I bought this as a gift for a mate of mine via Steam. That's my claim. I didn't get on with Fallout 3, I can't see this happening for me ever sadly. I'm sure fans of the genre will love it though, tiny bit impenetrable for a meat head like me.

I haven't felt that this has been intimidating at all, you'll get on with this much easier than the previous games. The introduction is more engaging and teaches you the core mechanics. Give it a try

While we're on the subject of being crap, I can't play driving games, the best I can do is a passable master run through f-zero gx, if that can be considered driving. No heroness there for me.

If I am playing anyhting that doesn't involve tyres its gotta be Xenoblade Chronicles, I let FallOut get patched up before jumping in with that, got out of the cave thing, had a wander around, got to the first village and then it went all 16bit fetch quests on me... So I left it and never returned. Still, the world was very well created and I enjoyed the underground bit.

It's probably worth getting a PC rig together for all the pixels if I go all in.

Playing this on PC is a sensible thing to do; mods, steam integration, more pixels and keyboard-mouse precision.

I've been counting down the days ever since this was first announced and had it preloaded on Steam, waiting for midnight was like waiting for Christmas when I was a little kid. I've played the opening and a couple of side quests so far, it's absolutely spellbinding!

I really love what they've done with the combat, in Oblivion you simply hacked away with no feedback from the enemies whatsoever, I didn't mind (I loved the world and characters so much). But in Skyrim, you're dealing with far fewer weapon strikes per battle, but each strike means a hell of a lot more and you really need to make sure each one really counts. I love the way they've allowed you to manually activate techniques such as shield bashes and the way these techniques have a marked effect on the enemy. So rather than simply hacking away at the enemy, you're actively looking for the right opportunity to break their defence with certain techniques and land a strong attack - simply throwing such an attack out at random will absolutely murder your stamina.

LOVE the magic in this game! I'm definitely going for a spell-sword fighting style as I love having a spell on my free hand. Even the initial Flame and Spark spell you have available are absolutely brutal! Also was shocked at how GOOD the bow is now! I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and have found that you REALLY need to think long and hard about ensuring you deal as much damage as possible before confronting groups of enemies. The dungeons are now so beautifully designed, and even have clever traps and puzzles!

I've found one Dragon Shout so far, but have not been confirmed as the Dragonborn yet. Can't wait to see where this goes...

The best thing about this game is the way they've crammed it full of well thought out systems. These games in the past were always amazing technically, but you really had to make your own game out of them. But in Skyrim, they're still cramming the game full of just about everything you can imagine, but you actually have systems in place which make you want to make use of all of them and you are rewarded for what you put in. The crafting is fantastic! I actually spent quite a while last night hunting animals and gathering minerals so that I could create items via Blacksmithing. The way your character actually performs these crafting actions is pure magic!

It's really depressing that I have to spend the rest of the month working on another game, but as soon as I'm done there I'll be living another life in Skyrim. I played Oblivion right up until the release of Skyrim, I can see the same thing happening here. Going to try and forget this game exists until I finish work

Was thinking of picking this up in the week, since I have the hat already...

That's mint! XD

Seriously, pick it up. Very surprised people are sleeping on this one, once you start playing this you'll not play anything else. You're saving money.

I have to spend the next month playing something I cannot stand... ¬_¬

I've snuck a few hours into Skyrim though, and it's fucking amazing.

Tell me you're not writing the new Dant0r game guide...

Not a fucking chance.

- and that is NOT Dant0r.

Anyone who's playing this is it possible to break the game down into bitesized chunks. What I can't really play these days is stuff where I need a solid 3 hour session. I need a game that I can break down into chunks (say 1 hour). Also how does it track your progress. I find I need a game to keep a good log of what I've done and where I'm going to next (appreciating that this genre is open-ended), because I can leave stuff like this cold for a few months at a time and then come back to it.

Fundamentally I'm not sure this game is a good fit for a married bloke with 2 kids...

The game tracks your progress via a "Quest Log" which is broken down into catergories.

You can pick up quests in any order and complete them in any order, and progress within these quests is tracked within the Quest Log (it's like a journal which updates automatically). You can save at any point, just as long as you're not in battle. You end up playing these games all day because you can't tear yourself away - not because you're stuck between save points.

I'd consider selling the wife and kids off.

Being able to save at any point is the best thing about this, but the fact that its takes over your brain when your not playing it is probably the worst...only 7 more hours before I can get back to it.

What are people playing this on. Realistically I have PS3, 360 options only. I'd have to sell the wife and kids in order to afford a decent PC rig to get the best experience sadly.

