Two hundred years after Martin Septim fought off Mehrunes Dagon and saved all of Tamriel from destruction, trouble returns to the continent. This time it’s in the northern, Nordic province of Skyrim.

The issue that has plagued Skyrim: Dragons have returned from the dead and are wrecking havoc across the province. You, being the long foretold Dragonborn with the blood of a dragon, are the only person who has what it takes to stop them. Similar to Skyrim’s predecessors, Oblivion and Morrowind, the game begins with the protagonist imprisoned for a crime he committed before the game opens. Although it seems that Bethesda has overused this opening, it allows the gamer to almost create the character’s past and write the character’s future for purposes of evil or for good.While Oblivion makes you pick your skill set, like major skills and minor skills, Skyrim doesn’t. Some of your skills will start at 15 and some will start at 21 depending on the race of the type of character you choose. Ranking up is also much easier. Since you could only rank up your major  skills to increase your overall level, leveling up in Oblivion took a while. Every skill rank up in Skyrim adds to the overall rank and there is even a meter to show you how close you are to leveling up. Upon leveling up, you get to choose to increase the Magic, Health, or Stamina of your character and get a perk to add to an individual skill and give it a special power. This could be increasing damage done by one-handed weapons or making enemies flee when inflicted with too much fire damage.

One of the cool new features is the ability to dual wield weapons and magic. Instead of the traditional two-handed weapon or sword and shield, you can now have two swords, sword and magic, since magic is now equipped to a hand, or double magic. If the same magic spell is dual wielded, the spell becomes overcharged and does a much higher amount of damage. When magic in Oblivion was just a ball or quick burst, Skyrim’s magic can be constant streams, the normal ball of fire, spikes or a new spell called a rune. Runes can be placed on almost any surface and explode when enemies walk past them and deal a bunch of damage.

A new addition to the Elder Scrolls series is the ability for the player’s character to use shouts or “Thu’ums.” These allow the player’s character to use the language of the dragons and amplify their voice into a power. Some shouts damage enemies, some effect the world around you and others can act like spells, reducing an enemy’s life force, making enemies flee or calling in giant storms. Some thu’ums can be humorous by blasting enemies off of high places or jumping off mountains and not taking any damage.

Compared to Oblivion and Fallout 3, another game that Bethesda mothers, the graphics are phenomenal.  Hopefully they would be since the game has been in production for close to four years.Vast amounts of detail are woven into the game like the veins, hair, and dirt on the back of the player’s hand and scenery that looks almost real. Instead of the snow and rain moving with the player, like in Oblivion, all of the weather stands still. One of the player’s thu’ums can actually clear the sky of any weather currently in progress and reveal the bright and shiny day.

Character customization has also been upgraded. More hairstyles, facial hair styles, hair colors and presets, are in the game as well as the addition of eye colors, war paint, scars and a few other things. The argonian species received the biggest change in customization options as well as a redesign. The argonians can now be different colors as well as other options as to what the character’s facial features can be.

In Oblivion, enemies leveled up as you did, but mainly only the ones found in the oblivion plains. Skyrim has enemies are harder in certain areas, predominately more colder ones, and they increase in the frequency they will appear. Every enemy in Skyrim increases in ranks though so don’t ever assume you’ll be safe ofrever. The levels of regular enemies are mainly just the normal name, like Wolf, and then the harder version has Snow in the name. Bears have a third level, cave bears, and trolls go by frost instead of snow. Dragons have four levels; Dragon, Frost Dragon, Blood Dragon and Elder Dragon. They increase significantly in difficulty as you progress through the game. For human enemies, the name after what type of enemy will change like Bandits become Bandit Outlaws. For mages, the name changes to show their magic ability i.e. Novice, Adept, Expert.

With these new enemies, come new fighting techniques to take them out. One of the new techniques is that you can bash an enemy with your bow or shield. The bash staggers the enemy allowing you to make your next move with out the person being right up in your face. The bashes do take stamina though so don’t bash too many times then expect to be able to do a power attack. The next one is more of an evasion technique. An actual sprint function has made it into the game allowing you to run from enemies, but sprinting takes up a lot of stamina so be warned.

Skyrim deserves an award for it’s beautiful gameplay and every gamer needs to at least try to play the game. The rating on the game does say blood and gore, and even though there isn’t a major amount, the game is centered around fighting so there is a reason for its rating. Even if you’re unsure about the game, rent it first, but the game is worth all of the money you pay for it. For all of you parents out there, read the ESRB label on the back first and make sure it’s okay with you if your child plays it.