So I tried out Skyrim....

Honestly, there are a lot of bad, very bad RPGs out there. Mostly because of story stuff, others because of gameplay related things, but rarely because of graphics. Gfx stuff does not matter. Take Gothic - the higher the number of the sequel, the lower the votes. It seems that there is a strange correlation between sequel number and the votes they get. But today I will try out another game from which many people said and keep saying: "Woot, the best game in the world, directly after "Jesus Online" and "The End of WWII - Aftermath"!".

So I installed the game and had much fun to wait as Steam was having issues with their downloadservers. I am patient, very patient, thus I tried it ten seconds later. Eleven seconds and even thirty seconds later. Then five minutes later, fifteen minutes later, one hour later.
In short: Four hours later I could download Skyrim which took some time to get it on PC, causing interesting lags during the session of World of Warcraft. Those moments where you think "Oh, great, nobody in raid dies, nobody gets harmed, everything is fine... wait, something is strange" and the game suddenly continues and you realize you are dead...

Ok, so Skyrim finished downloading, the installer took some time to prepare the game and then... waiting. Thank God Skyrim loads in a fast way so I suddenly had the menu with a few things to click. No "NVoodooa - they way it's meant to be uninstalled" or "Optimized for people with too much money", no visual orgasm of a designer who wanted to express himself on the virtual kindergarden they call "intro". Just the developer, menu, finish. Good, very good.

Started the game, blackscreen. In the following first seconds I really thought the game would start with a crash as I only heard sound but saw nothing. While I was going to beat the display with my mouse and my keyboard and the cat which was passing by I "opened the eyes" and realized I was a prisoner. The guy in front of me was telling me something about who they are and the thief on my side and such things, which really interested me as much as the square-root of Pi. I was more focused on graphics which was really great. A little voice in me told me to pay attention: Good gfx offen means... Ok, shut up, voice, the guy has something to tell me!

Prisoner.... check
We gonna die.... check
I have no clue who I am... check

After arriving at a little... uh, camp which was only there to punish people by cutting off their head ("camp Haircut", I think it was the name). Thanks guys - five minutes of intro, had no opportunity to make something wrong but was going to lose my head. I think such troubles are pretty normal for a "Head start".

I had the possibility to create my character. Interesting... I was wondering how strange it would be if someone would ask me who I am and I would start to change my face and name till I'd say "So, finished, call me....".
But hey, this is a game so: let's take a look what we can do...

Ok, we are gamer so it does not matter how ugly we are as we are in reality, too. The perfect identification with the character I was creating was established, good. But for a woman having some sympathy for aesthetics and taste will have as much fun with the characters like Flipper had with a chainsaw. Really: Either the developers wanted to create the uggliest races ever or they designer simply hates people.

I decided to take the first style the game gave me and bam, I was ready to get my head off. But hey, did I hear a noise? Ah, no... let's continue, I want to die. No, wait, really, a noise.... aww, impossible. Not in Skyrim. Ah, there, another one...

Is it the wind? No
Is it a jet? No
Is it Superman? No
It is: super dwaggon coming down from the ceiling to land on a tower and play "Bob Loss - The Joy of Burning".

I was able to flee and landed in a tower. Then my worst enemy was my greatest fan: Here, come up. Here, run. Here, follow me.
Mate, sorry, but you wanted to kill me. Now I am here to follow you? Yeah? For sure. Go play with the raging dragon out there, greetings from hell, unlucky bastard.

But no, I had to follow. Well, later I got the possibility to get a sword and rush to the next village with my new best friend: Captain Head Off. He proposed me to join the army who wanted to kill me. Good idea, why not? I have far more good ideas - why not joining the Team Edward? The one with the dragon? I've got far more friends there than I had in the Camp Headache.

Ok, I went on, to the next village. There I learnt a new important thing about Skyrim: This game was made for consoled. The menu is as intuitive as nuclear physics for children. Tab to leave a menu - ok, but this is not always described so you have to guess. And E for taking something and R for taking everything - the same "R" you press to drop your item. But only one, not all items. Good to know - the idea of getting completely naked while talking to someone would be strange.

The textures are a little bit... "blurry", the engine is still the same like other games of Berthesda before. This could be a perfect mod created for Fallout 3. Some things are a little bit different...
The fights itself, for example. If you fight with a sword you sometimes get to see interesting slo-mos in 3rd party perspective giving you the feeling of being Conan The Barbar - or the guy of "crank" - or both.

There is no clear "class choice". You cannot say "Uh, I am a healer" or "Uh, I am a fighter" as you have to improve your character while levelling. Pretty good for guys loving to fight with a sword, mace or a big rat they found. But not for the magician who rather sets himself on fire than others. No matter what you do, you will soon learn to set things on fire, destroy them, smash them, whatever.

Because the main story of Skyrim is as interesting as two pounds mehl on a table. Most of the time you explore, do side quests, whatever. Imagine you were playing World of Warcraft, but without any other gamers. Well, imagine you are playing a former WoW expansion - now. This is Skyrim.
You are the Delta Force, dropped off on.. who ever knows they dropped you and now you are trying to find a way to entertain yourself. Welcome to World of Explorecraft - The Boring Crusade.

So after two hours of intensive gameplay I've got to admit that Skyrim is the better Oblivion. Sure, it has its problems, it's often boring (at least for me) as not everyone wants to talk for a lot of minutes to guys they never know and with other guys who some minutes ago wanted to cut off your head.
And yes, the concept of enemies levelling with you is as motivating as ten hours of grinding for a very rare item. But in the end that's the true flair of a world in which you have a lot of opportunities to die, pardon: to explore. To lose yourself and drop the reality, for people always wanting to know why they hate vikings. Or Sweden. Or both.

To sum it up: Skyrim is great for people loving this genre. If someone wants a tight story, with a lot of focus on strict character specialization and a well seen path to follow then Skyrim is as suited as a bycicle for a fish. Play something different, like Dragon Age (the first part, not the arcade mod they called "Dragon Age 2").

Side note: 
I am wondering about myself, to be honest. I mean: I used to play those games very much, I loved Fallout 3 and I even loved Morrowind. What happened to me that I cannot get "stick" to Skyrim?


See you at the next "So I tried...." part.

P.S.: Here a very interesting way to steal. Should be doable in reality, too

Noc