The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)

...criteria are different, obviously, but the main convention is to look at the following aspects:

Longetivity: How long the game lasts.
Playability: How fun the game is to actually play
Graphics: How nice the game looks and how well it takes advantage of the machine it is running on
Sound: How nice the music is and how well the sound effects are implemented.

Obviously, there are more than this usually ...
...for the basis of this review, let's just assume all four aspects above are equal. So without further ado, let's tear this game apart:

Longevity:
In recent times the length of your average game would teeter around the 12-15hour mark, and yet have the cheek to ask for your hard earned 40-50 pounds. In this respect, Oblivion is like your over-generous best friend, on Prozac, at Disneyland and who just won the lottery. The playtime ... more

Every so often there comes along a game that despite how you may have built it up in your head, it still manages to astound you. To put it simply, this game is a masterpiece. And you know, since I'm here, I'll explain why.

But first, when reviewing a game, everyone's criteria are different, obviously, but the main convention is to look at the following aspects:

Longetivity: How long the game lasts.
Playability: How fun the game is to actually play
Graphics: How nice the game looks and how well it takes advantage of the machine it is running on
Sound: How nice the music is and how well the sound effects are implemented.

Obviously, there are more than this usually and some are more important to people than others, but for the basis of this review, let's just assume all four aspects above are equal. So without further ado, let's tear this game apart:

Longevity:
In recent times the length of your average game would teeter around the 12-15hour mark, and yet have the cheek to ask for your hard earned 40-50 pounds. In this respect, Oblivion is like your over-generous best friend, on Prozac, at Disneyland and who just won the lottery. The playtime on this, at the maximum, is 300 hours. 300 hours to do EVERYTHING in the game. Now, while 300 hours on a computer game is the stuff of divorce/break-ups, it goes a long way to explain how simply gigantic the world of Oblivion is.

There's so much to see and do, and I defy you not to be amazed the first time you crawl out of the sewers and catch glimpse of the wonderful world that awaits you. The feeling that this is the beginning of a wonderful and time-consuming adventure is one that I had forgotten in my recent years of computer gaming and growing cynicism.

To illustrate my point of how long this game is, my Xbox 360 tells me I have 80 hours clocked up on this so far. I'm nowhere near the end of the main quest, and I have explored, really, very little of the world, as the "Fast Travel" option between cities or places you have already visited, seems to tempt me all too often. I really shouldn't use it though, as the walk between areas in the game, whilst lengthy, is breathtaking. From rolling fields with grass and flowers lightly swaying in the breeze, to immense mountains and chasms, to which I have lost many an over-trusting horse to. The pain of losing "Sparky: the wonder horse" is still with me.

A moments silence please.

Ok and back, the "guild quests" and mini-quests that you can choose whether or not to undertake, even outweigh the main mission, so its all to easy to go roaming through forests and looting caves based on a conversation you have overheard between one or two of the NPCs (Non Player Characters).

Which brings me to my next point: The sense of believability that this is a real, breathing world is unparalleled. The computer controlled characters have their daily routines, they go to work, meet with friends on certain days, go to restaurants, and sometimes embark on rather "shady" outings. I almost believe the characters are getting on with things when I turn the console off, as if my being in the game is of little consequence to them, that I'm merely a tourist in this beautiful world for the length of time I choose to play. Its hard to believe this really when most other games can't half convince you that the whole world isn't there just for you and that every action the characters take isn't somewhat scripted and in direct relation to whatever you're doing. Oblivion doesn't make you feel "special", but that's exactly what makes it special.

Playability:
The thing that will put many off initially is the huge amount of menu screens, bars, icons and widgets. Its initially extremely overwhelming being confronted with so many options to set up your character, where, for example, "race", "birthstone", "specialisations", "major skills" and "minor skills" are all to be chosen and tinkered with by you, and each has a very different impact on how you will play the game from the get go. There is an option to auto create a character and the game will also offer advice on character creation based on how you've played the game for a while, but after that you're stuck with what you've created. Not that this will limit you forever, as there are always other options in the game to do everything, for example, one race allows water breathing, but later on you can create spells, potions or enchantments that will let you do this. I would not recommend playing this game without the accompanying guidebook you can buy, as it points out some things that you may never see or do or realise in the game. Think of it like a "tour guide" (again, a testament to the games sheer size), as opposed to a game guide and you don't feel quite so much like cheating.

