The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

    The first thing that strikes you when you start this game up is that it’s a pretty big one. Oblivion’s location of Cyrodiil is big... Huge. And not to mention diverse. Without the in-game map you’d almost definitely lose your bearings as soon as you so much as changed direction and your jaw is very liable to fall of at the first sight of the environment from the very moment you find the exit to the sewers, where the story starts; mountains, forests and lakes – all in the same vista. It is something truly spectacular. Trees sway in the wind, butterflies flutter convincingly around you and mountains reflect perfectly in the water. Even with a standard definition TV, the graphics are good enough to convince you that this is one of the world’s most beautiful games. You start your adventure by creating your own character - choosing your sex and race, then on to a level of visual facial customisation that is so detailed that you're likely to skip it altogether. These things make you believe Cyrodiil is a living, breathing world… or it would. 

    The problem with Cyrodiil is that it feels completely deserted - empty - except for your own character and a handful of bumbling townsfolk. This emptiness is only made more evident when you try (out of plain old curiosity) to walk to the edge of the map, only to be greeted by a nonchalant "You cannot go that way, turn back". The fact that the map is so huge can actually be detrimental to the gameplay; you’re constantly asked to travel back and forth from one place to another and back again, all in the space of about ten minutes, sometimes several square miles apart and although exploring the countryside is sometimes one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game, once you realize that fighting bears and trolls can be a little repetitive you start seeking out quicker ways to get from A to B. A horse can do this pretty well, but any enemies you encounter will invariably try to kill the horse rather than you – even after you dismount, and if you don’t want to carry on the rest of your journey on foot, you’re pretty much forced to ride past and outrun them; the faster enemies will follow you for quite some time. You can use the Fast Travel option right from the outset (which transports you instantly from one place to another) but it kind of leaves you wondering what you might have missed out on if you’d bothered to make the long trip yourself. Riding a horse drops the framerate considerably too. This sometimes leaves taking a trip on foot as the slightly more favourable option. 

    Bethesda made quite a point in flagging up their new “Radiant” AI prior to the game's release release, and while it works in theory, in practice it’s not so impressive. In fact the artificial intelligence is one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. NPCs are meant to live their own “lives” moving around as they please, but standing in the middle of town for several hours and then sitting down in the local tavern is hardly a convincing life. While the characters in the game often converse with each other you’ll often hear the same conversation several times in the space of an hour, and this aspect of the game is fraught with little problems; listening to an actor having a conversation with himself in the same voice is incredibly funny, but not "comedy easter egg" funny, more "how the hell did this game pass quality control?" funny. The persuasion system works differently this time round as well – in mini-game form – and while it’s less than believable, it certainly is more fun and involving than just picking an action from a menu and hoping it does the trick. At least this way you do almost feel like you’re making a conscious difference to the way another character feels about your own. 

    The combat system is where this game really shines out from the rest of the RPG crowd. The choice of weapon your character uses is solely up to the player; you could be a warrior who uses a magical staff, or a wizard brandishing a giant claymore – if you so choose. Morrowind had a range of different weapon classes, but Oblivion’s weapons have been grouped in smaller categories; long and short blades are both now classed simply as Bladed weapons, and the Blunt weapons category now encompasses maces, axes and warhammers. The spears, unfortunately, have disappeared and the staff weapons are no longer used to attack enemies directly but instead can be enchanted to launch different kinds of spells at your foes. The developers have done away with the different types of ranged weapons and left just the bows, which is one of the more enjoyable weapons in the game; taking down a horde of goblins with a bow is possibly the most satisfying thing in the world – not only does it feel cool, it’s a real visual treat, watching as their bodies roll over backwards and fall to the floor in a crumpled heap – the ragdoll physics work very effectively in this respect. All of the weapon types bar the staves have their own skill level, which increases each time that type of weapon is used. Where the fighting in Morrowind was painstakingly simple, the new system is a little more developed, while still remaining intuitive. Pulling the right trigger on the controller will make your character attack once, and pulling it repeatedly will enable your character to string their blows together. Charge attacks are performed by holding down the right trigger and do more damage than the regular attacks, but they take longer to execute and your character will get tired quicker if used too often. As your character’s skill in a particular weapon improves, you’ll learn new charge attacks that are able to disarm, knock back or even paralyze an opponent. Blocking opponents’ attacks is now no longer down to luck; holding down the left trigger brings up your shield and blocking is even possible with a two-handed weapon, but is considerably less effective. Casting magic in this installment has been improved to great effect; no longer do you have to sheath your weapon and get out your “magic hands” to cast a spell but instead the currently selected spell is available to cast at the touch of a button. All these things lead to a much more fluent and natural battle system, and are great for one-on-one battles, even one-on-two. But when it’s you versus a band of marauders, that’s when it gets hectic – you’ll often find yourself having to backpedal quite frantically to avoid taking too much damage, and it just looks and feels a bit stupid. There are plenty of situations where you’ll need to team up with the town guards or a group of mercenaries to take out a small army of monsters, and this is great fun… for about 30 seconds. Your allies will have a habit of rushing head first into a fight and they’re only really able to defend themselves if the difficulty slider is right down on the easiest setting. This means having to babysit the other NPCs if you want them to survive – because if they don’t, it quickly turns into a case of you against ten other enemies. 