I'm consoling myself by getting stuck into Mass Effect (1) following a long discussion with Saur on it from a while back. I know it's a completely different sort of thing, far less open ended and walled in, but I'm going to have to start blasting through some of the back cat before I can justify to myself that I need Skyrim. Mass Effect is sucking me in, but I'll not taint this thread with my normal off topic musings.

Mass Effect is brilliant, as is Mass Effect 2 so I'd say get stuck in to those.

I'm playing Skyrim on 360 and it has some texture issues, tho I don't really care about all that...it looks great most of the time. The only thing that may be a problem later is the draw distance when using my bow, but I'll have to wait and see how that works out.

I'm on the PC version but the game really starts to freak out when the framerate increases. There are 2 issues I'm having, one of which they know about and will fix in the next patch and the other is one which I'm apparently the only one who's reported - even though there are loads of people talking about it online. People seem to be able to bitch all day, but not able to communicate their findings properly...

Bethesda actually respond to every report and I was talking to them today, hopefully these things will be fixed in the next patch.

The first issue is that during internal sections when the framerate increases, objects placed on shelves and around the room rattle on their surfaces. Walk into a tavern and it sounds like some sort of earthquake is happening. They know about this one and are fixing it.

The second is that the Y axis on the controller massively increases when the framerate increases, it doesn't stay in sync with the X axis. I'm sort of getting used to it, but it's not easy! I'm getting 300+ fps during internal sections so the speed increase is huge!

This game makes me sad. The raw game itself is absolutely brilliant, but the control system and UI make playing it a constant battle against their baffling design decisions.

It's amazing how basic information cannot be accessed unless you delve into at least 2 layers of the menu. Even something as simple as seeing how much gold you have. They have also completely omitted your avatar from the menu, so you cannot actually see what equipment you have on you, you have to make note of this as you scroll through what will become a huge list of items as you play.

This game, like Oblivion has masses of spells most of which apply active effects to your character, things such as added strength, health regeneration, added physical defence etc. In battle I always fired off such spells in rapid succession, getting as many effects active as possible before wading in, then topping these effects back up when they ran out. All of these spells have different effects and different durations. But in Skyrim...right, first of all you cannot rapidly fire off spells - you have to enter the menu and equip each spell individually, this means repeating the same menu steps over and over many times before you get stuck in. This is tedium in itself, but even worse is that once you have these spells active - you cannot see what active effects you have on your character or their durations unless you delve 3 levels through the menu! You actually have to enter the menu, select the Magic tab, then select Active Effects in order to see them, plus you actually have to scroll through a menu of these effects and note them one by one. This is completely crazy! How they expect people to keep repeating those steps in battle is completely beyond me. Also, you cannot actually see which spells or abilities you currently have equipped, there is nothing onscreen to tell you for example if you have a dragon shout equipped or a unique racial specialty, or some other type of blessing.

In Oblivion, every time you had an active effect it would appear on the game's HUD as an icon with a little timer gauge underneath it. It was all the information you needed at a glance. How something so fundamental was overlooked is completely bonkers. Also you can't simply cast spells when you want to like you could in Oblivion, you now actually have to be in weapon drawn state to cast a spell. So suppose you're not even in battle and want to cast a spell which is not related to battle; you have to go into the menu, un-equip which ever item you have on your spell hand, select the spell you want, exit the menu, go into weapon drawn mode, then cast it - then re-equip what you had in that hand. In Oblivion this was just a simple matter of pressing whichever hotkey you had the spell assigned to and then pressing the spell button - that it! It didn't matter what equipment you had in your hands or whether or not you were in weapon drawn mode.

The other thing which I don't like are all the little touches Oblivion had which are all gone from Skyrim. Like how your character now does not make eye contact with people talking to him, he just stares into space. Also the way you cannot freely control the camera is rubbish, it pivots around the character's head so you can never get a proper look at your avatar - you have to zoom way out to see the whole character. They've removed the avatar from the menu, so the only way you can see him/her is through the horrible 3rd person camera which you have very little control over.

I'm really close to not playing this again until the modding community work their magic on it. The entire UI and control scheme needs to be redesigned.

this sounds like the issues I had with Golden Sun x 100. That game made you reset your Djinn after every battle. It was completely retarded as you had to set those bad boys to use them in the next encounter. The only way to do this was to wade through a set of menus and actively reassign each Djinn = tedium.

I was wavering on picking this one up, but there's no way I'd make it through the first hour based on what you have said. Is the interface identical between versions? Perhaps the console versions have a more streamlined UI?

It's identical across all version, this is the problem - the streamlined UI does not lend itself at all towards a PC title. Even something as basic as mouse tracking is completely fucked in this game. I've been playing around with the config files, switched off "Mouse Acceleration" while I was there and still no joy - the mouse massively lags behind your input.

