The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a well created single player RPG with lots to do, especially if you get the Game of the Year edition, which has the "Knights of the Nine" and "Shivering Isles" built in. It's not just a hack and slash gore-fest and the sheer size of the game means there is lots to do.

The voices are a little samey after a while, mainly because there arn't that many people doing the characters, although hearing Patrick Stewart as the Emperor and Shawn Bean as his illegitemate son Martin was a surprise for me as I hadn't realised they had worked on the game until they spoke.

It's a little hard to see your way in some places, especially the sewers, because some of the areas are too dark, but the gameplay is not too complicated, you don't have to remember multiple button combinations to execute special moves and overall I would say the "The Elder Scrolls, Oblivion" is worth getting if you are into thoughtfull RPGs. If, however, you prefer the "kill 'em all" fast paced action games like "Call of Duty" or "Bad Company" you may find this a little slow.

Well this game simply blows my mind! Right from the opening scene where PATRICK STEWART reads the opening monologue and the music slowly builds to an intense cinematic style beginning! WOW! From that instant I simply could not wait to get my hands dirty with this game!

Everything in this game screams quality, it is the way ALL western Role Playing Games should be made, I say western because the east have a very unique way of making them (a la Final Fantasy) which is awesome but only really they can pull it off, and oblivion is the west's vice versa! I always play my games on the easiest settings; I am not really after a challenge as much because I love to see the storyline without getting killed all of the time! But if you do like a challenge, the difficulty can be changed at any time!

Your characters are fully customisable, right from the skill set you'd have them learn to the gloves they can wear! The game is HUGE, took me 20+ hours to complete and get all of the achievements but there was still more to play! With extra downloadable content such as 'The Shivering Isle's' you can pretty much add another 10 " 15 hours worth of gameplay!

I would recommend this for anyone, but be warned! You will turn into a reclusive outcast who begins referring him or herself as 'The Dark Magician'!

A brilliant game, the graphics are good but it is often TOO dark in dungeons, to the extent where you have to use torches and/or nighteye all the time which is annoying. Some gameplay is a bit repetative, but apart from that it is a great game. A must for all RPG fans. The game is so huge that sometimes there is too much to do.

Get the game of the year edition, as you want the expansion packs.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is perfect. From the amazing graphics to the challenging game play, there is no fault to be found with it. Everything you decide for your character to do has an enfluence on the gameplay. The monsters and humanoid enemies grow in dificulty as you increase levels and your time spent in jail or faction increases your fame and infamy. There are so many options you can be whoever you want to be. You can choose to follow the main quest line, or make your own path.

That you can go almost anywhere and there are lots of creatures and monster to fight and the main quests is very good to also the side quest are good and are a wide range of weapons and amour and is very realistic.
Great game in my opinion and well recommend The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Despite all that Oblivion it is a really good game to play and play again with different set ups

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is truly the very best game I have ever played!

Finally an RPG which lasts more than 10 hours before completing it! I love it, the graphics are so realistic and also some of the normal quests which you come across are really good because they're just about genuine problems. I've completed the whole game except for Shivering Isle and it took me about 50 hours. the only guild I completed in a day was the arena. Overall the game is really good and it has got to be one of the greatest games on Xbox, ever!

If your still thinking of purchasing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion make sure your stocked up on nappies and pizza, cause its going to get messy.(pizza can be eaten with one hand so no valuable Oblivion time is wasted).

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.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the first game I bought for the Xbox 360 and it was so addictive that I got it for PC so i could hack the heck out of it. This game is definitely a must have if you don't already have it for PC and have a 360 get it for the Xbox - it's lots of fun and has less loading time. The biggest problem with this game is that it missed out on a lot of things that Morrowind had like the Werewolf, throwing weapons, spears, ect. These great things that were in Morrowind and were taken off in Oblivion made the game dull if you played Morrowind. Another thing which was lame is that they did not even think of making horse back fighting - you cant use a weapon when you're on a horse and you always have to get off and kill whatever is attacking you. Also the fact that there were no new races was kind of boring and that there were no new guilds or weapons which made it different from Morrowind - the only big difference obviously was the graphics and the Oblivion gates. Even though this game lacked some it still makes for a great game worth the 60 dollars or what ever it's worth now.

First, I have a top of the line gaming system with an ATI x1800XT and AMD 64/X2 with 2GB high speed Dual Channel DDR RAM and SATA II hard Drive with a 20" widescreen LCD. This game was made for high-end systems. It is way beyond FEAR or DOOM3/Quake4. With all the settings to Max this world sucks you in like never before. Sometimes it seems pretty easy, and sometimes I spend hours trying to get past some really tough situations. The downside is that it can get tedious when fighting certain enemies who are higher levels or just really tough. Travelling across country can be interesting when discovering new areas and dungeons, but it can seem almost impossible to get out of some jams. The playstyle options are open to your own imagination, and almost every hour I play I learn something new about strategies and tricks.
I suggest buying the official game guide, not to read all the way though, but to look up when you need a pointer or general information about cities or quests when you are unsure of what to do. It's added to my game enjoyment because I use the guide sparingly for extra information. Don't read the whole guide, it'll ruin the excitement like being told the movie plot before seeing the movie.
I give Oblivion a thumbs up.

This is a fantastic visual game and massively addictive. However, do not buy this game if you have a girlfriend who wants a lot of attention, otherwise this game will seriously damage your relationship.
This game is however, so immense that you won't need your girlfriend for a couple of years anyway.
Brilliant!

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an Xbox 360 game which I enjoy, but it can sometimes feel like a bore.

