That’s right. I have a problem. And they say that the first step to getting over your problem is admitting you have one. Right? Well I don’t want to get over my addiction.

I’m a computer game player from WAAAAAAAAAY back. Remember the Commodore 64? What about the Atari? I was there. In fact, whenever I put on a DVD these days, I still find myself saying “Press play on tape”. If you’re not 30 year’s old or more, games on the Commodore 64 (which was a computer in the 1980’s) were sold on a cassette tape. When you wanted to play the game, the computer would tell you to: “Press play on tape”.

Haven’t things changed since then? I mean, we have the Wii, and the Playstation Move and XBox Kinect. The Commodore 64 used to take up to half an hour to load a big game. Now, you slip in a disk and before you know it, YOU are the controller.

What I like to see in a computer game is CHOICE. I tend to think outside the square, so I don’t like games where I have to do it THEIR way. I want to make my own decision about how I achieve the goal. And that’s where games like Skyrim excel.

Fable was a good contender against the Elder Scrolls series (of which, Skyrim is episode 5). I only got involved with Elder Scrolls at episode 4: Oblivion, and it sucked me in like a child at a sideshow. The world in these games is amazing. The games are actually designed to have open-ended play. And if you don’t want to follow (and complete) the main story, then that’s fine.

Skyrim was released internationally on 11 November, and since then I have clocked up a little over 100 hours of gameplay. Can you believe that? 100 HOURS! A lot of new games these days will offer 25 or MAYBE 30 hours of gameplay for your $100. And to make things even more amazing, I traded in some old games to buy Skyrim, and ended up paying $9 for it. NINE FUCKING DOLLARS. For 100 hours of gameplay, so far!

And the thing is, I am NO WAY NEAR finished this game. I think I’m about 20% of the way through the main story. The rest of my time has been spent doing………stuff. So if you’re not familiar with the game (or it’s predecessor), here’s how it works.

You play a character that is any one of about 6 or 7 different races. From human, to lizard-thing, to elf. At the start, you get to “design” your character by editting your face – everything from the shape of your head to how far apart your eyes are, how dark your skin is and what your hair looks like. Then you get to give your character a name.

I won’t give away the storyline, but what I will do is say that in Skyrim, there is pretty much NOTHING you can’t do. Except have sex. And that’s my pet hate in video games these days, but I won’t talk about that now. If you want to hear my thoughts on that, leave a comment.

In Skyrim, you can create your own weapons out of the following types of material: leather, iron, steel, ebony, glass, elven steel, dwarven steel, dragon scales or dragon bones.

You do this at a blacksmith. They have a forge where you can create the items, a grindstone to sharpen and improve your weapons, a tanning rack where you can turn all the animal hides you’ve found into leather, and a workbench where you can improve any armour that you’ve made.

You can also create potions. At the beginning, you don’t know any of the magical properties of any of the ingredients. You have to start mixing them all together and gradually you will learn what magical effects they have. You can even EAT all of the ingredients, to help learn their effects.

And the best thing? Most of the ingredients you use to make potions are found in the game world. Everything from those damn Mountain Flowers, to bees, lichen, moss, butterfly wings, mudcrab claws, hawk beaks and ice-wraith teeth.

You can also hire – or be provided with – someone to help you out. They work really well as a pack mule to carry all your gear, but they also help you out in battles.

You can just wander around the wilderness, discovering caves, mines, forts, dragons, giants or towns. You can buy a house in each town and deck it out with all the latest furniture. You can spend your time just working on potions or making weapons and armour to improve your skills, or you can go dragon hunting.

And as you wander around the towns and get to know people, they will ask for your help. One of the menus keeps a list of your outstanding quests, and there’s miscellaneous ones as well. Everything from taking a note from one person to another to killing a dragon that’s been pissing off the local Jarl (aka regional leader), or clearing out a castle or cave where bandits live.

But Skyrim has it’s flaws. And anyone with a few brain cells would expect that. You can’t create a world like there is in this game without a few things going wrong. There’s plenty of webpages whinging and bitching about how shit Skyrim is because of all these little glitches. But I say to these people: Get over yourselves.

Sure, there’s some legit stuff. It sounds pretty minor and a bit nerdy on here, but I assure you, they are incredibly frustrating. Things like if you locate a quest item BEFORE you meet the person who tells you to START  the quest, then you might not be able to complete the quest. There’s also the odd lock-up (mainly on PS3 after four hours of continuous play) and the crappiest maps that ever lived.

And then there’s things that are really just tweaks. The game itself is awesome, but when a game gets all the BIG things right, you start looking at the little things. Like why can’t I mark the map myself when I find something interesting? Why can’t I rename a potion? Why can’t I tell my companion to STOP STANDING IN THE FUCKING DOORWAY!!!!!!!!!!!! Or why can’t I just ask a local where I go to sell my potions?

But that’s not to say that the game doesn’t already have a lot of these little things already. When you turn a normal sword into one that drains the magic of your enemy, you can name it anything you want. I have a fur hat that I gave an alchemy enchantment. So I called it “Hat that makes potions stronger” haha. Yes, I’m a child.

But it’s the REALLY little things that make this game what it is. Early on in the game, I was attacked by a group of people hired to kill me. Naturally, I slew them all (insert evil laugh here) and then looted their bodies. But then, the locals started walking up to the bodies and saying “Ooh, a dead body. I wonder what happened”.

You can even get married in Skyrim. And not to the ONE non-player character (NPC) that the game makers decided you should marry. There are literally about 20 NPCs that you can marry. And Skyrim is progressive. Same-sex marriages are allowed. You can even marry some of the people who will accompany you on quests.

The gameplay is also pretty awesome, but after 100 hours, I still struggle with some of the controls. I play on Xbox, and Skyrim’s predecessor, Oblivion, had amazingly intuitive controls. Skyrim does not. Did you hear that Bethesda? Skyrim DOES NOT have intuitive controls. And it sucks. When you’re being attacked by a dragon and need to grab your shield at the same time as drink a health potion, it gets hard.

Which reminded me of another awesome aspect of Skyrim. The world interacts with itself ALL THE TIME. You can be wandering around the world and find other animals and NPCs locked in battle with each other. Just recently, I was approaching a bandit camp that I had previously cleared. As I got closer, I heard a dragon overhead, so I froze and pulled out my bow.

But the dragon wasn’t after ME. I followed it’s stream of fire and saw that the dragon was attacking the bandits in the camp. I joined in, thinking the bandits would help make light work of the dragon, but when the dragon flew off to circle around, the bandits turned their attention to me. But the funny thing is, as the dragon came back to ground level, the bandits started attacking the dragon again!

And that’s not all! About half way through the battle, a giant joined in! Once again, everyone joined forces to fight the dragon, but once it was out of range, everyone started attacking each other again! It was funny and awesome at the same time. But things didn’t end well. The dragon was just about dead, so I rushed in for a melee attack, only to have the dragon grab me in it’s mouth, thrash me around and discard me like yesterday’s newspaper.

But you know what? I wasn’t mad. There was no rage quit. How can you be mad at an epic battle like that? It was truly amazing to see and to be a part of. Just another reason I love Skyrim.

So, yes. My name is Grumpyaussie, and I’m an addict.