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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

There are few qualities better in game design than ambition — that urge to attempt the craziest ideas, even if it seems impossible to pull them off. The Elder Scrolls games were born out of these aspirations in 1994, when the first entry introduced gamers to an open world full of cities to visit, dungeons to explore and endless secrets to uncover. It may have been ahead of its time but it laid down a formula that could always be updated and expanded on with each successive sequel — a formula which may have finally been perfected with Skyrim.
   
The Elder Scrolls games are always going to be as good as current technology dictates and Skyrim wrings out every last drop of content it can from this cycle of video-game development. The world it drops you into is massive and detailed to a degree which hasn’t been pulled off as successfully in the past as it is here, managing to be both epic in scope and scale, and yet still full of the small, intimate details which give it the feeling of uninterrupted life happening around you. The game knows it can impress you with a visually stunning sight of a city far off in the distance atop some narrow cliffs, but it also knows it needs to create the small, simple-but-real moments to populate this impeccably created world or it won’t illicit any type of emotional response.
   
There’s a peerless sense of exploration and discovery built into nearly every facet of the game’s design. This creates a constant urge to play a little longer so you can discover what’s beyond the next hill, gain just a bit more experience to level up, tackle one more quest or explore one more dungeon. You never reach a plateau; there’s always something more.
   
You’d expect all of this to be overwhelming, but the game keeps everything as organic as the world it has placed you in. There are no clunky menus to navigate; the game sports sleek, modern menus clearly inspired by the kind of minimalism championed by companies such as Apple, and there’s no fear of levelling up your character the wrong way, as skills are upgraded as you use them. If you’re an archer, your skill with a bow improves with each arrow you fire. If you’re a mage, your flame spells will do more damage the more you cast them.
   
Best of all, the game doesn’t sacrifice its depth for accessibility — it simply finds a way for both ideas to coexist, perfecting a balance which the series has been striving for since the very beginning.
 
Bits & Bytes
   
I Am Alive — Ubisoft’s survival action game which takes place in a Chicago that’s been left in ruins by an earthquake — has finally surfaced after first being announced in 2008. It’s now due sometime later this winter as a download-only title for the 360 and PS3.

Upcoming Releases
Dec. 6 — The Adventures of Tintin (360, PS3, Wii, PC, 3DS).

   
Mel Stefaniuk is a writer who can tell the difference between Mario and Sonic.