Games Thirst – Amazing Life
If you pay any attention to the games industry, you’ll know two things about a little known game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The strange thing is, concerning those two things, one should dictate the other but sadly, Bethesda has been given a free pass.
The first thing you’ll know is that it’s the highest rated title this year. Critics across the boards hailed Bethesda’s latest WPRG effort as the best game ever made…some of them at least, and even harsh review outlets like Eurogamer scored the game 10/10. In fact, I haven’t found a single review of Skyrim that’s lower than 9! and all this would be all good if, say, the game ran smoothly, because that’s the other thing you would know if you’ve been paying attention: Skyrim is buggier than hell.
So buggy is Skyrim that some diehard fans have already traded in the game. So buggy is Skyrim that the PS3 version stalls when save files get to big (around 6 and 10MB). In fact every version of Skyrim is buggy: 360 owners have complained about an error that occurs disallowing high-detail textures to be loaded, leaving them with rather unpleasant visuals. And on the PC version, Dragons fly backwards. That’s just for starters, by the way, because it’d be too long to list all the bugs Skyrim’s contains.
Even after a few patches, Bethesda can’t seem to clean up their own game, and the recent patch only worsened things. “We need to treat our updates with greater care,” hailed the developer, realizing the recently released patch didn’t do what was promised, but instead reeked more havoc for some. Some gamers speak of having to redo missions because the game would just freeze, get stuck in mountains because apparently you’ve lost the ability to move, and other game-killing bugs.
Yet, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the highest rated game this year?
You can’t even complete the game on PS3 and it scores in the high 90s? Look, I am not saying Skyrim is not a legendary game. I know it is. It’s such a big world with an infinite amount of things to accomplish. There’s not another game as big as Skyrim on consoles, and it deserves high marks for that alone. But perhaps not as high as 10/10 or even 9/10? Perhaps, an 8 would be a better roundup for a game that’s bug-ridden? Or are we so used to giving Bugthesda Bethesda a free pass that we neglect all bugs found in their games and focus on other content.
Thing is, this happens with every title the developer releases, and apparently they haven’t learned their lessons. Remember Fallout: New Vegas anyone? Yeah, this has been happening for a long time, and when one of the buggiest games ever released nets perfect scores all about gaming’s web, I suspect it’ll continue way into the future.