The combat is pretty simple really, hack with swords, shoot with arrows etc, so it's not hard to pick up all these actions and other actions such as jumping, swimming, sneaking etc. The best thing is, the more you do something like swimming or jumping or sneaking, then the more a skill related to this increases. For example, swimming increases your agility, whilst getting hit with large pointy swords increases your armour skill, unless you're in the nip. It will take maybe too long to explain the whole levelling up system but generally, you have "main skills" and "minor skills", the more you use your skills the more you will gain experience in these skills, with increases in "major skills" allowing your character to increase a "level", which in turn gives you more points to attribute to any "major skill" you wish. Sounds complicated, and it is initially, but after a while you'll be creating your own spells, just for purposes of training, or finding sneaky ways to increase skills, such as by waiting for people to go to bed and "sneaking" around them to increase your sneak skills. Very fitting indeed.

Bad guys are plentiful and varied, and in an attempt to stop you from being bored when you have an uber-powerful "level 33 mega-knight of fiery instant death" (my little pet name for my character), all enemies are linked to your current level. What this means is, obviously, the better you get, the better (and quite often, the BIGGER) your enemies get. This is a nice idea, but makes the game quite difficult in places, but you can always adjust the difficulty mid-game, if you're a wuss. Or me.

Graphics:
Anyone who has seen this game in action will know what I'm talking about when i say blah?buahhaha,wha? But for the benefit of the readers who have yet to see the graphics, I will kindly translate: "magnificent", should do it, or how about "gorgeous", or "sexy" or perhaps other such words which really shouldn't be used outside of the bedroom. Yes, my girlfriend hates this game...

Every building, tree, rock or other screen furniture (including actual furniture!) is beautifully rendered and textured, and the amount of incidental items inside buildings, is amazing. Each room has your general everyday clutter such as books, cups, glasses, food, magic spell scrolls, you know, the usual. But everything can be picked up, and stolen (and later sold, if you know where to look, heh). Really makes you believe once again you are somewhere else. Obviously the views of the world when atop a mountain or large building are also breathtaking, with the draw distance going as far as you could possibly want. For the first time in a game, anything you can see (yea even that little speck on the horizon which is actually a huge castle complete with sword wielding skeleton warriors) can be walked to, and entered into.

Sound:
If you have a surround sound 5.1 setup, prepare to be dazzled stupid. The orchestral score is beautiful and the sound effects from everything from birds chirping to the wind blowing, are spot on and very believable. Even if you don't have a surround sound system, its still great! Every line of dialogue is spoken, and whilst it does tend to repeat, it doesn't repeat as often as most games and its fun to see two or three NPCs just walk up to each other and have a full blown conversation as you walk by. Keen listeners can find juicy nuggets of information of the "where to find gold and cool stuff" variety.

Are there any drawbacks to this game? Well, when I first had it, the loading times were stupidly long, between walking from inside a house to outside. However, I found that in some cases the game needs to have its "cache" reset on your Xbox, by holding A button when the game boots up. This cured the problem and the loading times were basically non-existent since this. They really should have explained this in the manual as I had to do some trawling through forums online to find this out! It also can have a few little bugs from time to time, but nothing noteworthy, that I can't actually remember any in particular is testament to this fact. For a game of this scale, even large bugs could be forgiven, but the developers of this game have not rested on their laurels it seems.

I haven't really mentioned the story on this game much as I wanted this review to be more of a review of the "experience" it offers the gamer, which is what sets this game apart from so many others. It is without a doubt the best £40 I have ever spent, and although I play a lot of games on my Xbox 360, this is the one that I always come back to for more, and one that has earned itself a permanent position in my collection, a feat which, for me, is truely astounding as I usually sell games to buy new ones, what with not having money to burn and all.

At the time of writing there are also downloads and new levels and quests available for this game, should you need them, I think I will wait a while before my uber-powerful "level 33 mega-knight of fiery instant death" embarks on any of these new quests, he's busy enough here already.

Thanks for reading guys, and I hope that if you do pick this up, you can have many stories of your experience with this beautiful game to share with me.

Pete (aka "uber-powerful level 33 mega-knight of fiery instant death")

UPDATE 07/02/06: I forgot to note that you can see actual video footage of this game in my "Xbox 360" video review (its near the end so you don't have to watch it all :-p). So you can get an idea of how good this game actually looks whilst playing!

 

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