This time round we are covering Oblivion, a delightful game from 2006 that, at the time was graphically awesome, and to be fair its something that the game has held up well and it still looks pretty damn awesome by today’s standards as well, especially on the PC where extra mods and increased graphics processing help the game look that bit better anyway. The game features all the usual mod cons, like dynamic weather, nice trees with lots of singled out leaves that don’t look like they are cardboard cutouts, and all manner of lighting, fog and visual effects. You can see an absolute mile into the distance which is particularly awesome given that in many games there is a random fog effect that suddenly obscures vision 3ft infront of your house. The only downside to this comes with the fact that at the time, the game was so demanding in terms of power that you only really got the full effect if you had a near top of the line PC, and the XBox360 version does hav a few stutters every now and then as well.

If you're this guy, you should cut somone in half for the sheer hell of it!

Moving on from the games looks, we head into the region of how the game plays. You basically get the “whole” tutorial thing at the start of the game, buts its very well done. It completes and early and key part of the story line, buts its extremely well integrated to the point where you are picking up the basics as you go through, and barely even realise whats going on, as far as I was concerned at the time, I was playing the first scene of the story, and getting a few hints along the way, only to emerge and realise I knew how to aim, attack, cast spells, change equipment etc…

To me, this was pretty fucking fantastic, as I dislike games where the tutorial is stale and stapled in, or just doesn’t fit with the tutorial. As far as im concerned, the game should either have a separate tutorial you can chose to play before starting the game so that its seperate, or if this is not an option it should integrate as flawlessly as possible with the story line. An example of something thats not so great is COD4 where you are part of the SAS but go through a kind of training/testing thing which makes no sense since your already with the SAS and should know what to do, and have proved your worth already.

Oblivion has a main questline, some side questlines, and then loads of random 1 time and small quests all over the place. Most of which are worth doing as you get decent items out of them which help the main questline, and also gets you doing things so your skills advance. My only real gripe with the gameplay is the fact that everything levels with you, so everything is a constant challenge, but unfortunately a doable challenge. I would prefer the option to head to a place above my level, and fight harder things and get better rewards which I could use to torture things my own level for fun!

A normal oblivion gate, hardcore shit lives on the other side!

We can roll on from the gameplay and into the actual storyline itself and how it holds up, and I have to say myself,  the whole story is pretty fucking good, aside from the ending which I found to be a bit of an anti-climax but that could just be my personal opinion on that one. As I already mentioned the tutorial integrates perfectly with the storyline, and gets the game on its way. From that point on the story is up to you, you can ignore the main quest, finish it first, do what you want. Everything has a story to it, and out of the hundreds of characters ingame, you can bet your ass most of them are involved in one quest or another, and i think this is awesome. I mean, I hate stale static NPC’s who are ingame for no reason at all, whats the point in it? Life for the sake of life in a game makes no sense.

The great thing I like about the story is the fact that you are the hero, but you are not THE HERO. Your basic task is to find the new emperor and return him to the throne. Thankfully its not some lame storyline where you turn out to be emperor, or become emperor because the guy is dead, or end up as rent boy on a street corner cos the emperor thought you were a dick during some missions. It gives great freedom to you cos if you are like me and random people need to die for reasons only you know, you are not left with some kind of fucked up ending where people would be all like “why is he emperor if he murdered half the city, he should be in jail.” It is a good way of doing it and with the amount of effort put into the stories and sidequests etc, I would definitely not call it cheap, because cheap would be parroting the usual story and scripting you into a box (which doesn’t happen often unless you make it!) The only real way you can get stuck is if you kill someone involved in a quest, cos in oblivion once your average NPC is dead, they stay dead and thats that. Only main questline players get to experience being “knocked out” the rest die and head to hell to burn for being annoying. The only other thing to add to this for people new to the game is that questlines have multiple arches, a NPC ay die on a quest with you, and others will act like it had to happen, yet you could try again and save them and that takes it of a bit differently but doesn’t change things monumentally, it just alters dialogue and some options, which is great!

Epic Scenery, lets roll onward!

Finally I can’t mention this game without adding in that for PC users who own the game, you can’t fully enjoy it without trying a few of the mods for the game. Some are good, others are fucking fantastic and you should definitely have a look around and try a few of them out.

I guess thats pretty much all I have to say on oblivion at this point, there is more I can say for sure but I don’t want to give away storylines and information that could spoil storylines as some people may not have played the game and will want to now. My only advice could be to make sure you try everything in the game, and also safe often and try to keep the killing to a minimum until you have some quests out of the way as you never know who you need. Either that or make a new game and kill till your hearts content!

I definately recommend this game, and you should play it or return to it if you already have it.