The other RPG I'm working on, manages to avoid every single issue which Skyrim presents - yet I know for a fact none of it will ever get noticed because you simply don't have to think about it. I can control the viewpoint in 3rd person on the fly, I can view the action and fight using any camera angle I choose. I can walk and run in any direction and move the camera as I go without even thinking about it.

Same way with the UI and controls. I'm playing the game on a 360 controller, but simply press a key on the keyboard or move the mouse and the game instantly switches over to a completely different UI and remaps all inputs to suit. Then simply pressing anything on the 360 controller, sets everything back to a UI and input configuration to suit the pad.

In Skyrim, if you have set the game to use the 360 controller, it will lock to this mode until you use the 360 controller to access the Options menu and switch it off. This can only be done in-game, you cannot access the options menu unless you actually load a savegame. Even if you don't have the 360 controller plugged in, it will still default to this mode and leave the keyboard and mouse disabled until you plug in back in...load a save game...open the options menu...then switch it off.

Skyrim uses one UI for all versions. On the consoles you don't have access to even a fraction of what you need access to in one of these games, and on the PC the whole thing feels like a mess because it's not designed to be navigated with a mouse. I have been using the pad, but have been having a nightmare with spells and abilities as you don't have a bank of hotkeys you can assign them to. In Oblivion you had 8 hotkeys assigned to the 8 directions of the D-pad, this worked perfectly.

I've just installed a mod which enables the keyboard while the 360 controller is enabled. This allows me to set my abilities/spells ect to 1-8 on the keyboard. Why they couldn't allow you to do this as standard is beyond me.

All I need now is for some clever bastard to redesign the UI and menus and make them relevant to the game they're serving. The whole user experience of this game feels like it was designed by people who do not play games - at all. There are so many "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" design decisions in place of basic functionalty.

What the PC version needs is dual head support, so you have the action on one screen and stats on the other. Failing that some dockable and movable menus and status screens that you can open close and position where you want. MMORPG have been like this for years and they allow a massive amount of customisation so that you can get the UI and hotkeys just as you want them. A cynic like me may even suggest that tweaking the interface is the 'game' in most MMORPG.

What you're going through with this game is one of the main reasons I quit PC gaming over a decade ago.

I've been tracking PC Console game releases, and the cycle seems to be, get the console one ship shape then it takes 6 months to a year to PCerize the PC version. I am 90% gonna get me a rig constructed, there are a few RTS games that simply don't exist on consoles I want to check out, and the digital distribution seems to have settled down. And I am missing out on all those pixels. Anno 2070 caught my eye recently.

@Mads - I don't even think they need to go that far, all this game needs is the same system which works in other RPGs of this type. These systems are used because they work!

All you need for the Active Effects issue are a series of icons with gauges beneath them to appear on-screen when an effect is active. This works perfectly in every single game!

You do not need a separate "Favourites" menu. This is so blatantly an idea from someone who does not play games and is probably thinking in terms of web browsing rather than playing an RPG. Having a bank of hotkeys completely does away with the need for a separate Favourites menu. This menu becomes absolutely huge after only a short time playing. Having 8 slots free to assign items/abilities of your choice completely does away with the need to a separate menu. Again, this is something which is standard in other games and nobody has a problem with it.

The reason why a model of your character is displayed in the menu in other games is so you can see at a glance what equipment your character is wearing. But in Skyrim, there is no such thing. You actually have to scroll through the menu and pick out what your character has equipped. This list is in alphabetical order and the items you are wearing do not jump to the top of the list - the order does not change. This list of items quickly becomes huge, so checking whether or not you are wearing an item which begins with a letter late in the alphabet means you will need to scroll through the entire list instead of simply looking at the model and visully confirming you are wearing it.

The vast majority of the screen space during the menu is taken up by a detailed model of the item you are currently highlighting. This should not be the primary display, this should be secondary, something which you can select if/when you want to see it. First and foremost you should be able to see the character model so you can see what he has equipped, showing me a detailed model of a type of armour/clothing (neatly folded) is not what I want to see - I want to see what I have equipped!

People actually complain about the menu system in Oblivion. I don't even understand what there is to complain about. Everything you needed was available at a glance, you had a model of the character which served its purpose perfectly and the catergorisation of items made perfect sense. Plus the Quest log was actually written as if your character is writing a journal. This is another thing they've removed from Skyrim, it's just simple bullet points now, what actually happened between those points is not recorded.

The in-game UI in Oblivion was a million times better too. Its all so straightforward, like in Oblivion you had an icon displaying which spell you had active, in Skyrim you don't. If something is having an effect on your character, it displays an instantly regonisable icon with a timer gauge, in Skyrim you have to dive 3 levels through a menu and manually select each entry in a list of effects to see what they do and how long they'll last!

