4981

From Tom on Oblivion:

However, I’m sure there are plenty of major bugs in Oblivion. But don’t let that dissuade you from getting the game. I’ve logged well over 20 hours on the 360 version and haven’t run into anything significant. The biggest problem I’ve seen was a hanging sound bug that went away once I saved and reloaded.

Seriously, just get the game. You won’t regret it.

I don’t have a review assignment for Oblivion, so I only started playing it a few days ago. I figured I’d just pop it in and take a quick look. Ha ha, the joke’s on me! My saved gamed says 32 hours. Some of those are while the game is paused and I’m eating or something, but I’ve been playing in earnest for at least 25 hours.

I’ve only done a few story missions, I’m only a member of one guild and not high-ranked at all, I make a point to ride/walk to any destination before I use fast travel, I’ll go on flower/herb/shroom picking expeditions, and none of my equipment is that fancy.

I’m exploring and dinking around a lot, thoroughly enchanted by the whole thing, and in no particular hurry to do anything. If this were an MMO, I’d be one of those low-level newbies who just walks around and looks at stuff.

I’m calling it like I see it Tom, you’ve become a bit of a jaded reviewer. The same fun gameplay is INDEED granted here, it’s the same game series!! Moreover, it’s bigger, better, improved in most every way, and absolutely stunning to see. The Radiant quest system is so cool as to drive player stories all over the place, randomly changing the game for each person that plays it. The graphics are absolutely stunning, with effects that are top notch, for most any game, period. The jaw dropping battles, scenes, and especially dragon encounters are something no RPG has mastered this well, at all. And quests that run the gamut from killing or returning items to freeing hostages, stealing, murdering, starting a war, attending a party, taking gods to task, solving murders, and a host of others. Mostly, “FedEx?” What a jolly yarn you are stringing.

Why could you not put aside your Battleaxe of Tom the Jaded and review the merits here without the light fluffy shout-out at the end, “For the most part, Skyrim is a triumph of world building that deserves recognition, praise, and the many hours you’ll pour into it.”

I’m saddened, but then again, you do that a lot, Tom. I’d still share a fine cup of mead with you, kinsman, but I do believe you took an arrow to the knee of your fun meter, sometimes.

4982

The tech fixes are needed, but now they really need to shift to fixing the quests breaking each other, like the Stormcloaks and the main quest.

4983

The review sounded mostly right, if a bit more dour than the game reasonably deserves.

The number, of course, is cause for jihad! Tom I demand an additional gold star for Skyrim or I will be DEEPLY ENRAGED!

4984

I just don’t get any negativity beyond the creaky tech and obtuse A.I. Skyrim practically dotes on the player in every way imaginable. Want to be stabby sneaky guy? We’ve got quests for you! A blasticus mage of death? Here you go! A Conan wannabe? Check out all of this! All three? No problem! Here’s another hand-built dungeon for you! Spent all your time levelling up in Alchemy and Smithing, but want to be a better archer! Sure, why not? And, unlike Oblivion, it works. The game responds. I geeked out when a random passerby remarked on some generic (if powerful) piece of loot I was carrying. Skyrim absolutely panders and responds to the player without sinking into a Daggerfall-style RNG-fest.

4985

That’s really well put. I couldn’t stand Oblivion and I’m more obsessed with Skyrim than I have been about a game for ages.

4986

Same here. Meh-ed Oblivion, loving Skyrim.

4987

Well said. I usually don’t read his reviews because of the weary jaded “I’ve seen it all” tone to them. I much prefer reviews from gamers that love the game despite the negatives instead of hating it because of the problems.

That’s why I prefer those guys from RPS or Eurogamer.

4988

The interface for looking at/using potions is soooooo bad. Ugh.

Toms fairly responsive to comments on the QT3 front page. If you have a question, ask him. Or better still post the comment at the site where the review is. Game review sites are more keen to print a particular reviewer if they see it drives traffic to the site. So Tom would probably appreciate it if you comment on the review site, but hes too classy to ask us outright.

