Skyrim

Jun

2018

Solomon Rambles About the Only Elder Scrolls Game Seemingly in Existence

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

FUS-TRA-TING

From its initial release in 2011 to its Switch port in 2017, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has outlived the Wii U’s production run. You can take that as a compliment to Skyrim’s enduring appeal or a sad reminder that Nintendo’s last generation console was an infertile wasteland of sadness and solitude. Skyrim has received a fair amount of flak for its endless ports, and with each edition, reviewers have collectively shrugged their shoulders and stated, “It’s still good.” Being a Nintendo-only gamer/fungus, I was one of 25-or-so hermits that was looking forward to playing Skyrim for the first time, so I was eager for the port. At long last, people would shut up about how I was missing out on one of the greatest games of all time.

Six years of hype creates a damningly high expectation to surpass, but it is not uncommon for a game to prove itself to be a timeless gem. In a sense, Skyrim is one of those gems, but whereas Ocarina of Time is a diamond, the fifth rendition of the Elder Scrolls is a just a humble pearl. I imagine a dose of nostalgia would have sedated many of my frustrations with the game, but without that, each glitch, repetitive side quest, and instakill jangled my nerves. What once was a Game of the Year now feels like a mere stepping stone for a later, better Elder Scrolls sequel.

Solomon’s best attempt to capture a scenic picture.

What is it?

Skyrim is Dungeons and Dragons watered down to an action RPG for the cool kids. From the outset, your character is set to be executed despite no one knowing what you did because, hell, they had to find some way to start the story, didn’t they? A dragon soon crashes the death party, allowing you to escape and explore the vast region of Skyrim. As luck would have it, you happen to be Dragonborn, an individual who can use the magical shouts of the dragons and suck out their souls. With this power, you can not only end Skyrim’s current civil war but rebel against the dragon menace that threatens civilization’s existence. You can also screw that nonsense and busy yourself with fetch quests, building a house, and other matters far more important than war and mass extinction.

As you can tell so far, Skyrim allows you to sculpt your play experience as you see fit. You select your character from a number of different races (each with different abilities), design their physical appearance, and then name them. From there, you choose how you fight, be it with magic, melee weapons, bows, sneaky-sneaky daggers, or a combination of the above. Each of your hands can hold a weapon/spell, so there is a lot of mixing and matching if you so choose. Forget any hopes of addressing conflict nonviolently because bloodshed is the universal language in Tamriel.

The most holy of all the weapons: the floating iron sword.

Almost every action you take builds experience. Sling a few fireballs, and your destruction level will improve. Pick a few locks, and bam, level up for lock-picking. Sell a few iron swords? Sure, that’s reason enough to up your speech level. Skyrim follows the logic that if you do the same thing enough times, you’ll improve. Prepare enough ramen noodles, and one day, you, too, can make peppercorn-crusted filet mignon. As you grind your individual abilities’ levels, they contribute to an overall experience meter, and once filled, you can upgrade your magic, health, or stamina in addition to allocating a skill point to further buff your skills.

Although the civil war and dragon storylines are the main focus of Skyrim, you have several other opportunities to dive into the Elder Scrolls lore. Each major town has at least one substantial quest, be it to climb the ranks of the Thieves Guild, eradicate the vampire threat or join them, or confront one of the many Daedric (demon-like) princes. Countless smaller quests can be attained from speaking to townsfolk or other NPCs. The large majority of all quests will task you to delve into a dungeon, cave, or fortress infested with hostile EXP livestock. Should you accomplish your missions, all the NPCs of the land will recall your deeds forever and always, mainly because they have few dialogue options.

Even Agnes – who is forever stuck in the wall – will herald you.

What’s good?

