- Reviewed on: Xbox 360
- Also available for: Windows PC
- The Good: Huge open world to explore. Combat system is a lot more interesting. Breathtaking visuals. So much stuff to do you'll be playing this game for months.
- The Bad: Will consume your life.
- The Verdict: It's the best Xbox 360 game out there, bar none. It's also one hell of an RPG.
REVIEW:
I am no video game addict. I can meet my personal and professional obligations no matter how much I like a game. But let me tell you, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of the most painful games to walk away from that I have ever played.
I find myself planning my day around it.
"Ok, after work, I have to do laundry. But I can play while things are in the dryer…"
On the subway I spend time thinking of new uses for the spells and magic items I found, or planning a trip to a distant part of the province of Cyrodiil. Talking to my colleagues, I see that I am not the only one so obsessed. I check my Xbox Live friends list, and most of them are busy playing Oblivion.
So what's this game that's got us so hooked? It all starts after you create your character, and you awaken in a prison cell. Veterans of the Elder Scrolls franchise know how this series loves to throw you in jail. Unexpectedly, you receive a visit from the Emperor himself (voice of the ever-reliable Patrick Stewart). He claims that dark times are coming, that you have a destiny to fulfill, and that he's not going to live through the day. He's very right.
After escaping the first dungeon, the rest is up to you. That's the beauty of this series. You get a huge province to explore called Cyrodiil. It's got mountains, lakes, rivers, forests, and you can literally walk from one end to the other. The game doesn't go to a load screen unless you enter a dungeon or a town (and even then, the load times are pretty respectable).
It's amazing watching the terrain shift as you go from mountains to fields, or forests to ruins … the transition is so smooth you probably won't notice. And the graphics are absolutely beautiful. The world is alive with detail, such as plants, birds, music and ambience, realistic lighting streaming through trees - sometimes I find myself looking at some ruins in the distance from a hilltop and I want to applaud. Then a troll will walk up behind me and I will have to carve him a new one, but hey.
You can pursue the main story quest, or get caught up in a seemingly infinite variety of side quests. No matter what kind of thing you like to do, Oblivion offers it. You want to be an evil murdering assassin? A noble vampire slayer? How about actually playing as a vampire? Or would you rather be an expert thief? A buff arena fighter? Want to solve a mystery? You can do it.
There are guilds and organizations galore to join, which will grant you special missions. Even just walking from one place to another will reveal some hidden hole in the ground, or a citizen will rush up to you and beg you for assistance. All of it is optional, so you can pick and choose what you'd like to do. Good thing the game has a solid quest log that shows you what you've got outstanding, and allows you to appoint any quest as your "active" quest, and then put up any important markers on the map.
The freedom is almost absolute, and the rewards are very cool. For example, I completed one seemingly unremarkable fishing side quest, and walked away with a magic item that let me breathe underwater indefinitely.
This may sound a lot like the previous game, Morrowind, and it's true they are very similar. However, Oblivion has a huge improvement in the combat system. In Morrowind, you sort of vaguely waved a weapon at your foes and the game calculated some numbers until something died. In Oblivion, things are much more action-oriented. You can block and try different kinds of strikes, or jump around a lot and evade attacks. Your stats obviously still play a huge roll, but the twitch aspects make combat a lot more involving. Personally, I like going into sneak mode to deliver a shot with six times the damage before my chump enemy knows what's going on.
Oblivion strikes a pretty good balance between twitch and statistical play. There's a lockpicking minigame that will allow to use your real world reflexes to open a lock, or you can simply hit X and do a quick lockpicking skill check. It's a lot better than simply trying the lock over and over until you get it. But perhaps the best part of Oblivion's RPG system is that everything you do makes progress, even failure. When you fail to pick a lock, you gain some lockpicking experience, so it's not a total loss. During combat if you don't time a block right and get hit by a monster, then your armour score will increase. It's a great system.
I can't think of much I don't like about Oblivion. A game this size isn't free of bugs, and I've encountered a few minor ones, such as floating rock or a disappearing bad guy, but nothing that totally ruined the game for me. For a game with this much content, the quality control is pretty impressive.
If Oblivion has a major fault, it's how astounding compelling it is. The game has so many secrets and things to do that I don't know where to look first. Once, after noticing how little of the main quest I had done, I resolved to get back on track. On the way to that main quest objective, I encountered and completed three more side quests that happened to get in the way. I just had to, and that kept me up until three in the morning. The game is costing me a lot of sleep.
I think the best way to express how good Oblivion is, is through anecdotes. My friends and I are full of them. Every time we get together, we have something new to share. Since you can create a variety of different characters with different strengths, and we all have different personalities, we all have different gameplay experiences. For example, I was bragging about the underwater breathing thing, because no one else in my circle has found that one yet. One player told me that his friend's current objective is to get one of every type of meat that you can find in the game. Why? Just 'cause. Everyone has a story about something cool they did, and quite often other players were totally unaware that you could do something like that. Says it all really.
Oblivion is a game you will not play through in a day. If you want to really get to know it, it is not an exaggeration to say you'll be playing for months. Or, you can focus on the main quest and be done in a relatively short time. The game provides a lot for your money.
I waited a long time for Oblivion, and I must confess to getting caught up in the hype. Am I at all disappointed with the finished product? Not in the least. I should go on and review other games now, but it's going to be hard to walk away from Oblivion.
