The worst video game of this generation.

Skyrim can then fit in as well.  On the PS3 at launch you couldn't look through water or it would instantly freeze, as well there are still many bugs in the game.  

But to get a grasp, moving your camera through water would cause a freeze.  Some of the main quests need you to swim across bodies of water, so what you had to do was zoom your camera out as far as possible while swimming backwards at an incredibly slow speed across the frozen waters while navigating with your map.  It especially pissed me off since I like Argonians, and breathing underwater means **** when doing so freezes the game.  There are also massive combat issues.  For instance how incredibly imbalanced the game can be.  Executions benefit only NPC's and not the player.  If you are playing on harder difficulties some attacks you cannot dodge, since enemies will just instantly enter an execution animation meaning they don't have to hit you.  You just suddenly get a cutscene of you dying.  Meaning that glass cannons are not viable, mind you being a mage or thief is being a glass cannon.  You would need at least 300 health as a standard, 500 on higher difficulties meaning you'll have base mana and base stamina.  As well some enemies do not miss you, such as Dragon Priests.  While Ice and Fire attacks can be dodged, shock ones are instant.  On high difficulties they can hit for over 500 damage.  With maximum shock resistance, and 500 Health(Which is a *** ton), you can survive two hits.  They can cast two at a time, and also deal damage to you ever second you are close to them while they also float.

Skyrim is actually far more difficult than Dark Souls if you ask me.  But it isn't challenging, you just get killed because of poorly designed combat mechanics.  Especially considering how enemies level, you have no idea how powerful an enemy is until they hit you.  I was going into a bandit camp when suddenly I got hit from behind by a double thunderbolt from an enemy that in total hit me for 700 damage, basically the average health cap, at level 30 of 80.  Dragons can land next to you then instantly execute you.  They even added a new difficulty, Legendary.  Your damage gets divided by like 4, while the enemy's is multiplied by 4.  Meaning killing just normal bandits can take 5 minutes of you bashing on them, and if they hit you once you die.  As well if they do an execution(Random Chance to) you just instantly die if they are remotely near you.  

I enjoy Skyrim, but it has such a horribly designed combat system its baffling.

PlasticandRage wrote:Fallout: New Vegas deserves a place on this list too I think. I bought it at launch and it was nearly unplayable because of all the bugs. It's the only Bethesda game I've sold before finishing because it was so buggy that it was just irritating. I tried to just deal with it for awhile, but then got too frustrated to continue when my follower, Boon, loaded inside a rock and the game autosaved over my separate, non-autosave file, after it happened, so he was perma-stuck there. That was enough for me.

 Hey woah now. That's actually my second favourite game, first being Dark Souls. I honestly haven't encountered any hardcore bugs in that game (unless you count cazadores). All Bethesda games have their fair amount of bugs. If we're judging games solely on how buggy they are, my cousin can't play The Last of Us on his PS3 because it bugs out way too much. But that's a fantastic game.

Serious_Much wrote:I kinda agree FFXIII fits into bad business and lack of content. FF fans expect exploration, plethoras of NPCs and towns to explore. They expect returning to old locations on revisit as well as numerous side quests and stories that go along with it.

To me, sub plots were done through the backstories of the other characters (which sucked, if I'm honest, it was a cop out), thhe lone side quest was simply killing missions of overly hard monsters- side quests which I add make end game to be an exercise of nothing. Exploration was zero besides 11, and even that was tiny compared to some of the areas in XII, (which I thought was the perfect line square could find between auto and manual RT gameplay), which brings me on to the combat consisting of only the x and L1 buttons. Obviously too, there were no towns (they teased me at one point in a house.. but it's so forgettable I can barely recall it, an no NPCs really worthy of mention. My friend has had my game for the last 2 years as I'm so appalled at the sight of it and the disappointment it represents. I kept telling myself it was good, and they were just gonna let us have exploration at end game in the same way they did FFX, but nope, nothing. I'm still yet to finish it also.... Rant over

To be honest I just think Bethesda should be named, shamed and shunned for the shocking things they churn out. Fallout and Elder Scrolls would be good, and have great potential. But they're lazy with updating mechanics and most importantly don't give a **** about bugs and glitches. Sure, it's funny, till I can't turn in a main quest so i have to restart my game, or the game freezes an glitches out within 30 seconds of pressing new game. I don't care how big it is. If if that bad they should do massive beta tests like MMOs do because the glitches they have are worse than most free to play online games, which honestly sickens me.