Skyrim is immersive because of how much control you have over the game world. You can align with certain factions and rout others, betraying those who you dislike. You can read through the multitude of books littered throughout the land, learning everything you could have discovered from the Wiki. If you wish to be self-sufficient, you can craft all of your materials through alchemy, smithing, and enchanting. Hell, you can even marry and adopt kids. With this virtual autonomy, the real world is simply a vestigial appendage of your mortal coil.
The amount of content can easily suck out a hundred hours from your life. The number of quests in the original game is staggering enough to topple a large class of fifth graders, and this is further bolstered by the included Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn expansions. Multiple playthroughs are encouraged to try out other character races and follow different questlines (such as choosing to become a werewolf). There is a lot to do, even if a quarter of your playtime is spent on loading screens and small talk with the locals.
Certain quests ooze with creativity. The civil war quests see you fighting alongside an army while conquering enemy fortresses or cities. You can join the Dark Brotherhood (a league of assassins) or opt to eradicate them. You can enjoy a night of drunken debauchery and suffer the next day with a hangover and the unsettling fact that you proposed to a hagraven. The Daedric prince quests, in general, offer adventures that can be unsettling, epic, and/or hallucinogenic.

Nazir was so amazed by Solomon’s archery that he refused to move as Solomon shot arrow after arrow into his face.

What’s bad?

Bethesda produced a lazy port. Upon its initial release, Skyrim was riddled with more bugs than a Riften vagrant, but this was supposedly forgiven due to the massive scope of the game. However, six years later, Bethesda has done nothing to reduce the pests. Entire questlines cannot be completed; enemies flip and fly through the air; crashes occur; and controls can be unresponsive. Apart from the bugs, the only new additions to this Switch edition are botched motion controls and free items from amiibo.
Combat often feels more like a battle of attrition than technique. Most fights boil down to who whacks who harder. Dodging and blocking are too inconsistent to be reliable, so you will often spam the attack button until you run low on magic, health, or stamina. At this point, you flee the battle or to your menu to guzzle eight potions or devour eighteen sacks of flour. Hit detection is variable but particularly horrendous against dragons or when using a bow. Some scuffles can be fun, but the combat system does not feature the depth needed to keep it entertaining over hundreds of hours of content.
Much like the life of an NPC, Skyrim becomes numbingly repetitive, contrary to my opinion in my padding blogitorial. It’s great that the game has fifty billion caves, dungeons, ruins, and fortresses, but when they all follow the same basic archetypes, it’s hard to distinguish between Location 23 and Locations 46, 72, 138, or 95b. It certainly doesn’t help that you’re constantly fighting the same spiders, bandits, and goddamn Draugrs. Even dragons eventually devolve into annoying houseflies, albeit big, burny ones. I get that some things will repeat in a massive game, but Skyrim often feels like the product of one designer/programmer falling asleep on the Ctrl+V buttons.

The best bug was when Solomon’s magic meter never diminished. Ungodly power, I tell you.

What’s the verdict?

Skyrim slammed the gaming world like a comet in 2011, blowing away all other releases and distinguishing itself as a game to be remembered. In the years since, Bethesda has tried its damn hardest to make sure we won’t forget it either. In reviewing this game, I haven’t a clue if I’m biased due to my unrealistic expectations or if everyone else is due to their nostalgia-addled brains. New players will likely get a kick out of the freedom offered by the Elder Scrolls, but veterans need not slog through the same game they have been force-fed for years. For any of my readers on the fence, you can wait and make your decision when I repost this review in two years for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition – Pocket Edition.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 7.5
Time Played: Over 75 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Scoring Policy

Mar

2018

Solomon Rambling’s Top Ten Saltiest Switch Moments

Becoming a Pillar of Salt

Being a slug of a man, I hate being salty. Anger, in general, isn’t a fun emotion unless you can destroy things, but then people say you have an anger problem and an assault charge. When playing video games, anger tells you something is going horribly wrong. Gaming should be cathartic, offering you a world away from your irritating real world. When the gaming world becomes frustrating, you’re essentially just left to face the problems you experience in the real world, except now you’re in your boxers on your couch questioning what you do with your time. A true nightmare indeed.

But that’s enough about my weekends. Here, I present you with a top ten list of my saltiest video game experiences with the Nintendo Switch thus far. Annoying readers will be quick to notice that I use “salty” and “angry” interchangeably. Technically, “salty” is a specific form of anger that stems from embarrassment, but this definition also came from Urban Dictionary which claims “Solomon” is a funny, intelligent, well-endowed person. Due to UD’s questionable accuracy and my sheer laziness, “salty” and “angry” are synonyms here.