Tony

4989

Tom has built his entire career around doing shit like this, can anyone honestly say they didn’t see it coming? I think he’s a terrific writer, just not as a game reviewer. He’s always trying to work in some dumb ass pop culture tie in or an obscure reference to some TV show or movie no one gives a fuck about, or pointing out that you can bounce a basketball off of Manderly’s head but he doesn’t react realistically. Much of the Skyrim review didn’t even talk about the game, but instead pointed out all the flaws and odd occurrences he witnessed. I’ve played nearly 80 hours on PC and can’t recall any of that happening. My point is that he went out of his way to talk about stupid bullshit that is irrelevant to most gamers. We want to hear how it plays, not pointing out every single mundane little detail that didn’t work the way you wanted.

And…HonestGamers? Anyone curious as to why you never see Tom’s reviews on the big sites anymore? Could it be they got tired of his idiocy and sent his ass packing? Didn’t I read somewhere that HonestGamers is actually run by a friend of his? Could it be that Tom Chick has…shudder…become irrelevant to gaming journalism?

4990

If you want rave reviews of Skyrim theres plenty to be found. I personally appreciate that Tom writes from a particular, consistent, aesthetic that differs from the bulk of game reviewers. I don’t use his reviews as a sole buying guide, but I love to read his take on games.

You’ll enjoy Toms reviews more if you read them like you might read music or novel reviews. He comes from a point of view and the more you understand that point of view the more you’ll get out of his reviews.

People want games criticism to be a science, but its not. Games are creative works, the particular viewpoint of the critic and context in which its viewed matters.

4991

Nope thats not it. I haven’t been able to play any open world games until this year with FONV and Skyrim. And Skyrim may be my favourite game of all time now.

4992

I don’t mind Tom’s review to be honest, it’s Tom, he’s like that. He is that awesome friend you occasionally play games with that often has the differing opinion, the one that makes you think about that game you are blindly enjoying, sometimes to the point that it saddens you and you don’t wish to play any longer.

I do wonder, after this many years of game reviewing, though, if Tom still enjoys gaming. Has it become a huge burden? Does he slog through titles just for the sake of making rent money, ad nauseam?

So my point about Tom’s Skyrim review is that I really do hope he can still enjoy himself. I hope he can see a wonderful story creating work, and stop to watch the butterflies, pick the herbs, marvel at the waterfalls, listen to the random conversations, and maybe even play hide-and-seek with the kids. I hope that jaded isn’t what he really has become, and that the marks for some of these games are to prove some unmentioned point that we might not understand. I suspect he is trying to hold game makers to a higher bar, if anyone should, it would be Tom. But I wonder if deep down, he really likes or does not like some of these titles.

I’m having a blast, and I really wish Tom could as well.

4993

From reading the review I get a sense that Tom wanted more out of it, and he saw a potential that would have made it grand(er). And in that sense I agree.

It w/c-ould be fun to play a massive RPG where time mattered… but I’ve played some games where it did (Dead Rising) and it wasn’t very fun.

I wonder if the AI and CPUs are there yet, so the NPCS in the game world can be ‘self aware’ and not all stand around with pots on their heads while you rob their homes. That is the perfect illustration of Skyrim.

A shopkeeper with a pot on his head, standing in a glorious vista where you can travel everywhere(*)

*) Except the places where invisible walls stop you from traveling

I wonder how a LOTR Themed game would work with the TES5-Tech.

4994

I think he’s the known curmudgeon that you know is likely to take a dump all over anything that’s popular. Yeah, every once in a while he’ll agree with the mainstream, but you know he’s looking for a reason to be contrary on anything that’s mainstream.

