Skyrim is looking to be a surprise contender for game of the year. It came out of nowhere, almost, with all of the talk being about the big faceoff between Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, the two giants of the FPS genre.

Yet I should have seen it coming; the multitude of fans at GAMEFEST who queued for hours to watch a Skyrim trailer should have told me that. Even knowing that it took me by surprise; it came out and suddenly my entire friends list on Steam was playing it, and /r/gaming on Reddit had turned into /r/skyrim.
 
 

I knew with such a magnificent reaction, I couldn’t ignore it forever. So I did what any good person should, and I started to play the game – and it didn’t take long until I was utterly confident that Skyrim did deserve to be worthy of its sudden praise.

It started with that magical property of games to appear as beautiful as a picture, and then you realise you can turn the camera round to get a different angle – this isn’t no cutscene, this is the game! As your comrades in the cart begin to speak to you and the lush environment and soundscape begin to fade in, you realise just how far the gorgeous vista pervades.
 

As you work your way through the opening stages of the game, there’s again this sense of overwhelming quality. Where Call of Duty acts like a theme park that wants you to try all of the rides and hurry you past the piles of puke, Skyrim is more like a nature reserve, with a vast expanse ripe for exploration. While finding an unexpected fruit tree might pale in comparison to riding a rollercoaster, when you’re out in the wilds it gains a whole new meaning. It’s another perfectly crafted piece of the environment that makes it all the more compelling.
 

That’s the magic of Skyrim, I think – its excellence exists as an almighty smorgasbord, where you can travel in any direction and find people, places and quests that have been excellently designed. It’s an immersive experience that transcends individual moments of excellence, becoming instead a world even greater than the sum of its parts.

Skyrim is available now on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. If you own any of these systems or know someone that does, then you should play Skyrim.

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of the BlackBerry 9900 battery and the Jabra new Kindle cover.