The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Sony Playstation 3, 2007)

The Good

* Huge, lavishly detailed world offers tremendous amount of action and adventure
* Main mechanics like combat, stealth, and magic are fun and well designed
* Impressive artificial intelligence and hundreds of believable characters
* Outstanding symphonic score, as well as excellent voice acting and sound effects
* Tremendous replay value, plus gorgeous graphics to make it easy on the eyes.

The Bad

* Frequent though fairly brief loading times
* You might run into some technical issues with performance.

This is a rare and remarkable achievement--a huge, open-ended, complex, detailed role-playing game that's fun to play and a pleasure to behold. Oblivion not only delivers everything that earned the Elder Scrolls series the devoted loyalty of a huge following of fans, but also significantly improves on the weaknesses of its 2002 predecessor, Morrowind. Morrowind earned recognition for being one of the best role-playing games in years, but the immersive and long-lasting experience it provided wasn't for everyone. Oblivion is hands-down better, so much so that even those who'd normally have no interest in a role-playing game should find it hard to resist getting swept up in this big, beautiful, meticulously crafted world.


Morrowind was a tough act to follow, but Oblivion isn't just better--it's a lot better.

The Elder Scrolls series is known for its sheer size and depth. These are games that you could lose yourself in, spending hours exploring a fantasy world, traveling for miles, or just looking for minutiae, such as rare plants or hidden treasure. Oblivion lives up to this pedigree, putting you into a massive, cohesive, highly immersive world. You get to create your own character--the possibilities for customization seem limitless--and then explore the world as you will. There's a compelling main quest for you to follow, which takes about 40 hours to finish the first time through, but the majority of the game's content is peripheral to that main quest. You can root out evil in hidden dungeons, join and climb the ranks in a number of different guilds, visit all the different towns and try to solve everybody's problems, compete in a long series of gladiatorial battles to the death, break into someone's home and rob them in their sleep, get caught and face the consequences, contract a disease that leads to vampirism and then try to find a cure, buy a house, steal a horse, invest in your favorite shop, and, if you can believe it, there's much more.

So the breadth of content is as remarkable as ever, but the most important thing is this: The many types of gameplay in Oblivion are well-designed and deeply satisfying, even when taken on their own. That's the main difference between this game and Morrowind. This may be a role-playing game, but you could play it like a pure action game, or like a stealth game, or like an adventure game, and it'd still be at least as good as, if not better than, games that are specialized in these regards.

Oblivion does a great job of quickly introducing you to all these different aspects of play, successfully engaging you rather than overwhelming you. You see the world through your character's eyes, but a behind-the-back perspective is also available. Initially you just pick a name, race, and gender for your character, and the game opens with you stuck in a dungeon cell, being taunted by a fellow inmate.

Overall Rating: An 11/10

Every once in a while, gamers are treated to a game that is so absorbing and addicting, that they find it difficult to pry themselves away from it; Oblivion is definitely one of those games. At its core, Oblivion is sort of an action RPG that combines traditional (sort of) role playing with action oriented gameplay.

As far as an RPG goes, Oblivion is far from standard. When you start a new game you are prompted to make your character. You determine the character’s race (Nord, Breton, etc), and you also get to customize their physical appearance. Each race has different characteristics, for example, Nords have an excellent resistance to frost damage but are vulnerable to fire damage. After this, you play through a moderately short dungeon; I won’t go into the main story though. In the dungeon you choose your character’s sign, and class which essentially determine how your character will grow throughout the game. Upon exiting the dungeon, you are thrust into an overwhelmingly vast world.

At first I had no idea what to do; as a fan of older RPG’s I was expecting to have to go somewhere specific, but the choice was mine. In Oblivion, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. The main story requires you to go from town to town completing tasks that get harder and more involved as the game progresses. The unique thing about Oblivion is that you don’t really have to get involved in the main story. You can explore the huge world (which is REALLY huge), go into dungeons to find treasure, complete tasks that villagers in the towns ask you to do, join the fighters or mages guild and complete tasks for gold, fight in the arena, bet on fighters in the arena… you get the point. There really is a lot to do in this game; I spent around 60+ hours just exploring, earning gold, getting cool weapons, and completing tasks. There is just way too much to talk about in terms of what there is to do so now I’ll talk about how the game plays.

