About
“Like Skyrim With Guns” is an expression used within the video game community to mock overly enthusiastic reviews of games.
Origin
In October of 2008, PC Gamer Sweden published their review of Fallout 3, in which they compared the game to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with guns. Neoseeker covered the story.
On November 25th, 2012, the gaming YouTube channel Machinima published their review of UbiSoft’s Far Cry 3 , in which they compared the game to " Skyrim with guns".
Spread
When Ubisoft released the game, they used the quote from Machinima in their advertisements for the game.
Almost immediately, the quote became mocked by the gaming community. The day the advertising campaign began, Inside Gaming Daily published an article musing upon the choice of words. On November 30th, Machinima’s Adam Kovic posted a video defending his “Skyrim with guns” quote (shown below).
On December 6th, Redditor ronasd4 submitted a promotional image for the 2008 roleplaying game Fallout 3 titled “This is the original ‘Skyrim With Guns’” to the /r/gaming[1] subreddit (shown below, left). On December 12th, 2012, redditor “thedz” submitted the post “Wow, Far Cry 3 really IS Skyrim With Guns” to the r/gaming[2] subreddit (shown below, right).
Several different variations of the phrase have been used to describe other games, in a mocking fashion of the original review. (HELPNEEDED)