    The new leveling system means that you won’t fight the more challenging enemies until you reach a certain level of experience, and you won’t be able to find more powerful weapons and armour either. While this makes for a fairer gaming experience, it sort of works against the game’s non-linear intentions; where in Morrowind it was possible to stroll into an unexplored cave and find yourself being chased out moments later by some fiery demon – that’s just no longer possible. Not only that, the new and more powerful enemies appear quite quickly as you raise experience levels, and it doesn’t really feel like your character is getting any stronger. As before, there are a number of guilds to join, offering different rewards, all of which are designed for a specific type of in-game character. Warriors and fighters may be more inclined to join the Fighter’s Guild, whereas the more stealthy gamers may want to join the Thieves Guild or the super-cool Dark Brotherhood.  In fact there’s nothing stopping you from joining all of the different guilds; a thief can tackle a job for the Mages Guild with ease, and a knight can assassinate someone for the Dark Brotherhood with no trouble at all. This leaves you thinking: Is this game too non-linear? There doesn’t seem to be any sense of hierarchy in terms of character class – no point to the system, and no incentive to create multiple characters of different classes. 

    To most intents and purposes, Oblivion is a hell of a lot better than Morrowind and worlds better than most RPGs, but there’s definitely something missing from it. Graphically it’s one of the best games on the console to date, and the downloadable content can lengthen the shelf-life somewhat.  But it lacks some of the charm that was so plentiful in the previous Elder Scrolls game.  The game is rife with annoying glitches, bugs and general design flaws too; guards can see through doors and floors. Loading times are terribly abundant, things don’t move when they should; things move when they shouldn’t and a lot of the character animations look downright ridiculous. It’s these little things that you start to notice so frequently after even a short while of playing, and the game just starts to get on your nerves.

  Putting so much focus on the game's flaws makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a outstanding game. In fact it’s so outstanding, you’ll want to carry on playing it for hours on end, but that’s where a new major problem arises. The mysteries of Oblivion disappear fairly quickly; once you’ve seen one dungeon, you’ve seen them all. In fact there’s no need to see them all; just wait 24 game hours and the enemies and items in any one cave or fortress will respawn. There comes a point in the game where there’s nothing left to surprise you, and instead of trying to turn a fight into something interesting, you’re just left thinking about the quickest way to end it, so you can see if there's anything more interesting around the next corner. For all its faults, Oblivion is definitely worth the trouble – and the money, especially if you’re willing to spend for any downloadable content. The graphics are, at times, breathtaking, the sound effects and dialogue are convincingly realistic, the music is expertly composed and the storyline is good enough to keep you playing for the weeks it'll take in order to see it through. 

   My advice; If I could isolate one sole significant problem with the game, it's that it gets boring way, WAY too quickly.  This is a must-play title – but only play it a couple of times a week. This way, not only will it last longer, but there’s less chance you’ll want to trade it in out of sheer spite.