Category TES V: Skyrim KOA: Reckoning Winner Round 1: Character Creation Now with 100% more beards! Bearded at birth Draw: Your bearded creation is hidden beneath all that armor, anyway Round 2: Game World Skyrim's truly open world turns the most hardened quest trackers into off-the-beaten-path explorers Invisible walls make Amalur the North Korea of open world RPGs Skyrim: off the beaten path is the new path... META Round 3: Main Questlines Save the world, Dragonborn! Save the world, fateless wonder (that is, you know, if you want to)! Reckoning: points for at least trying to rearrange the fantasy standard Round 4: Combat Backpedal, swing wildly, repeat -- also known as the Drunken Bar Brawl Combat System Hey, who got this Action game in my RPG? Reckoning: in the fight over fighting Reckoning scores a Tyson-in-his-prime K.O. Round 5: Crafting Find cool stuff, make cooler stuff Find cool stuff, make cooler stuff Draw: Ken Rolston likes you to find cool stuff and make cooler stuff in his games Round 6: Visuals If Frank Frazetta and Larry Elmore painted a game, it would look like Skyrim The bastard child of Fable and World of Warcraft Skyrim: wasn't Todd McFarlane supposed to be on Reckoning's team? Round 7: Bad Guys A rogues gallery of foes to face, but the dragons are the stars of this show Some especially colorful foes, but lacking in a marquee name, you know, like Dragon Skyrim: Reckoning's big bosses are cool, but Skyrim has more of them, and they're frickin' dragons Round 8: NPC Companions Werewolves, a talking dog, a badass witch that killed her own mom... A Dokkalfar (elf) with a British accent in a leather bikini and a drunk fortune teller Skyrim: wasn't R.A. Salvatore supposed to be on Reckoning's team? Round 9: Memorable Moments Watching your horse kick ass, slaying your first dragon, taking arrows to the knee Juggling your first foe, unleashing fate, facing building-sized bosses Skyrim: when a game sparks meme creation(s), you know you've created something memorable (or awful) Round 10: Replayability Multiple class skills/abilities, races, and infinite quests thanks to NPCs that like to steal from and kill one another No need to police NPCs for infinity, but still offering a ridiculous 200 hours worth of quests Draw: Sure, infinite is a slightly larger figure than 200, but damn, that's a ton of game

We know, we know. GameSpy awarded The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim five out of five stars and named it our 2011 Game of the Year. Conversely, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning earned four stars. So why throw the undersized rookie in the ring with the heavyweight champ? Is it our sadist streak? Partly, yes. But it's also because these two open-world fantasy RPGs have so much in common, a head-to-head matchup is too tantalizing to ignore.To make things a bit more interesting, we'll do this: Skyrim has a two point handicap. We'll compare the two games in 10 different categories, and instantly start Skyrim in the hole. Sound good? Then ring the opening bell for Skyrim versus Reckoning!Skyrim takes it, 5-2, but with three big points that could go either way. Throw in the two point handicap we placed on Bethesda, and TES V: Skyrim wins it in a split decision, 3-2. Not a bad outing by the rookie, Reckoning. We'll see how the franchises compare after 38 Studios and Big Huge Games get a few more RPGs under their belt. For now, though, Ali (Clay) isn't quite ready to topple Liston.