Oblivion -- Getting Lost in Tamriel and Loving It!
This is my favorite game. Sometimes I just wander around in the woods of this game. It's that pretty, that entertaining. It's what's known as a "sandbox" game, meaning you are free to do as you wish, go where you wish. Oblivion is also an rpg, set in a distant past of low tech days. Your character is a regular person (m or f) who somehow earns the trust of the soon dead emperor, and is asked to take an amulet to the emperor's remaining son, secretly kept away from harm for just this possibility: you are to find him so he can keep the land of Tamriel from disintegrating into a bloody fiery mass of monsters and mayhem.
You start with nothing, find weapons and armor along the way, and from the time you get free of the prison in which you start the game, you are at your own pleasure. If you can see it, you can probably get to it. The land you explore in the game seems as big as texas, as varied in terrain, and dotted with interesting shrines, caves, huts, caverns and yes dungeons (no dragons as yet).
You can be good or bad, murderous, even, and so long as you don't get caught red-handed, you can get away with it. You can rescue the helpless or frisk and rob them blind. You can use swords, clubs, axes, bows, spears, magic, whatever. There are few limits to what you can do. Or how you look. Setting up your character can take an hour, easily, if you change everything you can, from eyebrows to cheekbones to hair length... And that's just your looks...
You can follow the main plot, finding the Emperor's son and closing shut the gates of (yep) Oblivion which are beginning to pop up everywhere, or you can ignore that plot (and the city in which it starts) and just explore. You can join various guilds, you have a plethora of quests that range from FedEx type (bring me x number of y things) to appointments (meet me behind the big church at 1 am to [fill in the sinister blank]. You can even buy and furnish houses in every city once you get enough cash together.
And once you "finish" the game (hard to do, since it's so open-ended), you can download any of a number of "mods" created by others. The game editor and supporting files come with the game, and material created by players is free. Bethesda has also created additional "episodes" which can be downloaded or bought at retail outlets for $20 or less.
Of course, there's a catch, a price to pay for the freedom. It's a hard game for computers. Even with a lower medium range gaming rig like my own (2ghz cpu, 2gig RAM, 7900GT card, winXT), Oblivion played poorly until I tweaked the settings (found an article how online). For older less powerful computers, there's even a version called "Oldblivion" which takes graphics demands down substantially while still leaving the game somewhat attractive and playable. This game is good enough, imho, to warrant upgrading your graphics card if you haven't in the past, say, 2 years. Even an older 6800GT or a pair of them (less than $100) will make a huge difference over integrated graphics. I'd suggest trying to find a 7x00 card (7800 gt, 7900 gs, 7900xt) if you have pci-e, two for sli, if you can. If you've got $500ish for graphics alone, then you can really make Oblivion look good. The rest of us tweak it a lot.
There are few games like Oblivion. It's a total immersion blast. Sure, it's got some flaws, but none that can't be corrected by a mod found online. All the Elder Scrolls games are excellent, and Oblivion is the best of them all. Enjoy.Read full review