The whole "Hands" system is another piece of design which puts visual effect far above functionality. While it looks visually impressive to be able to equip various combinations of magic/weapons in each hand, it massively restricts what you can do in battle and forces you to repeatedly use the menu. As a spell-sword type character, I use spells but also fight with a sword and shield. But each and every time I want to use a spell, I have to un-equip my shield. In Oblivion this was completely unnecessary, it did not matter which combination of whatever you had in your hands, you could cast a spell any time you wanted - I could even combo spell attacks into my sword slashes it was so seamless. But in Skyrim, in order to cast a spell, I have to un-equip my shield, raise my weapon, cast it, then re-equip the shield. It's ridiculous.

I just thought that was what you had to do in these games...I've been going around the houses trying to sort my Vampire problem out and tbh its almost ended it for me. Dont get me started with soul trapping into a specific crystal.

- I bet you caught your Vampire disease in-battle and were given no on-screen prompt that you had a disease Active Effect in place. Then, as you didn't dive down those 3 levels through the menu, you didn't realise you had the disease until you started turning into a Vampire.

This is another example of how the system they had in place originally worked, and why this one does not. If this happened in Oblivion, the in-game HUD would inform you of your status and you could act immediately.

Yep, first I knew about was when daylight was messing with my visuals and there was a screen prompt saying my blood was boiling...eventually found mention of it under magic in the Active Effects sub menu. Even then I have no idea how the whole Vamp thing works, I've reloaded...

I've started digging around in the .ini settings and console command stuff and have managed to get the controls and 3rd person stuff functioning exactly as I want!

The 3rd person camera can be adjusted in the skyrim.ini file in your save folder, I got a list of these settings from a mod and spent a while playing about with them. It's set way too high as default, I've played around with this and have got 3rd person mode looking the business. I've also managed to sort out the stupid way you can't move the camera and your character at the same time. There is a console command "animcam" which switches the camera/control behaviour back to how it was in Oblivion. Now I control my Heroness in exactly as I want!

All some clever bastard has to do now is make a mod which displays Active Effects on the HUD and I couldn't be happier!

I'm thinking of asking for this as my xmas pressie from my GF today. I've never played an Elder Scrolls game before so hopefully I won't miss too much that's missing from Oblivion.

Saur, your comments aren't doing the purchase any justice. Along with all the glitches and the new patch buggering up magic resistances to the point of being game-breaking (do they EVER test shit thesedays??), your HUD/menu complaints aren't exactly inspiring confidence. The last (mmo)RPG I played was WoW and that had everything down in that department perfectly. I'm going to be pissed off, I can tell.

Anyway, I'll be starting out on maximum difficulty - going back to my melee only style of play from before I played MMOs (sick of magic after FFXI and WoW). Advised?

Seriously man, this thing is a tragedy.

The raw game itself is an absolute joy, but the user interface, camera and complete lack of communication of basic information fucks it up completely. I played Oblivion for around 4 years, I never once had a single complaint about its systems, menus or anything. Yes, the combat is dated by today's standards. But never once did I find myself despairing the way I have been with Skyrim.

I LOVE Elder Scrolls! I'm totally sold on the Elder Scrolls universe and would gladly have myself plugged into it permanently Matrix style! - But this game is a complete fucking mess. If you are going to buy Skyrim, buy the PC version and hope that a complete overhaul of the player interface comes soon, courtesy of the modding community.

Someone at Bethesda, someone really high up, obviously has a bizarre prejudice against RPGs. It must have been one of these higher ups who has a belief that the only way this game would have sold is if all the RPG stuff was disguised or hidden. Which is completely untrue, Skyrim would have sold through the roof regardless of whether or not they provided an interface which suited the game. FFS you can't even tell which items you have equipped, or which buffs you have activated and how long you have left on these. You're playing blind, because there is no way a player is going to delve through the menu every few seconds in battle in order to manage the character. Hiding all of the information relevant to the player does nothing for the sense of immersion. Oblivion was a hundred times more immersive than this, and this was due to the management of the character and stats just as much as it was about the game world. In Skyrim, managing your character never feels immersive. You're constantly fucking about with a massive menu full of uncatergorised stuff you have to trawl through to perform the most simple task.

Also, you mention the hardest difficulty. These settings are not balanced in any way whatsoever. The difficulty just seems to be a global buff to all enemies. So if for example there is an enemy which is set to be significantly tougher, this enemy will get the same global buff stacked onto it - making it totally unbeatable. As the level scales to your level, this enemy will get tougher as you level up. On the hardest setting I was fine until I hit level 20 or so, then I couldn't even beat a single Bandit out on the road.

