Review by Calamity

"If this is a good game, then I worry about the future of gaming in general."

The Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion in my opinion is just a horrible game. I bought it after getting several suggestions from friends to buy it. So, I bought it and I was addicted for a few days, but as time went on the game got worse and worse. As I played Oblivion more, the game just got worse not better. I began to realize the game's problems and the game became extremely hard for me to enjoy. Well, let's get started with the review...Shall we?

Graphics:8.5/10:The Graphics in Oblivion are quite good. Textures could use a little more work. Plants and other environmental objects found throughout the Overworld look great. Filled with a lot of detail and life-like. Character designs are great. Weapon/armor designs are nothing really too unique, but they look nice. My only problem with Oblivion is that the overworld is bland. Really, the overworld is basically take one area of it then copy+paste it ten thousand times. Overall the Graphics are very good, but not perfect. Mostly due to the blandness found in several areas. So, onto the most important category Gameplay.

Gameplay:5.4/10:Oblivion really falls flat on it's face here in my opinion. The game mostly involves you either messing around or doing quests. First off, the game gives you very little indication of what to do when you begin. It took me a while to figure out that the red arrow in the middle of your compass was supposed to tell you what direction to go. Once, I found that out I was really able to play the game a lot better. The game takes place from a first person point of view, but third person is optional. In third person your character has terrible moving animation though. During third person mode, it looks as if through your character is not walking, but rather sliding along the ground. With the basic Gameplay of Oblivion covered let's discuss the main aspects of the game.

You do quests and gain rewards from the quests. The Quests usually have a simple generic objective. Like go there and kill some enemies or assassinate a specific person. The Quests are quite entertaining due to the rewards you get. A major problem is and this is Oblivion's biggest problem is the combat system is horrible.

It takes very little strategy. Basically you swing your weapon at a enemy block when they attack and exchange blows. There's nothing more to the combat then that. So, the combat is bland and hardly takes any strategy which is very bad. I honestly found the combat to be one of the most boring aspects of Oblivion. If the combat is boring then why am I even playing this game? Well, at least other things about the game were somewhat enjoyable. Like robbing houses, stores and randomly killing people too. Allow, me to talk about those.

Robbing houses, stores and killing random people was probably the funnest part of Oblivion. Unfortunately, this aspect is flawed too. If I enter a house with nobody else around aside from one person nobody will notice me kill them right? So, I murder the person inside quietly. Steal a item or two from their house then leave. Next thing I know... There's the guards! How does this make any sense at all? The guards never caught me committing the crime so there's no way they found out about it already. Unless, wait I found it out! Secretly security tags are put into each person. If that person dies, the security tag alerts a nearby guard and they go after you. Okay, enough with the jokes, but really this is ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to enjoy stealing or assassinating people if the guards will catch you no matter what. So, when you do this you'll need to of course either surrender or escape from the guards. Unless you turn the difficulty meter down the guards will murder you. That is, if you don't run for your life from them. This major problem just leads to another problem. Money yeah, that's right.

Money is excruciatingly difficult to come by in Oblivion. It's either you steal some nice stuff and sell it or else you're most likely broke. With all the difficulty of stealing what's the point though? You'll just have to earn Gold at a terribly slow pace unless you want to actually have the guards hate you. Oh, wait I can turn down the difficulty meter and kill the guards terribly easy. Yeah, that's another problem with Oblivion. The difficulty meter which was a bad idea from the start.

The difficulty meter allows you to adjust the stats of enemies. You turn the meter down the enemies will get weaker. Turn it up and they get stronger. That's just horrible and there's no reason they should have put it in. Everyone of course is going to abuse it. Especially if they have to do a really tough part of the game. It's a easy way around getting really good equipment to take on the harder quests. Now, even worse is enemies level with you! It makes leveling just about pointless and the difficulty meter already kills the point of leveling enough. Well, that's it I had it I can't talk about how horrible the Gameplay is anymore. Moving onto the horrible Storyline now.

Storyline:4/10:The Storyline in Oblivion is atrociously bad. What mainly kills it is the poorly written dialogue.When you talk to a random person walking around town it doesn't feel normal. Instead, it'll seem like your talking to a bland random generic robot that says boring uninteresting things and serves no purpose aside from hints. Overall the Storyline for Oblivion deserves a 4/10. It's ATROCIOUSLY BAD.

Music:9/10:There's hardly any Music in the game, but the sound effects are top notch. However, the lack of any Music hurts the Music category. So, overall a 9/10. Great sound effects, but no Music. So, how is Oblivion overall everyone...?

Overall:5/10:Oblivion is a mediocre W-RPG. The Gameplay is not fun or strategic. Storyline is riddled with terrible wrtiting. There's no Music to be found in the game, but there are wonderful Sound Effects. Last, is the Graphics which are quite good, but not amazing. So, Overall Oblivion gets a 5/10 from Lord_Kefka. In my opinion it was a extremely mediocre game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10 | Originally Posted: 10/08/08, Updated 03/06/09


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