I agree with every word in this post. Pretty much verbatim how I feel about both of those things. I got lucky and managed to play Oblivion without too much of a problem on my PS3, and did Fallout 3 on my PC without a single memorable bug, but everything else I've played that they've developed has been ridiculously buggy. I never finished Skyrim, despite my combined nearly 500 hours of play between 2 characters, because in both of those plays by the time I had started completing the larger side quest lines, like the guilds, my save files were large and complex enough in their encompassing all the changes to the world through those quests, that the game became unplayable. It got so bad that I couldn't even walk from point A to point B without such severe lag that it was a crap shoot whether or not the game would just crash.

Of all those Bethesda games New Vegas was by far the worst experience I've had. It was almost as bad as all that right out of the box for me. I was thoroughly enjoying the parts of the game I actually got to play unimpeded by bugs, but they were few and far between from the beginning and only got worse the more complex my save files got. I'm part happy and part envious of those lucky few who actually got to play the game bug free, but that was not at all my experience. I absolutely loved Fallout 3. I played the crap out of it. In fact as far as time investment it's probably the closest game for me to Dark Souls. If I'd had that same experience as far as software quality with New Vegas I wouldn't be nominating it.

I also can't help but feel like they should be ashamed of the bugs to an even higher degree because in a way I feel like they're setting a standard that developers can release buggy games and still sell millions of copies and get good reviews. That's exactly what happens with their games, and I honestly feel like ever since around the time Skyrim was released I've played increasingly more games with horrible unchecked bugs.

Fallout 3 was so good...then this:

When i say oblivion as the worse game, i was comparing it to morrowind/daggerfall. Not skyrim (skyrim's ok i suppose, a bit rushed. But it could be oblivion)

I'm talking about Vanilla oblivion too, no mods whatsoever

It's sad that because of how mainstream it is, console player (and probably some pc player too) consider this game to be a actual rpg (and a good one )

Any future digging on this topic will result in a large exposition, for i am an elder scroll fan through and through.

drdrack wrote:console player (and probably some pc player too) consider this game to be a actual rpg

Technically, they're right .
You play a Role, Level your Stats up, you have a Dialogue System, Quests, an epic Story yadayada .

Oblivion is an RPG . Just a different type of it (or simplified if you want to call it that) .

drdrack wrote:When i say oblivion as the worse game, i was comparing it to morrowind/daggerfall. Not skyrim (skyrim's ok i suppose, a bit rushed. But it could be oblivion)

I'm talking about Vanilla oblivion too, no mods whatsoever

It's sad that because of how mainstream it is, console player (and probably some pc player too) consider this game to be a actual rpg (and a good one )

Any future digging on this topic will result in a large exposition, for i am an elder scroll fan through and through.

 
I actually found oblivion to be the better game than skyrim. Mainly because skyrim has been horrendously watered down in terms of stats. The combat has added in dual wielding (melee of which sucks), almost cutscene finishers (which are ridiculous) to try and pretend they freshened up the game, then made the main enemy- the dragon all the same except swapping elements and some can turn invisible... cool I guess?

The only positive thing I found was the making pure magic more viable by adding in regen and the ability paths with each skill. Thing is though, they should add stuff like that on top of what was previously.. Not remove other stats and put this instead. With sequels you're supposed to build upon what you've done, not just swap bits out .

