Slaying dragons, rescuing damsels in distress, and outsmarting villains has been a terrible cliché for a long time, but the Elder Scrolls series has been following this medieval recipe for quite some time now.  Elder Scrolls I was released twenty years ago, but over many years  Bethesda Studios’ quirky little game series has slowly evolved and improved.  Skyrim: Elder Scrolls V, the most recent installment of the series, is one of the best games in its class.

Skyrim is a multiplatform single-player game that still follows the old medieval cliché, but it also extends far beyond the classic fairy tale structure.  The game’s adventurous style has a perfect balance between intense battle and lighthearted moments that can be enjoyed by almost any modern day gamer. The main storyline is excellent and never really loses it’s replay value. Unfortunately, there is a downside to the console version of this game.  While the gameplay on consoles is still pretty smooth and free of major glitches, it is also plagued by lengthy load times.  On PS3, players can expect a thirty second wait when exiting a building, and on Xbox 360 the load times can be much longer than that.  Put simply, Skyrim is best when played on the PC.  The PC version of Skyrim has much shorter loading times (usually about three seconds) and features modding capability.  The console version of this game is good, but if players choose the PC version, they can download and add in anything from graphical enhancers to balloon animal weapons.

Skyrim could have been written off as just another game following the nerdy cliché, but instead it turned out to be a Game of the Year-winning masterpiece. Thanks to Skyrim, killing dragons and saving the world has never felt so good.