Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been from this moment my favorite game of all time.
The game begins with you in a cell in the Imperial City. At this point is where you can choose your character's features, including race, name, and facial features. For some unknown reason the Emperor of Tamriel needs to come through your cell, for there is a secret entrance in the cell that leads to the sewers. The reasons for this I will leave unanswered. Your time through the sewers is the game's tutorial; you will learn the basics of melee, ranged, and magical combat; how to use stealth and pick locks, and how to use the basics of your inventory.
Once you leave the sewers, you can either continue with the main quest, or go off to explore Cyrodiil on you own. It is this free-roaming, non-linear approach that has been a staple of the Elder Scrolls series. For a world this big and for a game that was one of the first this generation, the graphics are most impressive. While there are minor bugs that rarely show up (and I have played the game long enough only to see them rarely), this does not distract someone from the beauty of the environment.
With over 100 side quests, including two expansions as well as several downloadable buildings/quests, this game will certainly keep anyone busy for months.
Now while the game is extremely immersive, there are a couple of factors that prevent me giving it a perfect score. On easy difficulty levels, combat is somewhat repetitive, a simple slash-slash-parry becomes the staple of the easier difficulties; however, I have recently started a new character, on 75% difficulty, and I have turned the music off (when an enemy sees you, the music in-game changes to more intense music). This makes the game entirely more enjoyable, as well as much more difficult not having music to let you know when someone is coming. The absence of music allows you to also hear the minor noises in the game, from wind blowing and trees creaking in forests at night to footsteps creaping up on you in a cave.
The other major problem was the leveling-up system. In most rpgs, including the previous Elder Scrolls series, creatures did no level up with you. Games like those would punish players who carelessly or reckelessly wandered into high level zones, only to be destroyed by high level creatures. For Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda decided to try something new, that would seperate their game from the other rpgs. Who can really critique someone who tries new and innovative things? Bethesda even admitted the leveling system in Oblivion was not as good as planned, and they decided to go back to the standard leveling system.
While these two features may be somewhat negative, they do not at all bring down the game. One aspect that seemed to really please me was that, unlike previous Elder Scrolls installments, the environment itself seemed more realistic; that it was not so much a fantasy world as it was a beleivable world. The realisitc trees, shrubs, grasses, and landmasses made it seem that it was more from our world than from a fantasy world (Shivering Isles, on the other hand, is quite different!).
This was the very first game I bought for Xbox 360 when I bought it back in 2006, and for 5 months, was the only game I needed for it. For those who have not gotten the game yet, do so, and I recommend that you buy GoTY edition, so you can save space on the harddrive rather than downloading all the dlc for it. For me it was worth much more than $60, and is a steal now at its current price; it is a game that anyone can say, "I have played one of the greatest games of this generation, nay, even this century."