 Also skyrim, on it's NEWEST update still glitched out 30 secs into my playthrough on a brand new PS3. That's utterly irreconcilable, that moment means I'm not buying anything else from bethesda till they get their head out their ***

I really liked that they upgraded bows enough to be a viable main weapon choice in Skyrim also. You couldn't really do that in Oblivion. They just didn't do enough damage, even with sneak attacking. Between magic upgrades and bows it made being a stealth character a lot more viable in general. Outside those things, and graphics and sheer map size, I think I liked Oblivion more too though. That and I experienced far less bugs playing Oblivion. In fact I'd be hard pressed to recall any serious bugs I encountered playing Oblivion, while Skyrim was a nightmare in that regard.

PlasticandRage wrote:I really liked that they upgraded bows enough to be a viable main weapon choice in Skyrim also. You couldn't really do that in Oblivion. They just didn't do enough damage, even with sneak attacking. Between magic upgrades and bows it made being a stealth character a lot more viable in general. Outside those things, and graphics and sheer map size, I think I liked Oblivion more too though. That and I experienced far less bugs playing Oblivion. In fact I'd be hard pressed to recall any serious bugs I encountered playing Oblivion, while Skyrim was a nightmare in that regard.

 I can vouch for that. I encountered bugs and glitches in oblivion yeah, but there were far more few and far between than skyrim, and they were menial at worst also

On the topic of being down on Skyrim.  It is a pretty nice looking game...At a distance.  Go up to any in game artwork, like the stone wals with Nordic art.  Put your face against them and look at them, they are flat pixelated textures that look like absolute garbage.  It's pretty ridiculous.

I wonder if Bethesda even thinks they're any good at making games.. Seriously, everything is subpar and they make it up by just using the motto "Bigger is better"

By the way, I should mention I actually enjoy Skyrim.  Personally I think it can be fun to just get lost in the world doing stuff.  But I'm not going to lie about the crappy aspects.

I have friends who play it and talk about how it is the greatest fantasy experience ever, they post on facebook about how immersive the game is.  Frankly I consider it one of the least imersive games I've ever played.

Nothing takes me out of it like doing a long quest chain at level fifty, then a Jarl going "I've got a special gift for you, it was difficult for me to get but you deserve it," then hand me an iron helm enchanted to resist 5% flame damage.  While I'm wearing my Daedric Helmet at Legendary enchanted to protect me 25% against fire and 25% against frost.  Nothing takes me out like fighting against bandits and having one of them hit me for 500 damage instantly killing me while the others only dealt ten or so damage.  Nothing takes me out quite like having the game freeze or crash mid combat.  And there sure isn't anything like seeing a dragon frozen in the air flapping its wings with zero health, dragons aren't scripted to die in the air.  They have to land then they can die, so if it glitches and gets stuck in the air you can't kill it.  This happened to me once with Alduin, because of the save data getting corrupted from it being such a long lasting file I couldn't reload, the one I could reload he was glitched in.  I had to load a save 30 levels prior when I had done almost none of the quests.  The game is broken as ***.

I enjoy playing it to some degree too. There's a lot that's great about it. The combat is the big one for me though. If it were a bit more difficult and varied I think I personally could overlook a lot of the other stuff, but the fact that once you hit level 20-25ish nothing stands a chance against you and you accomplish it by doing the exact same thing over and over again makes  the game pretty stale for me after awhile. The stealth characters especially. I have 2 characters, one is an orc, who I'd cast his innate ability with, I can't remember the name, then run in close, absorb any damage, and just beat my enemy to death with my mace, and I have a dark elf who I sneak around with at a distance, and kill everything with arrow sneak attack shots. Even if you try to vary that all you really accomplish is giving the orc a sword or an axe, which do virtually the exact same thing, or maybe throwing some spells on the dark elf, which again do exactly the same thing but with less initial damage and more damage over a second or two. It's the exact same thing over and over with different back drops. I just get bored doing it after awhile. I'll give it to them that they did try to mix it up in a few ways though. The whole werewolf thing was awesome for awhile, especially to supplement a melee character with. I may be remembering this wrong, but I think they designed it so that it doesn't scale with your character levels though, so after awhile all it will do is get you killed.

