Review for Oblivion

As I said, I'd post some kind of review about Oblivion since it did take up so much of my life the last month and a half. This game was also being played on the 360, as well so some things I say may not apply to the PC version since there are so many variables with a PC.

*Warning: May contain some spoilers*
To be honest, I was getting goosebumps when Emperor Uriel Septim first appeared on-screen and began his monologue. Right after the fairly brief monologue, the character generator comes up and after careful consideration I went with a Khajiit as my race. It's basically a human-like pussycat in lamens. I figured my core character would be sneaky and dandy with a blade. My journey begins inside of a jail cell awaiting my fate when none other than Uriel Septim himself comes to me and says I'm the one he's been seeing in his dreams. He assures the guards that I'm someone to be trusted and eventually make my way out of this dungeon, with or without Septim.

After 45 minutes through this dreadful place, I finally make it to the end. I finally am able to step outside into this beautiful and lush environment that is what makes a lot of what Oblivion is. Do I have to immediately go to the next mission in order from what I have in my logbook? Nope, in fact I do the complete opposite and save it for dead last. I travel off to the different cities seeing what they all have to offer. I join some of the guilds that are available, I help out some people who run up to me asking for help, I run into some trouble with the law, and just diong what I damn well please.

I'm going to cut my little review here short and just go list some things I found to be good and bad about the game.

The Good...

• The game is one of the most open ended games I've played next to the GTA games.


• The graphics and environments are very believeable and realistic looking... imagine something from Lord of the Rings.


• Full speech for everything that someone has to say and not to mention, the lip-syncing is really well done too.


• Tons and tons of things to do from buying a house and decorating it like your Christopher Lowell or some shit to becoming some evil sorcerer and destroying the population of an entire city.


• The map is absolutely gigantic. Assuming you don't use the quick travel option all the time and actually feel like "role-playing" since that's what this game is... a "role-playing" game then this game would take you an eternity to finish.


• Though there are a ton of missions to do, there aren't many that seem to be too repetitive from the others. They each have their own little objective with different circumstances, people, enemies, location, etc.


• Although a little too short if played by itself, the main story is quite epic and the end makes you feel very accomplished with your deeds.


• The entire game is done fromt he first-person. Just like something out of Half-Life, there are no pre-rendered CG movies that tell the story and take you out of the game. Everything is done as you're moving around and controlling your character.


• Definitely plenty of replay value.

The Bad...

• Leveling up in this game means absolutely jack shit when everything else around you stays at your level. So yes, as I experienced, leveling up in this game does more harm than good. It makes the enemies rediculously more difficult than if you were to stay at level 1. This definitely doesn't make it worth your while when you make it to level 35 like I did and then start to do the main story. There's also other things that having a higher level at really does nothing like if you're good at lockpicking, your Security skill doesn't really mean shit.


• Lots and lots and lots and lots of loading. The game somewhat takes advantage of the the 360's harddrive by using it to cache certain things, but my god I was starting to become rather irritated with it near the end of the game.


• The "Loading Area..." thing makes things laggy at times and can take away from some of the immersion in the game.


• As high as of a level as I got, you start to see the same kinds of enemies over and over again and it just ruined all my fun.


• Nearly all the Gates of Oblivion were the same thing. I killed most of the enemies in the first few gates, but after those first few, I literally ran through killing maybe one or two who stood in my way and reached the Sigil stone at the end to close the gate.


• Recycled voices used throughout the game. It's weird listening to someone who ordered you around to kill people for about 20 hours of the game and then hearing the same voice coming from some beggar asking you to spare some change.


• Scrolling through the inventory with as much stuff as I had was a real hassle and made me cry... not really, but god damn I had too many potions and magic scrolls.


• Guards can fucking hear everything... you'd try killing someone in their house and they'd make one little yell and the guard would be there within 10 seconds.


• The fact that other merchants know whether you have stolen something or not. This basically forces you to join the Thieves Guild if you plan on selling any of your stolen goods.


• The diagonals on the D-Pad sometimes made it hard to pick exactly the right thing without having to press it a couple times.


• Music was good, but played the same damn song over and over.


• Also, combat music would engage the second you came within sight of an enemy. Even if the enemy wasn't in range to attack you yet or you already rode off into the sunset, leaving them in the dust... it sometimes just forced me to stay far away from an enemy so I wouldn't always have to hear the damn combat music. Just like Star Wars Galaxies, for everyone who's played that catastrophe of a game.

The Ugly

• The second game made by 2K games that I've experienced bad locking up issues with on the 360. Maybe it doesn't do this much, if at all, on computers, but I can assure you it did more than enough on my system. At one point, the locking up issue became such a problem that there was a certain mission I couldn't pass because everytime I would cast this spell I was given to cast on multiple people, the 360 would lock up immediately. It was the Sanguine Shrine mission for all of you reading at home.

Now I may have left out some things that were good, bad, or ugly about the game, but these are all that I could think of at the time. The game overall is very good and highly recommended to anyone who remotely enjoys playing RPGs... or hell, even FPS-shooters. It gets a lot of what it does right, that's for sure, but there are some bugs here and there in the game from making it a flawless game. Not even "funny" bugs like Halo may have, but just things that usually annoy you and interfere with gameplay and that's mostly what makes this game lower than what it would have been had these not been a big deal.

I give this game an 8.8 out of 10.