The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC DVD)

 

 

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I am what might be described as a more 'mature' gamer. I'm also female. Now, I don't want to be accused of being ageist or sexist BUT I wanted to write a review specifically for the older person who might pass over this game because they think that it's all about fighting, war, death, destruction etc.

Well, not the way I play it, it isn't...

This is a brilliant, immersive game that has kept me happily engrossed for eighteen months - and I haven't finished it yet! (Well I never said I was a 'hardened' gamer...!!)
The graphics are absolutely brilliant if you have a PC with a good graphics card: if you have a slower PC, then you'll need to tweak with the in-game settings to ensure it doesn't stutter. Even then, playing with the graphics at its lowest level, the graphics are good.

I recommend you turn off everything that runs in the background of your computer before you start the game (you can do this by pressing CTRL/ALT/DELETE and bringing up Task Manager). Also unplug your printer and turn off your screen saver (this is one greedy game!!)

During the first few minutes of the game (or the first few hours, depending on your ability. Or the first few days, in my case...), you go through a kind of tutorial. This takes you out of prison and through a dungeon full of rats and nasties to be killed - finding out along the way how to use various weapons and spells. But - don't let this put you off. Because once you get out of the dungeon you enter the Province of Cyrodiil - a kind of medieval land where magic is common and the gun hasn't been invented, so you must use swords or fists if you want to fight - and thereafter you can wander around and do just as you please. You also design your character: goody or baddy, male or female, human or non-human - the choices are many. You also choose your skills and attributes, and you can spend as long as you like fine-tweaking your characters physical appearance.

By making your way to different towns, you can pick up various quests (missions) along the way. Some of these are simple, some of them are difficult, most of them are good fun - and most earn you money or goodies if you complete them. You might be asked to find out who stole a painting, or re-unite a couple of estranged brothers, or help clear a farm of horrible trolls... There is some thwacking and killing along the way, but mostly of scamps or trolls or wolves, so it's not too gruesome.

(You can play a wholly different game of course - you can be a murderous warrior if you like...)

Overall, this is a really, really great game and can be anything you want it to be. You can become an expert in magic and cast spells, or you can become a thief and an expert at sneaking around. You can be Mr Good Guy or Girl and go around helping everyone so they all like you, and spend your money on new clothes and houses, furnishings and even your own horse. Yes - you can ride around on a horse if you like - cantering through the woods stopping to collect herbs and flowers along the way, before standing by the water's edge to have a glass of wine and a bite of bread... no finer way to spend your leisure hours.....

There are lots of cheats on the Internet as well, so you can have endless health and endless money, for example, and can play a very easy game if you want!

I have now bought myself a Playstation 3 to play Oblivion, and I actually think that the visual aspect of the game was better on the PC (although I'm told this will not be the case once I've got an HD TV). But the game is awesome everywhere - and I just wanted to write a review for people who might pass this game by, thinking that it was merely another violent war game. Well, it CAN be, but it doesn't have to be.

Try it and you'll be enthralled!

Firstly, I must say what a fantastic game Oblivion is, set in a huge and graphically beautiful world; there's so much to see and do, this game has kept me totally engrossed for months. For someone who's new to this type of game, starting off was quite daunting, there's a huge amount of things to consider when setting up your character before you actually start playing the game. Once you do get started though, you will see the time spent deliberating over the plethora of options was well worth it.

I'm not normally a fan of RPG games, but what attracted me to Oblivion was the thing that makes it different from a standard RPG game, the ability to play in First Person view and engage in real time combat. Take on your foes with bow and arrow, charge in with shield and sword, or throw around some magic spells, there's great variety to the combat and more than one way to tackle every situation.

The game world is huge, so walking from place to place as you go about your business can be very time consuming. When you first start the game, walking everywhere is great and in fact the best thing to do, as you will discover new places and meet new people along the way and building up your characters various skills as you go. However, many hours in to the game, the prospect of having to journey to a town at the far side of the map, walking along the same old routes, getting attacked by the same bandits and wild animals can be a bit wearing. This is where one of the games best features kicks in, there's an option to 'Fast Travel' to any location you've previously visited, just pop up the world map, click on the location, watch the load screen for 2 seconds and you're there. I found this feature to be most useful, if you get a bit jaded with all the walking about, bring on the Fast Travel, if you've got time on you're hands and fancy a stroll through the beautifully crafted countryside, grab your walking boots!

Finally, a word on performance. First thing to say here is this game has got a whole bunch of bugs, some rather nasty ones too, which cause frequent crashing. Fear not however, there is a patch you can download from the official website that fixes these bugs, so make sure you get it before you start to play. Secondly, you may be wondering if your PC can run this game OK, well I can't tell you that, but what I can say is that I set all graphics options to max and the game runs perfectly smoothly. My PC spec is: Processor: P4 3.4GHz HT, RAM: 2GB DDR PC3200, GPU: Gainward nvidia 7800GS 512MB RAM (AGP). Hopefully you'll be able to compare your PC to this and at least have a rough idea of how well it may perform.