Morrowind is my favorite/the best (imo)

I enjoy skyrim, broken mess that it is (though less so on the 360) but its been "main streamed" into horrible simplicity.

At level 9, with the hammer of might, I can kill anything in the game with stagger lock combos. dragon, mammoth, giant, dragon priest, bring it on, you won't even get to attack before i've killed you, and the power difference between player mages and npc mages is absurd.


I hate oblivion. At least skyrim stands out in my mind, but oblivion is just one big green blur of boredom.

I never got the chance to do Morrowind. I've watched a few videos though and looks like the type of game that would be difficult to play for the first time after playing all the next gen sequels. The graphics and systems seem pretty primitive in comparison. Don't get me wrong, I'll play snes/genesis rpgs all day long, and often do, but older 3D graphics games can be a lot more difficult to bare with in my mind.

It would take some getting used to, but its so great. So much more is viable and fair (builds,) and there are more major quest lines. (2 temples, thiefs guilds, mages guild, morang tong, warrior guild, 3 great houses( warrior/mage/stealth,) ashlanders, 3 vampire clans, imperial legion)

I thought the morrowind graphics were ok (though I love playing old generation 3d graphics games so whatever haha), but the thing I didn't like was the combat- you didnt always hit, which was retraded.. Then naturally your hits were weak as hell to boot.

I thought the instructions in quests could have been clearer sometimes, and used stuff like landmarks to get you there but they weren't tooooo bad.

You think it's done well enough that the combat would still be entertaining? At least as entertaining as the combat in the sequels?


Maybe I'll give it a go when I finish up with Dragon's Dogma. Shouldn't be too too hard to find I wouldn't think. Might even be on Steam for all I know.

Tolvo wrote:By the way, I should mention I actually enjoy Skyrim.  Personally I think it can be fun to just get lost in the world doing stuff.  But I'm not going to lie about the crappy aspects.

I have friends who play it and talk about how it is the greatest fantasy experience ever, they post on facebook about how immersive the game is.  Frankly I consider it one of the least imersive games I've ever played.

Nothing takes me out of it like doing a long quest chain at level fifty, then a Jarl going "I've got a special gift for you, it was difficult for me to get but you deserve it," then hand me an iron helm enchanted to resist 5% flame damage.  While I'm wearing my Daedric Helmet at Legendary enchanted to protect me 25% against fire and 25% against frost.  Nothing takes me out like fighting against bandits and having one of them hit me for 500 damage instantly killing me while the others only dealt ten or so damage.  Nothing takes me out quite like having the game freeze or crash mid combat.  And there sure isn't anything like seeing a dragon frozen in the air flapping its wings with zero health, dragons aren't scripted to die in the air.  They have to land then they can die, so if it glitches and gets stuck in the air you can't kill it.  This happened to me once with Alduin, because of the save data getting corrupted from it being such a long lasting file I couldn't reload, the one I could reload he was glitched in.  I had to load a save 30 levels prior when I had done almost none of the quests.  The game is broken as ***.

I enjoyed Skyrim the first time, but then i just couldn't replay it, especially after playing Dark Souls; everything seems so...poorly done.
Walking around with my 100 two handed nord in ebony armor/mail, and suddenly a wild altmer appears with two elven daggers and tells me to pay up or he will gut me like a fish, in a typical male altmer voice.

Then there's the "storyline", nearly every quest is either find or kill someone/somthing, it's too much to cover in detail. Hadvar says "Hold your fire" when you're sneaking up on stormcloaks.

