This week's issue of Japan's Famitsu magazine features a major first worth noting, especially if you're interested in how Western-developed games are seen and treated over there. For the first time in the mag's 25-year history, a Western-developed game -- Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- has notched a perfect 40/40 review score, only the seventeenth game to do so.
"The overwhelming detail packed into the game really pulls you in," Famitsu assistant editor Norihiro Fujiwara wrote in his review. "From the music to the story and setting, everything is excellently done -- the main story isn't all that long, but there's an extremely large selection of subquests. Even the area around the first village you visit is packed with just a shocking amount of detail and volume. It's just pure fun to adventure around the vast world while pondering over which skills to acquire. It may be tough for light users to get hands-on with some aspects of it, but the gameplay system -- a mix of Oblivion and Fallout -- is overall easy to get to grips with."
The perfect score is a first for a non-Japan-made title, although several Western games have missed the mark by a single point in recent years, including Grand Theft Auto IV, Gears of War 3, and (most recently) Modern Warfare 3 and EA's FIFA 12. It places Skyrim in the same rarefied position in Famitsu's review annals as Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid 4, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and...er, Nintendogs.
The review text is all the more interesting to read considering that Square Enix's Final Fantasy series, long seen as the standard-bearer of Japanese RPGs, is increasingly seen as having grown rudderless in recent years. "Right now, I'd say this is at the top of the heap for singleplayer console RPGs," declared review-writer Ranbu Yoshida. "The sense of realism and freedom in this title goes far beyond the previous one. Exploring new lands and dungeons, as well as taking advantage of new skills to raise your character, is so fun that you really lose track of time."
"Skyrim is definitely my pick for this week," chimed in fellow editor Jigoro Ashida. "The sheer amount of freedom might bewilder some people, but the way you have to feel blindly around at the start is exactly what makes the discovery, growth and accomplishment you experience -- the core of any decent adventure -- so exciting. The action isn't that terribly frenetic, either, so I'd say it's a lot more approachable than you might think at first. Even if you're new to the series, you should absolutely check it out."
. So I put both of the files in a ZIP so I can upload it.
