The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Review

Overall Rating

Fantastic graphics
Incredible number of quests and side-tasks to do, then just muck around some more

Sluggish combat
Loading times take forever
Eventually becomes repetitive and tiresome

As I write this, Oblivion has just won XBox 360 game of the year and overall game of the year at the Golden Joystick awards, so it has a lot to live up to.

Firstly, I should point out I am a major RPG fan, and have played most of them since the days of the SNES and Mega Drive (Genesis), and as such, Oblivion was a quick addition to my collection. However, most RPG's that become classics, tend to come from Japan, I can't think of many Western RPG's that are much good at all, but on that part Oblivion is a real achievement. As far as Western RPG's go, most people probably haven't heard of any beyond the RPG elements of GTA and the many pseudo RTS/RPG PC games, but Oblivion succeeds without trying to imitate Japanese RPG's, which is where the rest fail.

Oblivion feels distinctively fresh, and the game world is fantastically realised, really immersing you into it, and it's free roaming nature is simply unrivalled as an RPG. In fact, it can be compared to Grand Theft Auto in a way, as you're free to wonder about, even steal horses and break into people's homes, and that's the greatness of Oblivion; you can do pretty much what you like. You can earn money in a number of ways, go adventuring, and seek out items of worth from abandoned ruins and take items from any bandits that attack you, or you could go hunting and collect animal skins (although it's not really that profitable), you could become a merchant, buying and selling items between towns and traders for profit (and the more you do it, the better your bartering skills become and the more money you make), or you can take the criminal path and sneak into homes at night and steal what you can, although shops won't buy stolen items (you gotta wonder how they can know what is stolen though, a little unrealistic but nevertheless). You can sell them to members of a Thieves Guild if you join. And the other guilds (Fighting, Mages and Dark Brotherhood) will all offer you work, and eventually you can move up the ranks of each guild and eventually become leader of it, if you so wish.

The guild quests are brilliant, and each guild could be a game in it's own right. And after all of that you've got the Oblivion gates to deal with. Essentially, these are portals to the domain of Oblivion, and are how demons and such attack the world, so you must seek out these gates, enter them and basically go nuts and slay everything you find and close the gate.
Then after all that there is actually a main quest.

So there's plenty to do, and it will take a long time to see it all, but Oblivion isn't without faults.

Firstly, I don't like the First-person view, and while this is a personal taste, I feel the 3rd-person view is badly done. The animation of your character is very loose, but the combat is almost impossible, especially with a bow. But combat is sluggish even in the default first-person view. I feel this is the biggest let down easily, as it's nowhere near as good as it should be, and the loading times are another big let down. If you have a hard drive it loads quicker (apparently), but I have a hard drive and it still takes a long time to load. It doesn't have to load often whilst out on the open, but entering/leaving towns, and even buildings, the loading screen pops up and it takes so long it can ruin the feeling of immersion. And finally, although it's varied after a while I just got bored and eventually just started repeating myself in order to earn money and get some decent equipment, and eventually I felt that although the free-roaming is great, it is let down by the fact it becomes extremely tiresome to do so, as the world is absolutely massive, and exploring soon becomes boring.

All in all, Oblivion is an achievement, and if you like RPG's then you'll love it, but it does have it faults that cannot be ignored, but it's the best Western RPG we'll probably see in a long time, and it's worth playing, as it offers something different to the usual Japanese games.

But Game of the Year? Well it's good, but it didn't get my vote. I'm still waiting for the killer next gen RPG, but until then it's still the best RPG on the XBox 360.