10. Human: Fall Flat – Forced Replay

Human: Fall Flat is one of the most refreshing experiences I’ve had on the Switch thus far. Although each puzzle has a specific solution, you can take shortcuts and unconventional methods to solve each one. Your character is purposefully difficult to control, so when you do overcome an obstacle which required precision and patience, you get a surge of relief and a sense of accomplishment. When you lose that progress because your finger slipped, the resulting saltiness is just as potent.

Certain puzzles will require you to reset to your nearest checkpoint if you mess up. On the pause menu, “Load Checkpoint” hovers just above “Restart Level.” If you happen to hit “Restart Level,” you are flung back to the start without any confirmation. There is no “Are you sure you want to restart?” There is no “Press A to confirm.” There’s just Solomon fuming on the couch as his character face plants at the start of the level, effectively losing 45 minutes of slow, painful progress.

9. 1-2-Switch – Buyer’s Remorse

Everyone knows 1-2-Switch is a joke. It was advertised as the next Wii Sports or Nintendoland, but even Wii Play looks like a AAA title in comparison. Commercials were focused on people playing the game, largely because there is almost no gameplay to showcase. Every Nintendo fan knew it was a cash-grab for the Switch’s launch, and an expensive one at that.

And I still bought it. At full price. As a digital download. I’m still coughing up salt.

8. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Save Point Salvaging

Spamming “Quick Save” should never be second nature. For Skyrim, it is almost necessary, considering your saves act as your checkpoints. Checkpoints are invaluable because Skyrim enjoys killing you, most of the time in the cheapest ways possible. A single critical hit can wipe out 75% of your health, or a rabid pack of wizards can electric boogaloo the life out of you. No matter your killer, you’ll end up dead.

Once dead, your soul is presumably sent back in time to your last save point. If you’re lucky, you died close to a door where the game autosaves. If you died ten to twenty minutes into a dungeon after meticulously raiding every barrel for sacks of flour, you’ll be booted back to the beginning unless you quick-saved at some point. God knows how many sections I’ve replayed because of cheap deaths, but I do know I now quick-save like I have a hard-on for short-term memory loss.

7. The Escapists 2 – Botched Escapades

Bugs and glitches will be a theme as we progress through this list because few things tick me off as much as a developer’s incompetence or laziness in producing a functional game. It’s like a sin worthy of the fifth circle of hell or something. I understand not all issues can be ironed out, but when a game runs poorly almost every time you play it, you begin to question if the developers murdered their play testers at some point. The Escapists 2 is an example of an anger-inducing, game-crashing, bug-infested torture festival.

Bugs aside, escaping is an infuriating process, which is not a good sign when your game revolves around prison break. You can leave most prisons through the cliché way (i.e. digging your way out), but each map also features a special way of escaping, be it through the mail, a plane, or a dolphin. However, these getaways are rarely straightforward or clear, and you may often find yourself halfway through an escape attempt before you realize you needed some keycard or pickaxe or potted plant. Oftentimes, your mistakes lead to being caught, losing all of your needed belongings, and starting from square one again. Who knew prison could be so frustrating?

6. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ – Ultra Salt

Afterbirth+ was notorious for adding several elements that made the game unfairly and frustratingly difficult, so much so the developer patched some of the issues out of the game. The Ultra Hard challenge, however, has remained untouched, representing a big, fat middle finger faced toward the fan base. In this challenge, you must make it to Mega Satan, arguably one of three of the hardest bosses in the game. In a normal run, this is very much possible (albeit very difficult for anyone but very experienced players).

But Ultra Hard hates you. You get no heart drops. You have no map. All of your items are replaced with question marks, robbing your ability to make strategic choices. Every enemy is a souped-up version of itself. You’re occasionally taken to random rooms after you walk through a door. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The online consensus is that the best way to beat the game is to restart until you find a S-tier upgrade in your first item room. When this is the best advice a fan base has to offer, you might as well start rubbing salt in your wounds to prepare yourself for the pain you will endure later.

