This is definitely one of the best games out there for the 360, if not the best. It will easily draw you in for a gaming experience that will last for over 100 hours. The world is so big you just can't help but explore. Often times I find myself feeling very small in such a large world literally polluted by quests and goodies. While the main story line can be completed in a matter of a few hours virtually nobody will find themselves focusing singularly on the storyline. There are literally hundreds of other side quests that will consume a vast majority of the average players time. Each and every quest does an excellent job of bring the player into the story and many seem to follow a very respectable dramatic structure. One feature that will stand out to any player is easily the vastness of the world and it's attention to graphical detail. You've never realized that video games encompass generally small worlds until you've played Oblivion. Some truly breathtaking views are found in this game. Sometimes you'll find them from the tops of mountains or from lazy beach-side hangouts, but the developers designed the world in such a way that allows you to really admire the landscape you roam around on. Because the game is so enthralling and the world is so all-encompassing it seems Bethesda may not have spent enough time balancing it or bug testing it. I can't even describe how many different bugs I've encountered in this game. I've fallen through floors, seen dead people slide into mountain sides, grabbed mutton from live sheep, had quests that didn't initiate properly, had monsters that fell into rocks kill me when I stood on them, jumped out of levels over walls, and strangely levitated across ground after skipping across water. These aren't even all of the bugs that I could list with this game but these are the most frequent and the ones that definitely shouldn't have made it into the final game. Call me a snob but the sound design leaves much to be desired. many common sound effects that should have been loaded into ram have to be streamed off the disk. For example, when you take damage and you haven't in a while the disk has to spin up and a second or two later you hear the sound effect. The surround effects are also lacking. On my 5.1 setup people who are too close in front of me will come out of my rear speakers instead of the front ones. When people are talking the fade from one speaker to another feels too abrupt as well. While the music is absolutely amazing it suffers an unfortunate flaw. When you encounter a baddie the music changes from the normal tune to a more intense battle tune. Both songs are awesome and fit perfectly but there isn't any sort of transition at all. There isn't even a cross fade. One song just turns off and the other turns on. The balance of the game almost ruins it at later levels. So how easy is it to become invincible? Anybody could be an unstoppable beast with a mere 5 or 6 hours of game play. Simply cover yourself with chameleon gear and nobody can see you when you hit 100%. Resistances to elemental dammage aren't capped either leaving many avenues through which your character can be extremely over powered. Diablo 2 released many patches well into its life span to fix balance issues, none of which were even close to as bad as the issues in Oblivion, but Bethesda has not patched out such sorry excuses for lazy programming. I'm sorry, it probably seems like I don't like this game very much. I wouldn't have put in over 100 hours of play if I didn't like it, I really do. It has some shortcomings though. I don't think a lesser game would be able to get away with being so buggy but this is Oblivion. If you want your soul sucked out by a game this is an excellent choice, just be prepared to deal with some really annoying bugs.
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