It's the fact that you have no hotkey system to work with if you're on a pad, combined with the way you cannot tell which buffs you have which totally destroy the harder settings. Also, the system of having you assign each weapon, spell, shield to a hand is just LONG.

I badly want to play this game, it's an amazing world. But the game system is so atrocious that I'm prepared to wait as long as it takes for the modding community to work its magic and sort out this nonsence.

:sadface

On the other hand I'm having a total ball with this game...really hooked on it. I should never play WoW.

WoW's time has been and gone, unfortunately. They gradually take away what's great about it with each patch release. Now they are really taking the piss with their Kung-Fu Panda expansion.

A new player would probably revel in it though.

You know a game has an effect on you when, after two years of playing, then after two years of giving up, you still daydream constantly about 3v3 setups and set-pieces - especially whilst in the shower! I still feel the hunger massively but there is nothing there for me to feast on. I get by by simply watching old PvP videos from the greats.

-----

Anyway, I started Skyrim last night. Not having too many problems with it yet apart from scripted action sequences pausing for two seconds every five seconds. I'm trying not to look too deeply into the menus and item configuration. When it comes to equipping fresh gear I just quickly scroll down the list and look out for the green '+' modifiers, likewise, when I need to ditch shit I just quickly scroll down with my eyes locked on the value.

One dislike is that I'm playing it like Resi when it comes to documentation... I'll find a book and subliminally insist on reading the contents there and then, I suppose I should finish the action/mission at hand and then read all that once I'm somewhere safe. It doesn't feel very real stood around reading a book when I'm trapped in an underground cavern with a dragon on my ass.

I'm in the same camp as Saur, as the UI drives me fucking spare. It's even worse for me as I'm on 360, so I'm going to exchange this for something else and what for some decent PC UI mods. Such a shame.

I'm not too arsed about the UI as I never played Oblivion or Fallout, what I am arsed about however are the quest/game breaking bugs. Should have waited for the GOTY edition.

I'm forcing myself through the UI, I love the game itself and am just trying to find ways of getting around the hurdles. I'm using a mod which enables the keyboard while you have a pad plugged in. This allows me to use the numeric keys as Hotkeys, which has made things a million times better.

Finally bought a house, I'm carrying Daedric weapons around with me which is clogging up my inventory so needed to store them somewhere. Not surprised that chests have no item catergories now...I should have seen that coming. When you use a chest to store items, it's just one huge alphabetical list, there are no Catergory tabs. ¬_¬

Finally been confirmed as the Dragonborn and got the Whirlwind and Frost Breath Shout, finding the Dragon battles much easier now after levelling my Block skill to unlock Elemental Defence. I've found the racial specific power I have "Histskin" to be a complete Win button though! XD Against a Dragon I can activate Histskin and stand right in the path of its breath attacks and take no damage!

I've not branched out very far across the map yet. I like to clean up all Misc Quests in an area before moving on. You earn masses of money for these Quests this time round, it's well worth mopping up everything you can. Some of these Quests have been absolutely brilliant, especially loved the one where you're trying to piece together a wild drunken night. Or at least I was until it crashed.... T_T

Just picked this up on 360 for my brother for Christmas. He has the sort of mindset where he can grind through the UI (I hope)...

Oh man, you fell into the same trap as I did with accepting that drunken clown's challenge after your descent from the Greybeards... I'd planned on conservatively exploring the map as I don't like uncovering too much too soon, however this one sends you all the way to the bloody other end of the province where you get wound up into all kinds of problems and conspiracy. It's amazing how differently my game has panned out from how I'd planned due to one simple little fun challenge.

The UI isn't that bad I don't think. I have all the prime functions in my favourites which normally equates to just 6-7 commands. I'm a simple minded broadsword wielding Nord who cares not for magic or anything else complex, so my requirements are simple. Also, in real life when I leave my house I carry 3-4 items in my pockets... I hate having to route through a bag filled with shit most of the time (ie, the inventory in this game).

At least the menu pauses the action whilst you decide what to select next... So glad they didn't go down the Dead Space/Resi 5 route with that.

Been playing on Master difficulty since leaving Helgen, still a bit easy to be honest, and I try to get my companions to stand back if I know there's going to be any kick-off... makes my game more intense and leaves all teh EXPs for me. Had an epic fight with a giant last night which involved circling through trees and picking him off with arrows and the occasional power swipe once Slow Time shout was up.

I'm gonna be gutted once I'm done with this game. I think I will have to create a JP XBL account so I can download Oblivion and Fallout 3 with all the DLC. Finding the disc versions is proving impossible.

