Oblivion

To be honest I’m not a vast fantasy RPG fan, worrying about leveling up on your shoelace tieing skill does not float my boat but you could not ignore the hype that surrounded Oblivion IV: The Elder Scrolls. So I picked up a copy to see what all the fuss was about. As usual the limited edition version was all sold out so I settles for the standard version and went on home ready to be impressed. But to my horror I was not, far from it!

When I put the disc in, I was greeted by the Bethesda logo and some stuttering music. Loading times I put it down to, so started a new game. Nope not loading times, just plain old not working. Every bit of audio was jumping, Patrick “Make it so” Stewart was unbearable, then came the loading times, or rather they did not. It was taking minutes to render the landscape and move between sections, not great at all! So much so I went back to the demo of Blazing Angels.

Later on I did some home work and found out I was not running in 60hz mode on the console. After sorting this out and fitting a digital RGB cable (which greatly improved the visuals) I tried again. Perfect, no jumping audio, the rendering was better and loading times were back to normal. There have been reports of fragmented game cache’s with this game but if you are having problems with audio make sure your in 60hz from the dashboard.

Now let’s talk about the game, first off this thing is huge! You can not really start to describe the size of the game, don’t expect to put this down with Call Of Duty as completed just yet, Bethesda reckon over 250 hours of game play is required to complete the quests and trust me I take their word for it. There are some 9,000 different items and weapons to collect, over 16 square miles (scale version) to explore and enough little quests to keep every Wood Elf happy.

The graphics are impressive, I’m not completely blown away but they are very good, given the amount of them. When I first emerged from the Imperial Sewer (long story) and looked across the valley the view was fantastic but then to be able to run to that ourcrop of rocks on the other side and still enjoy the view was really something else. Trust me get a nice mid morning sun through the trees at Weatherleash farm and you will know what I mean.

You see what this game does to you, it drags you in, sticks a steel dagger up your ass and won’t let go. I really wanted to not like this game and having something to say about all the Obliv-lovers out there but I can’t. Within a few hours of playing the game I’m trying to increase my sneak skill whilst learning a new illusion magic spell. I’m full blown geek!

Granted this game will not appeal to everyone, the Halo fan boys will not be entertained for long but this game is well worth a look if you like that sort of thing, even if you don’t try renting it for a few days.