Excuse all the spam, but perhaps this information might help someone make an informed decision and NOT buy the PS3 version. The reviews become more gloomy as I read on.

*** please read the 12/9/11 update below this article *** PS3 users: Bad news: This is why you may want to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (protecting consumers): A) the game came with game-breaking bugs that prevent users from finishing it B) it was not stated on the retail-box that an internet connection is required to get the game to work properly in the first place (we're not talking patches/updates but major, crucial modifications necessary for an even adequately acceptable gameplay experience) C) retailers won't give consumers a full refund if they choose to return this defective product (defective due to the publishers negligence) D) Bethesda's latest patch (1.2) has done little to improve the issue and has, in fact, in most cases caused even more grief. Scaling down graphics detail (particuarly landscape-fade-in and dynamic lighting effects) to cover up memory leaks is poor programming and a slap in the face for every gamer who marveled at the (former!) graphical beauty of the game before installing the latest patch. Read the threads all over the WWW and Bethesda's own forum and you'll know just how poorly the game performs and negatively affects your PS3 hardware - if you're really unlucky. E) Bethesda does not show enough of an effort to admit, address, pinpoint and fix the problems. The omission of minutely detailed changelogs of the recent patches and the silence on part of Moderators, the official web-page and Bethesda representatives regarding the issue have an unacceptable impact on the trust-relationship between the company, consumers and even its most loyal fans. Furthermore, the lack of transparency regarding the mountaineous issues at hand is professional negligence at best, willful ignoring of consumer-rights at worst. F) the vast complexity and production value of the game is no excuse for glitches that undermine the overall gaming experience to a point where gamers spend more time on forums looking for help and support than using and enjoying the actual product! Most of the bugs could easily have been detected and fixed with another month or two of intense testing on all platforms. Again, we're NOT talking about minor quest glitches, but a game that stutters to a complete halt and becomes UNPLAYABLE after 15-20 hours or so!! Some dedicated fanboys keep defending Bethesda on forums, stating that their trailblazing in terms of complexity and quantity of a game's open-world-structure is an excuse for major bugs ("would you rather have progressive game-design or perfect stability?"). Then, how come ROCKSTAR can do it and Bethesda can't? How come all GRAND THEFT AUTO games and READ DEAD REDEMPTION were stable, playable and finishable from the get-go? The answer: ROCKSTAR actually cares for their customers enough to put their games through months of beta-testing before they release them. Bethesda apparently doesn't.

Enough is enough. Consumers should not function as cheap beta-testers who pay $60.00 only to end up helping the game-industry tidy up the mess they create by prematurely releasing products until the so-called "Special Edition" gets released. Consumers have every right to demand fully functional products for their hard-earned money. If you buy a new car, you don't just sit still and bide your time, either, when the car-dealer keeps promising you that it might actually start working properly in a couple of weeks when they release a patch. According to the "lemon law" you are entitled to receive a car of the same make/model that works or a full refund. If the retailers (understandably) refuse to give a full refund for a product that was malfunctioning before it shipped out to them, it is up to us consumers to hold the Publishers accountable.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim COULD have been a great game. Maybe it will be a year from now by which time forum-geeks have helped the game-company fix it free of charge. As for me, I have paid my $60.00, I'm not on Bethesda's payroll and I'd like to be able to play the game now instead of feeling like I got robbed and lied to.

*** update 12/9/11 *** - patch 1.3 has been issued, which reportedly will still not fix the issues for PS3 users that make the game unplayable/unfinishable after a certain amount of time. For the most part this patch seems to remedy the problems the previous patch caused. Congratulations! - Bethesda's PR department have done their very best to minimalize and sugar-coat the issues, digging their grave deeper and deeper in the process. When the Titanic is already halfway sunk, why not admit that the ship isn't perfect instead of handing out cookies to the passengers and singing campfire songs pretending reality is just a matter of how you market it? Backwards flying Dragons, which cannot be defeated anymore are called "amazing". Users who spend over 80 of the (promised!) 120+ hours of game-play and then run into problems are labeled "excessive players". Constant slowdowns, freezes and hard-drive crashes are called "occasional frame-rate drops". And to toss some more salt into our wounds, Bethesda's advice to PS3 users is (among many others) to get a faster hard-drive or to never dispose of items outside buildings or chests or (here comes the fan-favorite) to skip in-game-time for 30 days until the save-file resets the item management aperture, freeing up memory so the game may start running a little smoother for a short period of time - or not. Nice going, Bethesda! Considering that you can only skip 12 hours ahead in a row and each wait takes about 30 seconds to complete. So let me get this straight: I, the player, am supposed to sit there, press the select button, adjust the wait time, press X, wait for 30 seconds, then do it again 60 times in a row??? Any other hoops you ask players to jump through to play this mess? We can balance a basketball on our nose, too, while we're playing, if it helps... *** End of update ***