I'm in the process of building a similar character I played in Oblivion; sword and shield, backed up with support spells and destruction magic. It's not just the UI which makes this difficult, it's the entire game system which is massively clunky and never feels natural. You can't instantly mix between attacks and various spells anymore, whereas before it was effortless.

I need to effectively manage my inventory as I always ensure that I train 5 times per level. I've played these games enough to recognise that the levelling of your character works in exactly the same way and I know exactly which path I am taking. In order to earn enough money to do this I need to delve into the crafting aspects of the game which means collecting a huge number of items. You cannot carry this stuff around with you, so buying a house is the answer as you will have a storage chest to dump all this stuff into. The problem with the chest is that there are no Catergory tabs, it's just one huge list of stuff, everything from old keys, books, letters and equipment is all bundled in with the crafting items and everything else. It's just silly the amount of trawling through menus they expect you to do in order to manage this stuff.

I was playing Oblivion right up until the release of Skyrim. I always imagined that Skyrim would ruin Oblivion as it would be such a major step up, but there are a huge many aspects which are a big step backwards. It's not just the UI and game system stuff either, it's the little touches which bring the world to life which are also completely gone. Like your character no longer looks at people when they talk to him, people don't dynamically speak with eachother anymore either. I really liked that in Oblivion, yes the system has its faults and there were not enough voice actors, but it really brought the game to life. Now you have people repeating the exact same line each and every time you are in their vicinity.

Also this latest patch seems to have screwed the difficulty settings up. Originally Expert was close to unplayable, I couldn't even beat a single human opponent and had to turn it down to Adept. Now the game is a complete pushover in anything but Master setting. I knew it couldn't have been right that I could stand in front of a Dragon and take no damage! I was 1 hit killing most human enemies, and that 1 hit was sending them flying across the room! Turned it up to Master, and it feels like it did on Adept before.

Saying all that though, I am getting into the game a lot more and am getting to grips with making the system work for me. I'm really concentrating hard on Alchemy and Blacksmithing, I've got both of those skills in the 60s so far. I've not even visited the Magic school yet so don't have much going on there yet. One thing I love is that there's a Bard's school now, I need to get involved in that! I've always played a Bard in Elder Scrolls, it's great that it's getting more love in this one.

I can't say much right now as I'm half-way through my session, but I do find storing the alchemy ingredients exclusively in the satchel on the alchemy table, books on the shelves, and all the lower-end smithing materials and anything else I don't use that often upstairs in the chest much easier than just slamming it all in one place. Food, I just throw it away - what's the point of it? I might try and make a ball-pool in my house with wine bottles one day.

I just ran into my first hard opponent during the Sam/Staff quest... and I had to run past him for the time being, luckily I didn't have to kill him as after around 20 deaths it was just impossible chipping any health away from him. This is more like it. I also ran into a random set of Imperial guards that were proper nails, and took a few attempts to sort out. This is warming up nicely.

I'll probably feel the brunt of the menu system on my 2nd play when I try to replicate my Warlock build rather than this simplistic numb-skull approach. I'm actually thinking about a magic/archer type character for next time, that might be nice.

I found another glitch yesterday too.

If you unlock the dashing Power Attack with One-Handed weapons, you can run indefinitely. All you have to do is perform the Power Attack once, then keep repeatedly slashing with normal attacks. Your character will not stop running as he swings the sword, even when the Stamina gauge is completely empty, even if you release the directional input - he just keeps going!

I was legging it across the map yesterday, who needs a horse when you have a sword! XD

I'm trying really hard to ignore all of the glitches, but this is getting silly now. It's impossible to get lost in this game, every time I find myself getting into it and feeling the vibe, something utterly ridiculous happens. After the latest patch I seem to be able to drag any NPC with me as I enter any door which loads a new location. For example if I'm walking along a town road and enter my house while a NPC is within close proximity to my character, entering the house will drag that other character in too.

Doors within tows in general seem to cause all kinds of issues now (Jarl's mansion in Whiterun is the worst so far). NPCs turn into a confused mess when in close proximity to a scene changing door. It even affects the player character by teleporting you backwards slightly as you try and approach. When you finally manage to get near enough to access the door, you find that you can walk through it and break the boundary of the current area.

Water is also a massive issue. Submerging in water will cause the system to rapidly flicker between sumberged and un-submerged state. Also noticed you can no longer fight underwater - why not? There was absolutely nothing wrong with being able to fight underwater in Oblivion, and my character race was stupidly good at it. Now you can't attack while in water...yet there's no good reason for this to be excluded.

