Oblivion Reviews

[Professor S]

So far Oblivion is averaging a staggering 95.5% at gamerankings.com. but the highlight has to be the gamespot.com review.

9.6

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/theelderscrollsivoblivion/review.html?sid=6146657

Seeing as this is Gamespot reviewing the game, that is an incredible score, and by far the highest I've personally seen on that site.

Man, I need to get this game.

[Jonbo298]

I'm not a huge RPG person but Oblivion is doing well for me so far. It defaulted my graphics to medium with 640x480 resolution (9800 Pro, Athlon XP running at 3200+, 2 gigs of ram) so I bumped it to 1024x768 and runs perfectly fine. Might tweak a few other graphics to bump it up a small notch.

But I'm having moderate fun with it. As said, never been a big/deep RPG person. Doubt I will be with this game but I'll play through to "beat" it.

[Fox 6]

I'm not a huge RPG person but Oblivion is doing well for me so far. It defaulted my graphics to medium with 640x480 resolution (9800 Pro, Athlon XP running at 3200+, 2 gigs of ram) so I bumped it to 1024x768 and runs perfectly fine. Might tweak a few other graphics to bump it up a small notch.

But I'm having moderate fun with it. As said, never been a big/deep RPG person. Doubt I will be with this game but I'll play through to "beat" it.
But yet you play city of villans/heros. Interesting. Im curious what makes those games more appealing. The online multi-person factor?

thnx.

[Jonbo298]

CoV/CoH is a more...simpler MMORPG I guess is how you would say it. I tried WoW, EQ2, other various MMO betas but none appeal to me.

Just CoV/CoH is simpler but not too simple that I stop playing

[Professor S]

The COH/COV games are also much more combat based and they don't delve into game element fabrication like Oblivion or traditional MMORPGs. This makes them more accessible to more gamers.

While this makes for a much more manic, fast twitch game, it really takes away from the depth for me, which is why I love RPGs.

[Canyarion]

Jonbo, you don't just "beat" an Elder Scrolls game. They take days of play time...... I think I played 120 hours of Morrowind before I beat it. ;)

[Jonbo298]

If you go back and look, I did quote beat for a reason

[KillerGremlin]

1024x768, it autodetected me for "high settings."

Looks like I won't be too disapointed that I don't have a 360, unless I had a hi-def TV to compliment it.

It runs bueno. No joke. I'm cruising in game and it's fantabulous. The only bump so far is that the videos don't want to load and they are running choppy.....I'm thinking it's a frame video card problem, or an audio/video issue with my DVD rom drive. Giggity gay, a small small price to pay considering the gameplay hasn't had a hitch yet.

[Happydude]

what are your system specs?

[bobcat]

sigh, if I didn't have this home loan, I could buy an Xbox 360

[KillerGremlin]

what are your system specs?

Nvidia 6800 128mb, AGP
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (I really should overclock the thing)
1 Gig of ram

Once you get outside it tends to chop up here and there, so no HDR for me. Right now I'm envious of all 360 owners just because HDR improves the game by leaps and bounds, but I'll be getting a laptop for college, and hopefully it'll come stocked with a 7800gtx or ATI's newest card. (right now ATI is pumping slightly more powerful cards, SLI is where Nvidia is rocking socks)

There's a lot of pop up in the foilage, kind of like Far Cry has, and things don't look as pretty in the distance as I suspect they could on a killer system. I want to see this game run on a system with quad-sli. The nice thing is there's so much to do this game will probably have enough replayability to last people through a hardware upgrade. It's like solitare squared.

[KillerGremlin]

It's very hard to do this to Oblivion, but, I must be honest, this game isn't as much fun as Daggerfall or Morrowind duely based on a couple or three/four/five things.

First of all let me say for the most part if you have a mid/high end system the graphics are superb. As we well know though graphics alone do not make a great or fun game.

The initial parts are fun and quite challenging and to keep it mysterious for anyone still thinking about purchasing this I'm not going to go through them. I'm going to focus on what has made this game not fun for me and totally different from any other single player rpg I've ever played.

