The Best Games Of 2011: #3

THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM (10/10)

One RPG to rule them all. That actually would have made a fitting caption for Bethesda Software to have used on the front cover of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, because despite all the tiresome bugs, repetitive combat systems, predictable character types and story pacing issues, this engrossing experience makes for the best role-playing game ever produced. I had never been a fan of either of Bethesda's main franchises, Scrolls and Fallout, before playing Skyrim, and that I didn't even regard it as one of my Top Ten Most Anticipated Games of 2011 list in both of its incarnations (January and August, the latter looking at the remainder of the year) goes to show how much a developer can surprise you when you pick up such an unexpected winner. Despite all my qualms with the rather geeky fantasy premise of the series in the past, I was immediately totally immersed into the world of Skyrim from the moment I took my first steps- admittedly quite fast steps, as I was being chased by a raging dragon- in the huge province, and since then the twenty hours or so I have plunged into the main campaign and just a few of the seemingly infinite side quests on offer to partake in have been amongst the most fun times I've had with a video game this year. What stops Skyrim from besting the remaining two games on this list is what I've mentioned already: the bugs, the glitches, the crashes. Surely in this day and age we can run an open world which, while visually splendid, is hardly what we'd call next gen in terms of graphic technology without the game freezing as a giant attacks that moment too soon, or I step into a lake at that slightly too fast a pace? If this were the case, then I could perhaps forgive the breaks in the wonderful immersion caused by the strangely disjointed storyline and irksome character archetypes, but as it is the two games that have ranked higher than Skyrim have never caused any problems in terms of their immersion or fluidity of play. Still, I think Bethesda more than deserve to be placed on the Top Three podium of this awards process, seeing as with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim they've given us a game that can be played until the whole Autumn Blitz starts again in ten months time, yet still offer players more should they choose to return to it after that!