The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition

6 Responses to “ The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition ”

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition | XBox … | GLITCH IT
   12/29/2009 at 4:58 pm

   [...] the original: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition | XBox … Category: xbox 360 games | Tags: another-life, another-world, first-person, gadgets, [...]
2. A. Dent "Aragorn"
   12/29/2009 at 5:04 pm

   Oblivion is EXACTLY how I imagined an RPG should be like back in the 80′s, while playing Ultimas on Commodore 64s and Atari STs.

   Oblivion has weather. While there is no wind other than a constant, gentle breeze, you do get rain/thunderstorms, fog, snow (no blizzards though, because there’s not much wind). You don’t slip and fall on ice but the sound of your steps is different whether you walk on the road, on grass, on snow or on ice.

   The world of Cyrodill is not exactly continent-size, maybe some 20-30 miles in any direction from downtown Imperial City but… what a world this is. Cities, settlements, camps, estates, roadside inns, ruins, caves, dungeons, mines, shrines. The landscape is made up of plains, hard-to-climb mountains, rivers, swamps, waterfalls, seas. You can travel on foot or you can ride a horse. You can fight your way into fame and fortune while doing good or you can sneak into other people’s houses or pickpocket the unsuspecting. The guards will chase you and throw you in jail if you do illegal things but, if they like you enough, maybe they will look the other way sometimes. Powerful gods or humble people will ask you do ‘little things’ for them and, if you can make them happy, they will reward you according to their abilities. You can raise to the top of your profession, as a fighter, as a mage, as a thief or as an assassin or you can assemble your own little gang of dreamy crusaders so that you can fight evil and recover the relics of a legendary knight. Or you can do them all and become all, in sequence or make progress in all paths more or less simultaneously while moonlighting as a gladiator as well and, if still bored, how about helping a lady take care of the rats in her basement (that’s NOT what you think) or some drunk guy at the inn get rid of the Trolls that took over his daddy’s country estate? Oh and, I forgot, there’s a world to save or… wait… there’s TWO worlds, thanks to the Shivering Isles extension.

   This game is so huge, I can’t see how you could really ‘finish’ it. After more than 2 months of almost daily playing, I am maybe 75-80% into the main quest, half a way through the Knights of the Nine, only started the Shivering Isles adventures. I did become the realm’s Chief Mage (and the titles earns me no respect from the scholar mages) and the grand master at the Fighters league, got myself 350,000 gold coins in my pocket, 2 comfortable houses and 2 nice offices, completed close to 100 quests, slaughtered 2000 creatures and hundreds of humans, murdered 4 or 5 and all but one by mistake (friendly fire), didn’t even come close to the Thieves guild and, foolishly, made it impossible for me to ever join the Dark Brotherhood (these are the assassins). Also, I’ve never been a vampire and didn’t yet start my career as a professional gladiator. I did massacre the peaceful dwellers of a small village but I did that under the influence of some drugs that made them look to me like bloody Orcs – that was the price to pay for infiltrating and destroying the source of that scourge. Oh, and while briefly in the land of Dementia – or was it Mania? – I did, willingly, push buttons that caused a few careless adventurers to go insane and I watched as they were becoming so. I humiliated a lovely princess – or was it a duchess? – and I killed so many fearsome monsters, I lost count myself but the game does keep a count so it’s easy to know. In fact, the game keeps track of so many things… I could easily find out how many jokes I told, how many potions I made, how many horses I’ve stolen (one), how many hours I slept or how many books I read.

   Well…? What do you think?

   On the ‘not so good’ side, the game does slow down when you are fighting 4-5 monsters at the same time or when there are other things that keep the PS3 busy while you are fighting the baddies – like a fire burning. Loading/saving times are a bit too long but, while this is happening, you do get to read some randomly selected good advice on the screen.

   The other thing that saddens me is that I don’t believe the good people at Bethesda are working on the next chapter yet. I do hope that, as soon as they are done with Fallout-3, they are going to get busy with another adventure in Cyrodill or thereabouts.

   My other problem is that I am now fighting with my kids over time on the PS3. We have a bunch of other games but, since Oblivion came into our house, I would say that 95%+ of our PS3 time was on Oblivion.
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. D. ALBA
   12/29/2009 at 5:11 pm

   For anyone who is an an RPG fan and has a Play Station 3, look no further. In my opinion it is easily one of the Best, if not THE best game for the PS3 thus far.

   The GOTY Edition is basically the Oblivion main game with Oblivion’s 2 largest Expansion packs bundled in with it, “The Knights of the Nine” and the “Shivering Isles Expansion” pack.

   The “leveled system” isn’t perfect, as it is way too easy to level up an underpowered character while the in-game mobs/adversaries automatically get stronger so there is no going back to the newbie sewer dungeon as the rats and easy goblins have leveled up to minotaurs and goblin lords.

   Thankfully, for casual gamers you can pretty much follow and beat the main quest at level 1 and for those who have underpowered characters, you can adjust the difficulty slider to an easier level.

   For the more hardcore RPG gamers, you can easily get much more involved and with careful balancing and leveling of stats and skills you can build a character that is more than a match for the mobs on the default “medium” level and perhaps even hold your own at the “hardest” level on the difficulty slider. gamefaqs.com has some really good guides that can help you along with all that.