Every aspect of gameplay is broken, the animations are horrible, changing between 1st and 3rd person affects your movement, the characters' body language doesn't reflect what they're saying, the weapon hitboxes are ****, at least one skill tree is useless, puzzles consist of stones with animals on them, there are rings with animals on them too, that would have been fine if it didn't repeat hundreds of times with the right combination right next to it. Bears are also more dangerous than dragons; fortunately, you can kill anything in about 5 seconds by turning into a werewolf and spamming the sprint attack. You can easily reach the resistance and absorbtion cap against all types of magic. And have you ever tried to kill a dragon assaulting you in the college of winterhold?

I can rant forever about skyrim.
Well, except for the lore, TES lore is really great

Its closer to the dnd type system of attacking/defense, but its real time. Wether or not you can handle that I can't say.

Often, the battle plays out very differently in my head than it does on screen.

I also got really annoyed with the Civil War options.

It was supposed to make you split between the two factions, force you to decide.  Neither being truly evil, fighting for ideals that oppose one another.  They wanted it to be hard to decide, for people to be justified if they choose either side.

Let's look at the factions real quick.

Stormcloaks, Racism against Non-Nords and Especially Elves and Argonians, unintentionally weakening the Empire for the Thalmor, Leader that killed a king that would have supported him so he could instead replace said king, shows no compassion towards enemy soldiers(Stormcloaks are known for attacking Imperials on sight, Imperials have tried to negotiate with them but Stormcloaks just attack).

Empire, strict government(Standard of the entire series), willingness to defend Skyrim against the Thalmor if a true war breaks out(Stormcloaks also do this), willingness to execute prisoners(Stormcloaks also do this), Were willing to let people worship what they wanted until Stormcloaks brought attention to Talos causing laws to need to be enforced, Peace Seeking, Willingness to let Skyrim's customs withstand(The moot, the role of the spouse of a high king, etc), equality for all races.

Gee, it sure is hard to decide who is the good guy between the racist terrorist rebel group based upon murder, compared to the government putting forth peace, equality, and understanding of other cultures.  How is one to decide?

lol. pretty much. I don't pay much attention to the story after a once through on each side.

Most of my play time is things like roleplaying my ranger, who spends as much time wandering the wilderness and looking for things to do (quests or random amusing crap.)

To me, stats in games are suppose to matter for it to be considered a rpg. In oblivion, most of my playthoughs I remeber never truly worries about which stat to take. (expect strength, because i like to carry more crap)

In oblivion, you can basically (with little effort no less, as long as you use the rubber band/stone trick) make yourself the master of everything in a relativity short period of time. While in morrowind and skyrim, it takes far more effort along with the diffculty to be even the jack of all trade and is nearly impossible to truly get everything into a single character. In Skyrim, there's perks. Which makes huge difference. While in morrowind there is misc skills, which does not level though action itself. Not to mention how easy it is to level minor skill in oblivion and you're probably encouraged to do so. (what with having all the skills you don't want to be a major just to prevent leveling)

Stats are a good system in any rpg, I'm not going to disagree. But oblivion did such a terrible job of handling it. imo, the system is ignorable at best, and just a simple number burden at worse. (because the simple fact that most people are obsessed with having their numbers as high as possible. And efficient leveling is the only way) Oblivion management of stat is so bad, that merely removing stats and replaced it by perks via Skyrim made the game feels a lot better. 

However though, I am going to agree that to call this game the worse game of this generation is a bit ridiculous. It is definitely one of the worse games i played. For there are alot more broken games tech wise, not even game wise that are much worse then oblivion. However, since i did not play those games, because i read reviews. It didn't matter to me all that much. Oblivion however, has excellent review for strange reasons. (probably due to the fact that it was one of the few high profile games that was release on the xbox/?ps3? at that time)

Serious_Much wrote:I wonder if Bethesda even thinks they're any good at making games.. Seriously, everything is subpar and they make it up by just using the motto "Bigger is better"

If this was 7 or 8 years ago, I will disagree with this.

Now, I cannot help to agree even just a little...

It sounds worth checking out at the very least. I don't mind turned based systems at all if it's closer to that then the others. Guess I'll find out.

After Skyrim 1.9 you can level up infinitely, getting a perk and attribute point each time.