and still engaging. Sure, the beginning seemed weird, but in the first hour you're able to figure out that this is, indeed, a sequel to another game; it could have even been a sequel to the books themselves and would still make sense. With Skyrim they don't give you that information and seemingly expect you to just figure stuff out on your own.

The biggest flaw Skyrim has is its inability to make sense. Why in the hell would a guy hunting dragons need to loot brooms from someones house to sell for random equipment that he then sells later? If the game promises choice, then why am I not allowed to set fire to villages and run around laughing at the burning headless chicken? You can say that you can, but has consequence; what if I don't want consequence for having fun? And that's why Skyrim just flew off the deep end of boredom, and I went back to beating Megaman Maverick Hunter X for the 13th time.
Okay, why don't you take sequels and prequels into account? You don't read Return of the King and go, "Well they didn't explain anything. Who the fuck is Frodo and why does he have this ring?"
They don't have to explain everything because you were supposed to read them in order. If a game has a big fat 2 on the box odds are there is some content you're missing. Now some make an effort to clue you in but the fact of the matter is that a series is a series, as in a series of things with an order to them.
On to your next point about not knowing why you are doing what you are doing. It's a Role Playing Game. You do whatever you want to do. It's not scripted like most games; you choose how you want to act in any given situation. Why are you stealing brooms? The hell if I know that sounds like an odd thing to do. You have one and only one piece of preset info about yourself. You are Dragonborn. Why are you fighting dragons? You don't have to if you don't want to. I do it because it's fun and my character has accepted his fate. Your character may be different.
If you want to know more about the world then you can go find out. You can talk to people and ask questions. Explore in the hopes of finding people to answer your questions. Like you would and do in the real world.
It's not like other series in that your questions are answered in time. You learn about the Elder Scrolls as they become relevant to the plot, you learn why there are dragons and all that by playing the game. This is what makes the experience so immersive. Everything that happens in the plot happens to you. You witnessed the first dragon attack, you sought answers on who you are and what's going on. Your character has no preset knowledge of what's going on because you don't any knowledge of what's going on. You aren't guided down a set of hallways and you don't listen to your character's opinion of a situation. You choose where to go and you choose how you appraise things.

This is most likely why it fell flat for you. You said you liked Alice because it kept story and gameplay separate. This is counter-intuitive in gaming. Gaming allows you to, as a player, experience the story first hand. Why have a story in a game at all if it in no way reflects the gameplay? Why have gameplay at all if it doesn't enhance the story.

You're free to have your own preferences in gaming but saying that a game is bad for the reasons you have listed is short sighted and has no validity. It simply sounds like a bloated opinion of a game from someone who barely played it.
Again if you didn't like it then no, don't slog through it. But your opinion is not writ and being pretentious is not a good character trait.
The primary problem I'm going to pick at here, is that if a game cannot give any information in the first hour, it is not worth sticking around to get more out of it. If the game was given more choice than it gives, it would give you the choice to not be a Dragonborn. A lot of people would still choose it, but its not there to begin with. In Alice it kept them separate, but meaningful. And not as separate as I put them out to be.

The problem in Skyrim, in the end, is that when it emphasizes story (As most RPG's are bound nearly by law to), it has to hold up on that before it can be held up on gameplay (Graphics don't count, this isn't an art studio.) And while someone would say that games aren't books, that's no longer the case because games become old without reason to do things. And Skyrim's story falls flat without any initial reasoning; being thrown directly into a carriage and being told "You're going to die now, kthnx" is not good story, regardless of what happens afterwards, and even regardless if they go back to explain it later a la FFXIII.

If something doesn't happen in the first hour of the game I usually stop playing. Like Heavy Rain. If the event seems forced onto the subject at hand (AKA, the dragon somehow finding you and freeing specifically you, nevermind that other bloke who just got decapitated), it seems just plain insulting to keep playing.

Now, in another game, Bioshock for example, you could say that your guy being the sole survivor was bad storytelling. But the problem here is, the confusion going into the game is subsided by it being a game based more on the immersion of gameplay rather than story. And because Skyrim emphasizes story, I can't consider it nearly 40/40, maybe more 10/40, as the story is just plain dumb.

And for the LotR thing; no. Isn't the same. In LotR you're expected to have read them in order, and in all honesty I consider it all one giant story anyways. Like Harry Potter. Except the writers got drunk around chapter 5.
 

chinangel

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Sep 25, 2009
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Hammeroj said:
DarkRyter said:
Hammeroj said:
DarkRyter said:
Hammeroj said:
Wow, it saddens me to feel that I have standards far higher than supposedly 4 of the hardest-to-please critics.
Yes. You disagree. You obviously must have higher standards.
Because standards don't exist, or because Skyrim surpasses all of them?
Standards do not exist. There's no such thing as an objective measure of quality.

Whether something measures up to a standard is little more than opinion. Whether a standard is higher than another standard is downright arbitrary.
Right. I suspected that was the case you were going to put forward, and by God is it the most boring and cliche thing you could do on this forum.

Standards exist, at the very least in broad terms, and them being a human construct does not do anything to diminish the idea. I'm telling you right now, keep your relativistic jargon if you intend to use it. It does not win any arguments, ever. And it certainly doesn't make you look smart.


As far as standards go, I'll keep it simple so you'll have less to object to. There are objective qualities to an art form, and they become more abundant as the art form becomes more complex (games being mostly so). Objective qualities such as depth, variety, intuitiveness, originality or fidelity. Standards dictate how much of each of these qualities I demand for the game to be good. In context, of course, of what the game is trying to achieve.
but what you demand from a game can differ from another. It's fine to say that a game doesn't meet YOUR standards, but don't automatically assume that your standards are THE standards.
 

Spandexpanda

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Mar 16, 2011
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Does anyone else not think that any game can possibly achieve a perfect score realistically? Sure, it's an amazing game, and I love the Elder Scrolls to bits, but seriously, nothing's perfect. That any game could be perfect to four seperate reviewers is kind of odd, to me at least. For a game to be perfect, it'd have to be doling out sexual favours and making me bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. It could also print money, that'd be nice too. But obviously, that's my perspective. To someone who is a vegetarian, that game would be imperfect. Is it really possible for anything to be perfect?