Oblivion was designed to be played in the first person perspective, but you also can switch to third person. The combat is pretty basic; you can perform normal attacks, block opponents’ attacks, use magic, and use power attacks. Using power attacks drains your fatigue, which regenerates overtime; using magic drains your magicka, which also regenerates over time. Overall, the combat is simple, fun, and it works.

I do have to add that I have experienced some technical problems with this game. The first thing that I noticed is that there is a lot of slowdown for apparently no reason. This does not happen that often but it is very annoying when it happens. The other, major problem, is that the game crashes every once in a while. Again, this happens for apparently no reason and is very frustrating, but it rarely happens. I have read many reviews for this game claiming the same thing. Despite this, Oblivion is an excellent game, but I just wanted to inform you of the problems and you should still get this game.

Oblivion is a HUGE game with tons of things to see and do. I would highly recommend that any PS3 owner owns this game.

Pros:
- A huge game
- Tons of things to do
- Non linear
Cons:
- None

On December 15th I purchased The Elder Scrolls IV for $7.01 plus $2.99 shipping for a total of $10. Within a few days, I had it in my mail box. So far, I only have a couple hours of play time in the game but I had played it previously several years ago when it first came out. In my personal opinion, I think the game is revolutionary, and way past its time even compared to now days releases.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released on March 20, 2007 by Bethesda Softworks accompanied by Havok, Speedtree, and Gamebryo. The game takes place in the region of Tamriel, where the gates of Oblivion of happened and demons pour out onto the land. It's your job to find the lost heir to the throne, and unravel the evil plans that threaten to destroy all of Tamriel.

The gameplay and menu layout is similar to that of Fallout 3, but in it's on way, kind of different and, in my opinion, better. As you play through the game, you can create and play as any character you could imagine as you roam through a world with stunning visuals that are years ahead of some modern games. The game holds its value better than most with easily over 100 hours with of play with many missions to execute and territories to explore.

Overall, the game is well worth it especially for what I paid for it. If you enjoy RPG games or enjoy games like Fallout 3, you'll definitely be able to appreciate this game.

I may be awful at these sorts of games, but I can still attest to the fantastic achievement this game represents. There are just so many side quests and the main quest is substantial enough to make you feel that you absolutely got your money's worth. There's no use to grinding and wasting time in this game because enemies level as you do, so that's not a time wasting mechanic you will be forced to exploit. The world is quite big and, fortunately, it is not littered with pointless enemies that make traveling a chore. The dungeons require varied strategies and the weapons look quite good. The only flaws I can find with this game are its incredibly clunky menu system and its occasional annoying hills. The menu forces you to scroll down every single item before getting to the one you want. Instead of going straight to soul gems, for example, you need to scroll through all of your documents and keys, which can be quite a list later on in the game. As for the hills, there are occasions where you have to get to the top of a mountain which only has a certain path you can take (which you can't see) on a really really steep hill, which is more of a cruel joke than a true game. However, these are really minor and shouldn't discourage you from this game.

Oblivion is a huge game that will keep you busy for years. There are a hundred quests, homes to decorate, spells to create, clubs to join and friends to make.
But somehow they all look the same after a while. The cities are amazing in that you can talk to every person and open every door- but that means there are only
a few dozen homes in every city.

The world doesn't have the feel of a big place, just a series of small ones that are all the same. There are perhaps ten voice actors and maybe the same number of face models, so everyone starts to look and sound alike after the first towns.

First-person fighting is clunky and a bit motion-sickening, but stepping back the camera didn't help much, as it was then impossible to see the foes. Bravo for shortcut buttons for spells.

No impressive graphics or striking personalities in the Final Fantasy style, but this game is a great time-filler. I recommend the guidebook if you want to get clues on the huge stack of quests.