That's quiet a headline, isn't it? Well, now after spending more than 100 hours playing this Bethesda's title, I find myself relatively doubtful about it's widely acknowledged superiority over other games, and RPG's in particular.

Before going into details I'd like to give some general approach to this game. First of all, it doesn't result next gen to me. It looks exactly like the development of Morrowind's idea of a wide-scale massive RPG with graphics worth of a a an up-to-date PC. The NPC's still look like stoned freaks and and I can't justify it because we've already seen the potential of next gen platforms on the example of Heavy Rain, consequently the hardware is ready by now to provide sufficient recources in order to create nearly photo-realistic visuals. And the fact that developers just played truant and failed to exploit the capabilies of xbox360 leads to the inevitable conclusion that they were not interested in making a smooth-running game, instead they were aimed at creating a product that would shock people by it's scales and not by it's quality. Therefore, if we look more precisely into this matter, we will find out that the game is flooded with bugs, it is very linear and sometimes unbelievably dumb.

Let's leave alone the glitches because there is no patch that would be able to fix them all. Such flows should have been cleared out at the stage of beta-testing because now it's too late to take some actions in this field. However, it's worth naming one of this bugs regarding the targetting system of the enemies. OK, I'm not interested in AI in no-FPS games, but how come the monsters keep running straightly in your direction not paying attention to pits, traps and obstacles? I had a weak thief character and sometimes I lacked guts to face some high level creatures. And then it turned out that the opponents would eagerly jump in a crater if you were staying at it's other edge. Besides there are millions of places (even in the Arena!) where you can jump to certain spots making it impossible for enemies to hit you with meely attacks.

As for the straight-forward gameplay, I'd say that the plot quests can be done in 5 hours by an average gamer. Besides, the storyline is less intruiguing than Pac Man. The main problem with this is that the universe of Oblivion fails to attract you, to make you spend hours wondering through it's territory communicating with characters and exploring new locations. To make the story short, the game lacks in that peculiar "fantasy" feeling. You won't find difference between a dozen different dungeons, and will be sure to get frustrated by shallow puzzles. All the races, inhabitting this world, live a mediocre life and I don't want to see a copy of the real world with fantasy looks - I want to see something special (like we did when we were playing Might and Magik, Wizardy, Final Fantasy, Oddworld, Little Big Adventure - games which are famous for their atmosphere).

On top of that, there is dumbness. The system of gaining experience is based on practicing your skills rather than on the good old system that required defeating createrus and completing quests to level-up. So, a thief, for instance would hardly be able to confront enemies, because he gains a new level by using lockpicking, sneaking and other non-combat skills. On the contrary, the system of checks and ballances enhances the equipment of your foes and replaces low-level creatures with more powerful monsters following your level-up. As a result of gaining levels we have - a world with no rats, wolves, bears which disappear and are replaced by minotaurs and leeches (evolution, huh?), where highway bandits wear glass armor and wield daedric weapons and where you obviously suck. Therefore, after reaching level 35 with my first hero, I picked up a fighter for a second try and completed every single quest in the game with level 1. That's why, this experience system is utterly wrong.

There were some positive aspects whatsoever - several side-line quest were just outstanding. I won't name them on purpose just to be save from spoilers. Finally, the sound is absolutely marvelous and has few drawbacks. The voicing can be rivaled only by Final Fantasy X.

And so, the game is over. And I don't care. This game didn't touch my strings. But I would surely buy Elder's Scrolls V and hope that the fourth establishment is just landmark which will draw a line between the old era and the genuine next generation RPG's.

While browsing the gamespot forums I found an incredibly rigid assession of games like GTA by an italian guy calducciano. I couldn't agree more:

"yeah, but it's another stupid game about the ghetto. What's so fun about being a ignorant gangbanger that wears his pants down to is ankles, talks like elmer fudd, and walks with a fake limp? I can see how a parody on the subject would be entertaining, but I never understood the allure of roleplaying as a bottom feeding scum of society gangster with an iq of 40. Games are fantasy, but, is this really what people imagine becoming? This is glamerous somehow.. to be socially retarded, with no hope of aspiring to anything better than a 6ft deep hole in the ground dug by your own stupidity? Each to his own. I just don't understand. "

Amen :)

Today I got down to playing NBA 2K6 in order to obtain some easy-to-earn achievments. It took me an hour to boost to 1000 and the simplicity of the process led me to the conclusion that although the whole idea about earning point is ingeneous the toughness of the task depends on the game you are dealing with. For instance, getting all the achievments in quake 4 presupposes going through the campaign 4 times on different difficulty levels (which stands for approximately 10 hours of gameplay), climbing to the rank of number 1 in multiplayer (forget about it, if you are not going to exploit the bug) and doing some other time-consuming insane things. On the whole, regardless of the toughness of q4 achievments, you still get 1000 points. So it's a bit frustrating getting the same amount in no time using sport-sims... So, if you fancy increasing digits in your gamertag, you'd better use rent services to get your hands on sport games which turn out to be the easist path to getting more points in less time.