As soon as you step inside the world, you'll notice how good the graphics are, but I felt the Xbox 360 could have done better. When the grass blows in the breeze when you're on a country lane, it looks very fake if you're in first person camera mode. The sand beside the lakes or rivers looks immense though, and I could just sit there looking at it all day long.

The combat is easy to use, yet addictive and fun. They could have included dual wielding with short swords or similar, as you can't dual wield. Unless it's with a shield and sword.

One bad point about Oblivion is that you nearly always, in the end, will need to fight. Despite if you want to be an Alchemist or non-combat character.

The world is great to explore, you will come upon various things in your travels from bandit camps, caves, god altars, ruins and houses in the wilderness. These do however get repetitive and sometimes boring.

The quests are exciting and fun, but they nearly always make you have to pull out your weapon.

Oblivion seems to like the cutting edge to make it a top class role-playing game. So much more could have been added to it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, and I've enjoyed it, and I am sure I will enjoy it in the future. I don't think it will get in my top fives games of all time though.

I'm a long term RPG'er and have seen all there is to see RPG wise over the last 15 years. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a disappointing title.

Out the box the biggest gripe is undoubtably the levelling monsters, check the games forums, it's full of moans. This is to say - when you reach say level 10, usually, the early monsters in 99% of other games will have become easy. Not in this. The monsters level with you, to "maintain game difficulty" but in my, and many others opinions this is simply not right.

You can however get yourself a mod to sort this, and I did...which was nice; but there's more.

The games interface feels very consoley. As a PC user you expect actions to be available on hotkeys and toolbars. In fact, having just finished playing World of Warcraft for 6 months, I was very surprised to see that this game doesn't have a toolbar, and only 8 quick slots available! This after using over 30 slots over 4 toolbars in WOW. So, to do almost any basic actions apart from melee and run, you have to menu up, select, and then close menu. Very tedious.

Still, there are some very nice features to this game.

The wilderness looks very nice and graphically the dungeons were very pleasing. Levelling is non conventional in that you must rest at an inn to stat increase but those who prefer D&D like me will never get used to having to trawl from town to town to find spell scroll sellers to learn new magicks from.

The game begins to feel repetitive even when interacting with NPC's as there are only a few actors voices used for every individual in the world! You'll see what I mean when you start talking to a pirate in anvil after speaking to a trader in kvatch! Strange faces and strange voices.

I was warned (having not at all enjoyed Morrow wind) that this would be more of the same and it's a shame I didn't listen! Not for me but rated 7/10 due to some nice storylines that were very captivating, however, I did feel awkward with the whole games mechanics so didn't like it much.

All in all, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a very good game that will keep you busy for weeks. You can choose to do just the main quest or you can choose to do the guild quests, or you can choose to do the many various mini quests or you can simply choose not to choose any quest and still spend hours walking round the huge world map fighting bandits, skeletons, giant rats, goblins (both flying and on foot), wolves, killer crabs ..need I go on. It is simply massive, although not as big as Morrowind, but the main difference is the volume of things to do. Walk through the woods for five minutes and you will stumble across some ruin or bandit camp or something like that. You can also visit the gladiatorial arena where you can either gamble as a spectator or become a combatant and rise through the ranks to stardom. There is simply no end of things to do in this game.

On top of this, the scenery and graphics are immense. Definitely the best game I have ever played on this topic. The attention to detail is immaculate and minor effects like water etc are nothing short of brilliant. I particularly like the fact that if someone shoots you with an arrow, it stays there, sticking out of you for a while (small things please small minds)

Now the bad points . Not surprisingly in a game this large, it has loads of load scenes and it keeps just stopping every now and then for a couple of seconds, which is very annoying. Walk through a door and you will be faced with a load scene, walk into an area where you have not been before ."Loading area" comes up and the action stutters for a second or two. These two things are quite annoying by themselves but then you bring in the fact that every now and then, for some inexplicable reason, it crashes, saying "This disc can not be read, please clean it and restart the game". I took mine back to the shop and they swapped it but the guy behind the counter said this is a common problem and he had it and his did the same. Fortunately, it auto saves every time this happens, but this is a major problem for me. I was under the impression that "Next Gen" gaming would provide better gaming. This is not acceptable for the money being splashed out on these games and hopefully will not be a "common" problem with the Xbox360.

To some up, this game is Morrowind with massively better graphics and loads more action. Would I recommend it? Definitely. It is a must for RPG gamers and will even satisfy the appetites of some action gamers. You are never short of something to do.

The only reason I have not given this game a straight ten is because you can not ignore the loading and crashing and stuttering.

I bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a couple of weeks ago and have played it until 3 -4 in the morning quite a few times since then.
If you're not into RPG's then you can probably give it a miss. The third person fighting isn't really detailed or lengthy enough the keep a fan of action games happy.
The scope of the game is huge. There's an enourmous amount of locations to explore and quests to undertake.
Look and feel of the game is very similar to Morrowind on the PC, if you liked that then you'll definately like this.
The visuals are stunning, I play the game in 720p on a HDTV and it looks great, 1080i is available and must look amazing.
The XBox copes admirably with the graphics processing. When you're walking around the countryside you occasionally get a "please wait" message while new scenes load - it's only there for a second or so at most though.
There's no online option, which is a little odd. Although having other players wandering around the large landscape would probably be too much for the '360 hardware to handle. There are a few add ons and upgrades that can be downloaded from XBox live though.

I thoroughly recommend this game, although you do need more than a passing interest in RPG's or adventure games to truly appreciate it. Some of the dungeon areas of the game are quite reminiscient of Resident Evil, with well worked music and dramatic sound effects.

Be warned though, this game will take over your life....