I was very excited when this game was announced. As a big fan of its predecessor, Morrowind, I greatly anticipated Oblivions release and I feel that I was not disappointed. The graphics are incredible, even on my three-year-old computer, (note to others - If you experience jerky graphics just turn of the grass, makes a big difference). The design is amazing, the towns and cities are beautifully textured and each has its own personality, just like places in the real world and forests are highly realistic, the characters are also highly lifelike, especially the lip-sync with the dialogue, and again the textures are excellent, hair shines, faces have wrinkles, facial expressions mirror a characters emotions etc.

The gameplay is very good, the combat system is better than Morrowind, with the ability to block and perform complex attacks which takes practice but that just adds to the realism. Other skills like lockpicking are also much more involving for the player and the `sneak' function is far more useful than in the previous game.

Missions and quest are varied, from the usual hack and slash to stealth to detective work, and the quest system is more versatile than in morrowind.

However:

I said it's nearly perfect, I do have some reservations.

The levelling system is dreadful, as other reviewers have noted, when you start out you are often attacked by rats and bandits, which are difficult to kill with the simple weaponry you start with, you would assume that once you level up it would be easier but no, when you reach a high level the rats disappear and are replaced with deadly tough minotaurs and the bandits suddenly have better weapons and armour than you do, in fact it is often a good idea to put off levelling up until you've completed certain quests as it often negates the usablity of the combat system and you resort to clicking the mouse as fast as you can and hope for the best!

The spoken (audible) dialogue is great but it seems to have placed limitations on how many topics you can discuss with other characters, in morrowind any character you spoke with could have upwards of 15-20 topics to ask about, in oblivion most characters have 3 at the most, and most of them just say the same old thing, and there is no challenge to getting info out of them.

Fewer factions. In morrowind you could join over 15 different factions each with its own type of quests and ranks, in oblivion there are half that number, which means fewer missions and therefore less gameplay time, now I may be wrong about the number of quests but it seems to me that it took a lot longer for me to complete morrowind than it has for me to reach the final part of oblivion.

Lastly, oblivion seems to have been designed for people who are new to RPG's, this is good for newcomers, but for anyone used to this type of game it does seem a bit easy, the quests are very linear, you don't have to work anything out yourself, the map is too good, with waypoints marked clearly and the option to quick travel to them takes all the fun out of exploring, in fact using quick travel exclusively would mean not exploring 90% of the map!

To conclude - overall a very, very good game with some bad points, but these shortcomings can be overcome as the modding community has provided an large number of modifications that you can download, andthat can make the game a whole lot better

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5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Game
Overall, this is one of the best games I have ever played.....and certainly contains some of the most epic roleplay and combat scenes of any game. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Karma

5.0 out of 5 stars Mods make it immortal
I've probably had this game approaching 5 years now and still play it for one simple reason. It has the best modding community there is. Read more

Published 4 months ago by D. Condliffe

4.0 out of 5 stars Cleptomaniacs Anonymous
What can i say that hasn't been said before? The storyline is immersive and makes you actually care about the NPC's (no mean feat! Read more

Published 4 months ago by Timmy

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
very good game!

This game has kept me entertained since i got it and will untill i get Skyrim (and probably after that as well)! Read more

Published 4 months ago by egglebe

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Game
i found a large ammount of quests to be very dull, just fetch or go somewhere and kill a bunch of skeletons or mages or beasts. Read more

Published 6 months ago by woolerland

5.0 out of 5 stars Oblivion
Firstly, my experience with the seller was fine. The item was despatched as promised, received in the condition listed and in a fairly timely manner. Read more

Published 6 months ago by NotLocke

3.0 out of 5 stars High potential ruined by poor game mechanics.
This game has a lot going for it. It looks really good, the world is huge and expansive, there is a lot of freedom to roam without feeling detached from the main quest and combat... Read more

Published 7 months ago by Tommy Nightmare

5.0 out of 5 stars ...best game. on par with the more modern version they released (fallout: NV)
this game is amazing. i would put it on par with
fallout new vegas. cant wait until skyrim comes out. it should be better by miles (if not then bethesda... tutut)

Published 8 months ago by Rickywonder

5.0 out of 5 stars The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Truely a huge, immersive game. I enjoyed this game immensely. The huge areas and many different enemies and npcs in the game are wonderful. Read more

Published 10 months ago by JS91

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing RPG and underrated
This game has had many mixed views from buyers, either loving the entire thing or getting bored within the first 10 minutes. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Geeohnny

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