Let’s break down his review, because it’s probably one of the poorest reviews I’ve ever seen him write. The first half is a glowing assessment of Skyrim. Then the Chickster goes off the deep end, saying “Skyrim is sometimes profoundly broken, and not just because of the occasional bugs and busted AI scripting.” But beyond the interface, it’s not exactly clear why Chick considers it “broken”. He doesn’t explain why he feels that he’s “flailing” in combat, nor why stealth is “contrived”. I have 80 hours in Skyrim and I have no idea what he’s talking about. I ran this review by two other guys (one in his 40s and one 19) in the office who are playing Skyrim and they both were puzzled.

I entirely disagreed with his stance on Civ V from a factual standpoint, but at least I could comprehend what his issues were. I didn’t encounter the same issues to the same extent, so I think he was pretty overblown. But I walk away from this one with no idea what bug is up his backside.

What’s even stranger is that Skyrim is universally considered an improvement over Oblivion in virtually every way - story, quests, interface (which still sucks on the PC but is ok on the XBox, which is the version he reviewed), etc…and Chick says Oblivion deserved it’s high review marks!
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=672464&highlight=oblivion#post672464
In fact, Tom Chick takes a poster to task about using the word “broken” as it pertains to Oblivion, yet he uses the same word to describe Skyrim.

I guess I’m wondering in what ways is Oblivion is far superior to Skyrim considering it deserved it’s high marks while Skyrim is “broken”?

4995

I briefly considered it, but then every person that I remember speaking on the Bombcast said just don’t. Because it looks okay without the, you know, good textures and stuff, so long as you don’t know how good it looks with the real textures. I figured that it’d just be a nice upgrade for me to get once they finally patched it.

4996

Polished? Well, maybe. Lots of ragdoll physics? Sure. But Saints Row 3 combat is for me Headshot Central.

4997

The moment to moment combat is boring only if you play on lower difficulty levels. As an older, wiser and much more experienced gamer, i don’t waste time on “average” difficulty anymore. On Master, watching a Dragon pop out of nowhere, slam on the ground, CHARGE me trying to eat me, is one of the most memorable moments in gaming i’ve had in years. And it’s a moment that wouldn’t be near as memorable if i were playing on lower difficulty level where i could shrug off the fire and just stand in front of it swinging a big axe in its face, instead of running like hell because it can eat me in one bite.

4998

We’ve been over Tom’s reviews before. He wants to see progress, or at least meeting the minimum state of the art form. Just picture him as an amateur movie critic instead of a game reviewer. You’ll understand him much better.

That’s an interesting link. He says he deliberately tried to break Oblivion after playing it for a while. When he saw how brittle it was, he couldn’t go back to it. I bet he did the same thing in Skyrim. That probably killed it for him whereas few of us have noticed any problems yet. Unfortunately he didn’t provide an example.

4999

I think this aspect is pretty poor. Why do people shout out stuff based on my stats that they have no reason to say? If that stuff were integrated into dialogs I was already having then ok, that would be good, but the intrusive proclaiming of factually correct but completely artificial statements is annoyingly jarring and seems like a real missed opportunity.

Bethesda landscape designers 12/10. Bethesda spontaneous conversation designers 3/10.

5000

Yeah… I just don’t know how anyone could play Oblivion and then Skyrim and not see progress.

Edit: Also, it seems to me that the thing with Tom’s review is that he’s refusing to judge Skyrim in the context of the type of game that it is, which he does sometimes. Like the part where he complains about a spell that refers to an enemy’s level… he likes a lot of what’s going on in Skyrim, but he hates being reminded that it’s an RPG? Or a game at all?

For me, the telling line in that review is the one that he reposted to the front page:

Skyrim is putatively a game. More accurately, it’s a narrative loom.

…and even more accurately than that, it is a game. It’s fine to say that some of the stories that emerge are really cool, and it’s even fine to say that that stuff is your favorite part or even the only part you like. But to say “Skyrim is not a game” and then go on to criticize it for having aspects that are, well, gamey just doesn’t make sense.