   Anyway, the bottom line is that if you have a PS3 and you are into RPGs this game is definitley recommended.
   Rating: 5 / 5
4. Christopher J. Benz "CJB"
   12/29/2009 at 6:00 pm

   RPG’s will no doubt soar to new heights in the future but right now there is none better than Bethesda’s amazing ‘Oblivion’.

   There are so many standout features to this game but at the top of my list are visuals, scope, atmosphere, playability and storytelling.

   If you are a reader of epic fantasy novels or ever played tabletop RPG’s in your youth, then this could very well be what you saw in your mind’s eye. Countless dank, darkly lit tunnels, caves, forts and castles, menacing enemies. The spell casting system has a visceral physicality that makes it very satisfying throughout. The fighting system is clever and versatile – a more powerful combat experience than say World of Warcraft. Combat actually suits the console interface and the remainder of the game is surprisingly easy to play on a console given the amount of story and character interaction.

   I could write a book length review of this game because the game world is absolutely massive even before the expansions (included in this version) come into play. The imaginative plotting in this game puts it above many other peers – I’ve played 40 game days and, amongst many other adventures, I’ve executed a quest for half a day inside a painter’s painting, I’ve followed a mad man through his paranoid belief that a number of NPC’s are out to kill him and so on and so on. The beauty of the writing is the moral dilemmas that are sometimes posed by a quest’s conclusion. You might discover that you rescued an item for a character who does not rightfully own it or you are unsure which of two characters to support.

   I’ve played, I estimate 40 or so hours of ‘Oblivion’ and I suspect I’ve not tapped 5% of the game world. It’s always engaging and often exciting attempting to overcome the myriad of clever quests or daunting enemies put in your way in this game world.

   Last and not least, this game looks simply magnificent, it’s an adult fantasy world, more convincing than the partial manga style of many of the MMORGs. It certainly has the scope and grandeur that rivals any of them.

   If you are partial to Tolkien style RPG entertainment – you really must experience ‘Oblivion’.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. Aardy
   12/29/2009 at 8:11 pm

   OK, I’ve been ruined so badly that all other games seem less appealing now. Guess I’ll have to wait for Elder Scrolls V now

   This is the best game I’ve ever played, period.

   It was hard to stop. The flexiblity of gameplay it provides is phenomenal. Great graphics, non-repetitive actions, non-linear flow, awesome soundtrack, numerous challenges…I can keep going. I spent 5 months playing this game at least 2-3 days out of a week, lasting about 2 hours at least. It is so vast, engaging and challenging enough to keep it interesting. No wonder it’s the game of the year.
   Rating: 5 / 5
6. Pullings
   12/29/2009 at 10:59 pm

   This really is an exceptional game. The world rendering is magnificent and the character and weapons graphics models are very good. The physics engine in the game is really impressive. Shoot an arrow into a dead rat and it recoils, drop your sword on a rocky slope and watch it slide into the water below. You’re ability to interact with the environment is nicely done. Most items that you can take into your inventory can also be manually manipulated, moved from place to place, or tossed across the room. They land with a satisfying clatter. That sort of touch really enhances the immersive experience.

   Combat is basically shoot or chop at the bad guy until he’s down. You don’t know much damage you’ve done or how much more you have to do before that happens. Its fast and furious with a lot of movement at times. Battles can last a long time, however, especially outdoors where you can run away for a bit, regenerate, and then go back at it. Ranged battles can also last awhile since the game mechanics allows you to dodge missiles of both conventional and magical variety and use cover effectively.

   Gameplay can be pleasantly non-linear. There is the save-the-world main quest line which I have yet to complete. The game, however, doesn’t lock you into it once it starts. Instead, you may deviate your activities to other shorter quest lines or dive into the many, many “dungeon-environments” that dot the landscape. The latter are a good way to get money and experience. Since there is noone else in the world, the dungeons will remain clear for a much longer period of time, but they will repopulate over time.

   The quests themselves were generally more compelling than in other games in this genre. Many of them involved recovering a lost or stolen item, finding a missing person, researching an unusual occurence, exploring a new area, etc. Almost none of them were of the kill or gather X of Y variety. Occasionally, they even present the player with a moral choice, for example, return to the lost item to its rightful owner or return it to your employer. Each choice has a different consequence.

   The dialogue from the NPCs was generally very much better than average. The voice acting talent also had quite high production values. There could have been more of them, however, as it seemed that most of the people you met had a voice chosen from one of eight. I preferred the actors with the English accents as an American accent in a game of this sort is a bit like a a Coke machine in Westminster Abbey. That’s just my own personal prejudice, however.

   I have a few minor quibbles however. There are far too few hot key slots. You will end up with a huge number of spells and items but only eight hot key slots in which to put them. This leads to the somewhat goofy practice of stopping in the midst of a pitched battle to down a potion, switch a spell, or change out some armor. This definitely takes away from the realism of the situation. Secondly, the manual is a bit thin for a game as rich as this one. More details of the game mechanics would be helpful. For example, we are told that wearing thicker varieties of armor dimishes spell effects, but we are not told by how much. Also there are many different potenial classes in the game, but the manual does not describe anything about them. This information appears at character-create, you make a choice, and that point it disappears again. Finally, it would nice if the game saved your state when you quit. A number of times I have returned to the game to find that I’m moved backwards in time a bit, and the quest I thought was finished, isn’t
   Rating: 4 / 5