Another thing I've noticed is that during sneaking animation, you no longer draw your weapon in a sneak-specific fashion. In Skyrim you always draw your sword in the exact same overly noisy fashion, but in Oblivion your character would take extra care not to be heard while drawing his weapon while sneaking. This is just another one of the countless little touches they've completely omitted from the game for no good reason. If you're sneaking up behind someone taking care not to make the slightest sound, how does it then make sense to make a LOUD metallic scaping sound as you draw your weapon?

Activating an ore vein while in Sneak mode will totally fuck up your character movement until you activate then deactivate Sneak again. Your character gets stuck in a hybrid state where the system cannot determine which state your character is in. You float across the ground with no animation and can only "Run" in short bursts before jolting to a halt. The only way to break this is to activate/deactivate Sneak - even re-loading the game doesn't shift it.

Enemies now cannot seem to see me if I stand behind something which is only waist high... seriously. I was fighting a particularly tough enemy last night and found I could hide behind a small nearby pot which would cause the enemy to break off its attack and wander around as if I wasn't there. It took me 10 minutes to chip its life down and kill it in this fashion, but it was consistantly safe.

Game difficulty is all over the place and it's impossible to judge if this is an error caused by a patch or if it's actually supposed to be like this. I'm playing in Master now as the game has suddenly become stupid easy on all other settings. But I'm finding that the exact same enemy types will sometimes be complete bastards and at other times die in a single hit! Bizarrely, dragons are REALLY easy, to the point that I can just power in with no strategy at all.

I've been holding back from posting on here because after each and every session all I have to contribute is negativity, and I've already blitzed the other forum with too much of that.

A part of me really wants to love this game, but then I find all the errors to be totally unforgiving. A lot of the 'perfect/10outta10' praise for this game is really unjust in my opinion.

I feel like I'm playing an alpha release at times. What a damn shame.

On a positive note I can't wait to have this out the way and then I can jump on to Oblivion with all its expansions and up-to-date patches. I feel that that will surely deliver a more complete experience.

The Skyrim reviews are totally inaccurate, I don't think very highly of games reviewers these days and this game highlights the problem with them. They get so caught up in the marketing and hype for a game that they completely forget what their job is. Awarding a horrible broken mess a perfect score is madness. Calling Bethesda on this shit in reviews would have made such a difference, it's disgusting that developers feel they can release games in this state. They do this because they know damn well they can get away with it, the millions upon millions of sales prove it.

I'm telling you man - when you head over to Oblivion you will be amazed. Every aspect, each and every little touch no matter how mundane works wonders in bringing the game to life. In Oblivion I actually felt like I was living in that world, it totally sucks you in and it feels like it's your own personal experience which nobody else knows anything about.

I really want to love Skyrim too, there are things that they've done which are absolutely bang on. But unfortunately anything which is good is wrapped up in layer upon layer of complete and utter bullshit which should have been ditched a long time ago. There are far to many bright ideas in there which may have sounded great as an idea, but completely fucks the game up in practice. The exact opposite is true in Oblivion. You can constantly see what they were trying to achieve, but technical limitations were holding them back, but you forgive it because it's all so damn clever. Directly comparing Skyrim to Oblivion is bizarre because they have actually removed more stuff than they have added. All the genius touches which made Oblivion seem alive are all gone. What I'm looking forward to now is not playing either Oblivion or Skyrim for a good long while, then starting again on Oblivion.

The posts in this thread are so upsetting. I've never played either game (Skyrim is sitting on my desk at the moment as a present to my brother) however what you're describing here sounds all too familiar and something which has interested me for a long time about the games industry.

Like you I'm prepared to forgive a lot if I can see a decent mechanic or a neat concept that is let down by the technology available to the designer. I remember playing Daggerfall and being blown away by the ambition of the game, same for Elite, Mercenary, Hunter, Carrier Command and a bunch of other games. I found myself hankering for the next hardware iteration, thinking that the greater power would deliver on the ambition of some of these designs and to a degree it did, but there was always a tendency to push even further at the boundaries and leave the player wanting yet more.

Perhaps the most irritating aspect of this is the demise of split screen gaming. I remember getting all excited that finally we might have the hardware to do really decent split screen 4 player gaming and then WHAM online basically killed split screen before the tech was there to deliver the goods.

I can't comment on Skyrim, but it sounds like they pretty much threw Oblivion in the bin and started from scratch, instead of working it up as an iteration from Oblivion. That's a brave choice, which in this case appears to have backfired somewhat.

Not really mate. It's probably sold more than Oblivion and has a generous share of fan boys who won't have a bad word said against it. In that case I'm sure more and more games will turn out like this.

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Custom optimisation plug-in for PC users. Cleans up slow down, frame skips, etc. It's getting lots of good reports.