5. Lego City: Undercover – Crash and Burn

My partner does a lot for me. For just one example, she is my test audience for most of the articles on this website, so if you think you have it bad, imagine the torture she faces. Because we are devoted to each other, we make sure to suffer equally, and in exchange for all she does for me, I play games like Lego City: Undercover. She is the reason I 100% completed the game. God damn her. I can say this because she will see this when she reviews this article before publication. Hi, Player Two!

As for the salt, I had to play Lego City for over forty hours, enduring all of its bugs, crashes, long loading screens, and poor design choices every single play session. I said it once and I’ll say it again: may Lego City melt to the ground.

4. Super Mario Odyssey – Volleyblueballs

When I started Super Mario Odyssey, I was dedicated to collecting every damn Power Moon in the game. Even when I started reading online that it wasn’t worth the trouble, I kept my eyes on the prize. I have completed every 3D Mario game before it, so Odyssey wasn’t going to be different. Then I encountered the volleyball mini game. After a solid 20 minutes in the mini game, I still hadn’t achieved 100 consecutive hits in a row needed to win a Power Moon. Defeated, I set aside Odyssey and didn’t touch it for a week.

When I learned you had to use Cappy (as player two) to feasibly win the Power Moon, I began my journey to 100% completion once more. Within three or so attempts, I managed to overcome the volleyball challenge. It was a hollow victory, however. There was no sense of accomplishment. There was only salt, as plentiful as the sand on that volleyball court where I lost my dignity.

3. Splatoon 2 – Connection Lost

Losing connection mid-battle is an infuriating experience, whether you’re winning or losing when it happens. Getting booted from a game rips you from the moment, disrupting your focus and creating an unsatisfactory, premature ending. You went in expecting a complete experience, and instead you got—

2. Spelunker Party! – Dead Ends

Once upon a time, there was a man named Spelunker. He was a stupid, wretched thing, and his stupidity was only matched by mastery of death. You see, just about everything could kill Spelunker. Once a bat shat on him, and he died from shock. Another time, he jumped while going down a shallow hill, and the fall broke his knee and instantly killed him. He died several more times to the likes of spikes, fire, poisonous darts, and bombs. It’s true that most would die if subjected to similar perils, but because Spelunker was a special kind of stupid, Solomon still blamed him for dying. This was because Spelunker also died to poor controls and bugs (which were not of the creepy-crawly kind).

Solomon hated Spelunker and his ilk. Many would think that Solomon would be happy if Spelunker died, but this was sadly not the case. When Spelunker died, it meant Solomon had to continue playing Spelunker Party! Unfortunately, Spelunker continued to die, day after day until Solomon exploded in a spray of salt. The end.

1. Nine Parchments – Nine Fucking Parchments

Frozenbyte is the first developer I have sworn to never support again. The only other games I have played of theirs are the first and second Trines, and I found both to be monotonous, frustrating, and uninspired. That said, they weren’t bad enough to blacklist the developer. Nine Parchments is bad enough and has filled me such rage that my heart has crusted over completely in sodium. No surgery can cure the shriveled husk that is now my soul.

Nine Parchments is a hot mess of bugs and bad decisions. Connection issues plague almost every game session. Maybe a player can’t respawn; maybe an enemy has magically teleported behind a wall; maybe the game refuses to progress to the next section; maybe it just outright crashes. When the game does work, you’re confronted with finicky targeting systems, stupidly difficult side missions (anyone want to protect a suicidal sheep?), and enough friendly fire to burn any relationship you have to the ground. My only comfort is that I have completed the game, so I can proudly and confidently say this game sucks harder than a black hole in hell.

Topping Us Off

That’s it for my first written Top 10. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out my video rendition of it. If you have a salty moment you would like to share, go tell WatchMojo. They thrive off of using your ideas to make money. Otherwise, feel free to leave your raw meat strewn about this page. With the amount of salt here, we can keep everything preserved for a few weeks.