1) The PC UI is horrible totally horrible. It truely shows this game was made for the XBOX and ported over to the PC with XBOX controls, you have to go through several functions to get to the page of the game you want like inventory or journal etc. etc. There's no ability to "set" hotkeys to these function like you normally would with a PC where "I" = Inventory or "M" = Map or "C" equals character stats or "J" = journal etc etc. You are forced to use what the game offers you and must memorize and learn a console system to play a PC game.

2) This one takes the cake the scaled npc/mob leveling system where no matter what level you are the majority of the npc/mobs are the same level or better. If you happened to find something you think would be extremely tough at level 1 like a DRAGON guess what? It's level ONE also. Only a handful of things don't scale level with you, but, things like wolves have a counter part like timberwolves that will be your level. It's kind of funny when you level up something that was a wolf when you wake from leveling up will be a timberwolf just like that.

3) Instant guard omni-presence constantly. Those of you who enjoyed playing a theif in Morrowind are in for a shock and surprise this time around. If you so much as "touch" an item that is not yours and belongs to another, gang bang guard(s) are going to appear and cart you off to jail (unless you pay the fine). Also as a thief "what you see is not what you get" You may see some glass weapons, they look like they would bring a fortune and you go through all the trouble to steal them and get away only to find out you can't use them or they are an illusion and nothing more than a cardboard copy of the real thing.

4) Sadly just like npc/mobs LOOT also scales by your level in this game now. You can forget daedric armor or any decent armor/weapons for a long time, and it doesn't matter if you clear out what you think is the toughest dungeon you ever saw, if you ain't the right level yet, you are going to get trash from the drops and trash from the chests and things you have to use lockpicks to open.

It almost feels like many mmorpgs where you have level restrictions on weapons and armor,the only open endedness of this game is where you explore. Everything else is predetermined from the getgo to the end. Now in Everquest I enjoyed tweaking out my level 1 character in level 50 gear and then soloing through the game as far as I could. Well, you can forget that in Oblivion, you're only going to get and find stuff and fight stuff at your level period.

I'm certainly glad that the store I buy my games from has a 7 day return policy, because this one certainly went back before the 7 days were up. I know there are many out there that like this game (mostly xboxers), but, the PC version was horribly designed and the design elements of the game do not allow roleplaying or godlike characters to be created through their adventure. Sadly as you level up instead of things getting easier by your level everything gets harder because it's always equal. 45 arrows to kill one goblin is rather rediculous when you could kill the same goblin with 3 to 5 arrows at a much lower level. Stuff like that just makes this game a poor effort in the "roleplaying" minded aspects of it.


Just an Amazon review. It's making me rethink how much time I really want to spend towards trying to build an uber character.

[Happydude]

i agreee with the review about the level system where you can't get good items until you reach a high level, that does suck.

what i don't agreee with are point 1 and 3, the UI for the PC has added buttons to go where you want to go. F1-F4 go to the different menus, i guess he just hasn't read the read-me file.
and the third point is not true either, gaurds don't appear there out of nowhere, if nobody sees you stealing something, they don't appear at all. i've tried.

but i do whole heartedly agree about the monster levels and the equipment not being available until you're a higher level. although it does make this game challenging, there is no way of raping anybody/thing in the game with superb equipment.

and i have no other complaints so far.

[Professor S]

The only area that bothers me is that the monsters level with you. I don;t like that at all. Part of the fun of a deep game like this is being able to go back and just wipe out lower level areas. It gives you a sense of accomplishment in the game and lets you actually feel like your becoming one of the more powerful beings in the realm. On the flip side, when you come across an enemy that much more powerful than you, you get a sense of how much farther you have to go.

[Canyarion]

Didn't Morrowind have something like that? I remember killing the mobs with the same difficulty when I was lvl 60 as when I was 10.... But there you didn't really notice, I guess.

[Happydude]

i think it might be in the difficulty settings? because you can change from easy-medium-hard. maybe if you put it on easy the monsters don't level up or something and when you put it on hard, they level up faster?