Created by one guy in one day. Nice work Bethesda! /golfclap

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1321657-tesv-acceleration-layer-offers-cpu-optimization-massive-possible-performance-increases-now-in-skse-plugin-format/

True True. It's shifted bucket loads hasn't it. It's obviously good business to invest in marketing and the hype machine. No doubt they were desperate to get this out before the holiday period too.

This is really damn good as well!

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863

I'm going to sit and wait a while for the modding scene to develop further before playing this any more. This menu mod clears up so many issues.

Another really good set of mods here, they just keep getting better and better. The sheer amount of really basic and straightforward things that are missing from Skyrim is mindboggling. Someone at Bethesda has a really bizarre design sense;

How the hell can you have a map with no roads on it?

What this guy says about the maps did not occur to me at all - but now that he mentions it, it makes perfect sense and he's absolutely right! In Oblivion, most of the truly spellbinding stuff happened when you were simply out on the road, exploring the map. But in Skyrim I haven't done this once because the whole game world is a barren wasteland according to the map. But with the roads included, you can see how all the locations are linked together and you end up exploring the world. I used to do the exact same thing he speaks about here, I would either fast travel only or just head in a straight line to my destination.

The performance boost mod is also shocking, if you read up on why this mod does what it does you'll be dumbstruck.

Well shit, I just wrote out a long reply and it just vanished. T_T

Nevermind. Long story short I'm far too absorbed in Oblivion now to care about this (60hrs). The game also has it's ups and downs but I'm finding the above arguments applying to Oblivion moreso than Skyrim, which may come down to me playing Skyrim first.

In Skyrim I'd ignore the map and follow the road signs, as it would save me attempting impossible mountain climbs via following compass points in straight lines. With Oblivion it's easy to just steam ahead to my quest marker as there are no mountains stopping me.

I'm only JUST 'getting' the feel for combat in Oblivion, and can now kill most enemies without taking a hit. I even managed to haul all of those Bruma lads through that Oblivion Gate on max difficulty without suffering a casualty last night, I never thought an Oblivion Gate could be that much fun, especially with mindless, Leroy Jenkins NPCs.

I managed to find an underground trading website for gamers to trade their games earlier this week. It's great, I went to pick up Fallout 3 for from some guy last night for $20 (a tenner) and had dinner with him.

Looking forward to starting that after Oblivion. Even though I hate/fear the concept of nuclear aftermath and grimy/brown textures.

I proper couldn't stand Fallout 3, all the stuff I hated about that game is what they based the Skyrim system on - it's absolute shit. Oblivion for me was pure magic, the first night I played it I decided to walk along the road heading west. I was blown away by the sheer size and scale of the world, then suddenly panicked people came running by warning that Kvatch was under attack. That first Oblivion gate encounter at Kvatch was probably the most drawn in and immersed I have ever been while playing a game, that is the moment that sealed the deal for me and I played the game for years.

Every single time I started again (which wasn't long after putting a data to rest) I ended up playing the same character. But I'd go about things differently and the game ended up being totally different each time I played. I love the characters, I love the setting and I never once had any problems with the way the game is presented, everything just felt so right. I do want to play Skyrim, but I'm going to hold off until the UI and menus are completely overhauled.

There are so many touches in Oblivion which are simply missing from Skyrim. I love the way the NPCs go about their business and talk amongst themselves and have masses of dialogue. It's a great idea which would have been perfect if they had more voice actors and more time to record the dialogue. In Skyrim by contrast, the people just repeat the exact same line every time you walk past them.

In Oblivion they've scripted situations which aren't even covered by dialogue. For example, if you meet someone called Amusei who's been sent to prison, you get a dialogue option allowing you to help him break out by giving him a lockpick. But after doing this, try shutting the door leading to the cells so the guard won't notice, then pick the cell lock yourself and let him out. Watch what Amusei does when you open the door leading to where the guard is. It's all the little details like this which simply never occur in Skyrim, ever.

Oh of course, I can easily see all the magic touches which haven't been carried across to Skyrim (a prime one being weapon sheathing in stealth mode that you mentioned, as well as all the others), it's absolutely mind-numbing as to why these would be left out as I can't see why it would require much effort to include them. It's like they sacked the entire team and started again with people that never played Oblivion.

Looking forward to Fallout now after your venomous feedback. I remember watching my mate cane it back home and it wasn't very inspiring at that time, I must say. He swears by it although he is massively into dystopia though.

When I asked him what he thought about Skyrim he said "It's like Oblivion getting bummed by Fallout, prematurely ejaculating, and this is the result".

So if one were to want to have a dabble in this type of game (after they've completed Zelda and Xenoblade) they would be best to get the PC version of Oblivion? Like I say I've always liked the "idea" its just usually the execution is a problem.