14 DAY TRIAL // My biggest early game disappointment with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is that it fails to make the user experience the best it can be for PC gamers, forcing them to use the WASD and the directional keys in order to navigate menus and interact with their inventory while limiting the mouse to just looking around in the world and directing attacks.
It makes it harder than it should be to do simple tasks, like changing armor around or checking what potions one has available, and almost put me off completely from making too many changes from the characters template that I first chose.
The user interface might be a disappointment but the core of the Elder Scrolls experience, which is navigating a world and battling enemies, is more solid than in Oblivion and in other recent Bethesda supervised games.
In combat my chosen character, an Argonian, seems to be more agile and better able to tangle with more than one enemy and the hits of the weapons and the parrying moves feel weighty and solid.
The enemies also put up much more of a fight, even early on, especially when they are natural or supernatural rather than simply human.
The much touted graphical upgrade powered by the Creation Engine is also smaller than we've been lead to believe, even on a gaming machine that is using Ultra High settings and the maximum resolution.
Yes, characters look better than they did but don't go much above the Fallout: New Vegas standard, and the world can look majestic and huge at times, but there are also some issues with how shadows work and lack of direct light can make objects look much too dark.
Of course, Skyrim is a huge game, one that according to the developers, could eat up 50 hours of gaming time easily, so a lot might change before we deliver a full review here at Softpedia.
Here's a look at how The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks in action:
