A game that sometimes feels bland due to its endeavor for sheer vastness, but nonetheless is an immense achievement.
User Rating: 9 | The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion X360
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an interesting game, one that was massively anticipated by many fans, including myself. An avid Player of Morrowind, the previous installment, I was expecting alot from this game, and for the most part, was not dissapointed. The first concept of Oblivion that will hit the player like a mack truck is the sheer size of the game. It is, in a word, impressive. Thousands of items, characters, quests, areas, and spells, all at your disposal. The physics in the game are excellent, one of the most addicting parts in my opinion- how fun is grabbing an axe off the wall and sending that annoying wood elf's dinner flying across his living room straight off his table, or dragging a corpse behind a rock to conceal it? Very fun. Even more well done is the way the physics are integrated into the combat- shields realistically work this time around, and swords sometimes clash in mid swing. Spells and ranged weaponry works very much like a generic FPS, which is a good thing- it's very fun to use. Everything for the most part reacts realistically and intelligently, thanks to a revamped AI engine. The skill system works very nicely, with the perks at certain intervals giving a real feeling of advancement, despite the constant loom of enemies that never really sink below your character thanks to a scaling system- which is, arguably, very annoying. Playing a single player RPG for three months should yield a little bit more than just being able to *do* different moves, you should feel as though you can crack anyone's skull in Tamriel. But alas, you simply progress for the sake of progressing, really. You'll never get to that point where you feel like a God in Oblivion, which to some may not matter, and to others may very much so.
For all its greatness and grandeur, however, I felt as though Oblivion was missing something, nothing tangible, but something that gave Morrowind such an incredible luster. Maybe it was the fact that you could go for a walk in that public park downtown and really see no difference in it from Oblivion's forests? That is a feat, in its own right- a testament to the game's realism. But some part of me wants something fresh and unique when I play a fantasy RPG, not a generic medieval world that looks exactly like Middle Earth. For all its greatness, why do we have to fight *bears* and *wolves* instead of giant dragons or horrid creatures that dwell in the canopies of the forests? I just feel as though, creatively, the game could have made itself more attractive and unique, but instead it settles for run of the mill. I have alot to say about Oblivion, but I don't have infinite time, so I'll sum it up as best as I can: This game is fun, plain and simple. It is interesting, and very next-gen, but in my opinion it lacks a real allure, it lacks something that really only belongs to it, unlike Morrowind which successfully created its own completely alien and beautiful universe. And lastly, there really doesn't feel like there's an incentive to get all powerful- mostly because within the context of the game- you never do. You'll never be able to take on a city full of guards, really. But if you're up for using your own imagination to supplement the games lack of it, then you'll find a very endearing RPG experience here. 
