We adore the game Skyrim as a game. We've been playing it on the PC fairly steadily. However, the PS3 version has numerous flaws with it which seriously affect gameplay enjoyment.

First, the basics about the game. This is an incredibly expansive RPG experience. You can customize your character down to minor details of scars and color. There are a wealth of places to explore and a variety of quests. You could go through the game numerous times and each time have a different experience, based on the type of character you chose to play and the directions you chose to take.

On the PC, the quality of the graphics is spellbinding. The bark on the trees, the details on the items, it all speaks to how much effort the game team put into creating this product.

However, for whatever reason, there are SERIOUS issues with their port to the PS3.

The first, most clear difference is the graphics quality. Yes, you could say that computers have always offered better quality than consoles have, but even so, we have other games on our PS3 which feature better graphics than this. Also, as the Skyrim team has been patching the games' numerous issues, the graphics quality has gone up and down. So clearly they are degrading graphics on purpose to try to keep the game running.

Which leads to the next issue - which really is the ONLY issue that even matters on the PS3. The game is riddled with bugs. Some of them are minor - but some cause the game to crash and lose everything you've done since the last save. It locks up quite regularly. And the deeper you get into the game, the more the game crashes. So that means as you're taking on the more challenging quests, you can't even be sure you'll get to the end of the quest before all your progress is lost.

Items won't upgrade properly. Items get lost. Quests become unsolvable. If you've invested 100 hours in a game and want to see the end of it, it can become incredibly frustrating to have the game keep doing this to you. Especially when you know your family members who are playing on the PC aren't seeing these kinds of issues.

Normally we are fairly platform-independent around here. We review on all platforms. We own all platforms. We usually don't care TOO much if we get a given game on the PC vs XBox vs PS3 vs Wii, and our decision gets based around if it involves motion or high quality graphics or if we'd like to watch the gameplay as a group on the TV. But this is one case where we absolutely would AVOID getting the PS3 version for actual gameplay enjoyment. It's extremely rare for us to hit this kind of platform-specific issue, so it is very much worth mentioning here.

Avoid the PS3 version of Skyrim.

Rating: 1/10

We purchased this game (sadly) with our own funds, even though we owned the PC version, because we thought it would be fun to play as a group in the living room. We were wrong.

If you're brave:
Buy the PS3 Version of Skyrim from Amazon.com