Please Rate this Review: Elder Scrolls 4

Tenkage · 06-01-2010, 03:11 PM

Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion.

Hello Tenkage here, or as I’m more commonly known on the internet as Ten-K. I’m here to start on my maiden voyage as a game critic and I figured I start with one of my favorite RPGS. Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion, or more commonly known as Oblivion.

HIGH: The large area where I could just explore the game.

LOW Mostly the glitches within the game.

WTF The NPCs are funny as they have a lack of voice actors making them go from sickly, to intelligent all within the same conversation. A bit humorous to say the least.

To those who did not know about Oblivion, the game is a role-playing game developed by the gaming company Bethesda. Having played the previous game Elder Scrolls 3, Morrowind for my old Xbox, I felt a sense of nostalgia in the sandbox sequel. The feeling is just hard to describe when I play the game; it is almost like I am the main character, hacking away at twenty goblins. Now I worked hard to get everything right within this review, so feel free to point out mistakes.

The story starts you off in an imperial dungeon where you create your character from ten different races. Oddly enough you are not given the reason why you are imprisoned so I decided to pretend I was in jail for public indecency. After being mocked by a fellow inmate the Emperor and his guards walk in trying escape a cult and he sees the player. Long story short, he says you are apart of some destiny, he is going to die and he does in the end. Prior to his death he gave you a special amulet and instructions to find his long lost son as he is now the rightful heir to the throne. After escaping the sewers and getting a look at the wonderful environment it is at this point you get to decide where to go.

Being a sandbox game the player has no need to follow the main quest, it is entirely possible to go around the world, do every other side quest and completely ignore the main quest. Of course by the time you return to the main quest you will find it a little harder. By a little more like twenty dremora trying to kill you harder. The game unlike other role-playing games including Morrowind has an interesting engine where not only can you level up but so can the enemies. You could go into a cave at level one and face only rats, only to come back fifteen levels later to find the rats replaced by bears, and trolls.

Leveling up is also different from other role-playing games, in other games, you kill an enemy, you gain some experience, wash rinse repeat until you level up. In this game you are governed by a set of skills, each skills plays a role in the game, like blade skills is handling swords or daggers, sneak is pretty obvious, acrobatics for jumping higher. Depending on how you create your character, by leveling up the skills, a few examples below show how to level up a few skills.

Blade = Slash up a lot of goblins

Sneak = Keeping sneaking

Acrobatics = Jumping around

By leveling up the skills your class is good in, you will level up, meaning more magic, more carrying capacity, more health and so on.

Looking away from the game play, I want to look at the story. The story of the Elder Scrolls series is pretty much the same, Daedra wants to take over the land, some guy (You) is asked to save the land, kicks a lot of but, saves the day and everyone celebrates until the next game.

Some may think that is a pretty clichéd game, but I think the plot works. Oblivion makes many references to Morrowind in the forms of characters talking to each other, some weapons veterans may recognize, or even a few familiar characters (I’m looking at you Bighead)

The music of the game is wonderfully composed but I feel it is a tad limited, I hear the same music flair up when an enemy is after me, be it a dremora with a large axe or a simple one hit, one kill mud crab who just noticed me. Personally I would have put in different music for different scenarios, but that’s my opinion. Other then that, the music does seem to match the land, a sorta Medieval styled music if you will.

The main quest isn’t the only story within the game, within the game are four factions to join, Fighter’s Guild, Mage’s Guild, Thieves Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood. To explain what each does I decided to put it into a small chart.

Fighter’s Guild: Mercenary’s, your quest is to stop a rival group from taking all the jobs and causing trouble.

Mage’s Guild: Mage’s (of course), the main quest is to stop an evil Necromancer from destroying the land

Thieves Guild: Well Thieves, basically your missions are stealing stuff at least until the last heist which is a doozy of a mission.

Dark Brotherhood: Assassins, they worship a dark god and goddess, Sithis and the Night Mother Respectively, I personally enjoy these quests for the stealth and fighting combo of missions.

How many hours can an average player put into the game, well depends on how a person plays. If they just want the Achievements, I would say about eight hours to do every quest line to get the achievements. For a role-player like me, well my record is over 50 hours on one guy. I’m not joking.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via Gamestop as my first Xbox 360 game and reviewed on the Xbox 360 Approximately 120 hours was devoted to single-player modes (completed at least 15 times) no multiplayer.

Parents: The game was rated T but changed to M as the graphics of zombies and crypts can be a bit intense, and the spider daedras and the fact the plants in the world of Oblivion can attack you, can be unnerving.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing: The game provides subtitles and the rumble feature will alert you if you are hit by an enemy.
My final thoughts on the game would have to be an almost perfect game. I feel some of the glitches, being audio or just the game can hold it back. The quests are fun, I can role-play my character to being just an assassin who uses nothing but a knife, and the landscape is so big that I’ve yet to visit every cave in the game.
My rating would have to be an 8.5/10
Compared to other role-playing games this isn’t the best but it did get game of the year edition for a reason. Buy it as if you rent it you will not be able to get everything out of the game.

I’m Ten-K hope you see me in the future.

FarmerBlaire815 · 06-03-2010, 02:26 PM

Liked the review, well written and touched on all the points of the game I liked (my playing time on it is ridiculous), except for a couple of grammatical errors I thought it was overall great, thumbs up from me.

(can't remember all of the errors but at one point you write 'skills' instead of 'skill'.)

Look forward to reading more of your reviews! :-D

Tenkage · 06-03-2010, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FarmerBlaire815

Liked the review, well written and touched on all the points of the game I liked (my playing time on it is ridiculous), except for a couple of grammatical errors I thought it was overall great, thumbs up from me.

(can't remember all of the errors but at one point you write 'skills' instead of 'skill'.)

Look forward to reading more of your reviews! :-D

Thanks, that made my day

jea · 08-24-2010, 03:09 AM

I would recommend you go through this article and proofread a little more. There are a few typos and spelling errors I caught on the first read-through ("apart" instead of "a part", "but" instead of "butt", "flair" instead of "flare"). Also, you kind of breeze through a couple subjects that really deserve closer attention. About halfway through you say "Some may think that is a pretty clichéd game, but I think the plot works." Go into more detail here. This is your chance to take on some of the criticisms that have been leveled at this game, as well as to tell us what the game experience was like for you; tell us why you feel the way you do.

By the way, I adore Oblivion, in spite of its flaws. I really need to get back to that game.

Robin Ashe · 09-28-2010, 05:45 PM

I liked the content, it was accurate, and everything you said was reflected in my own experiences playing the game, although I felt you were too generous with the score, but since you liked it, fair enough.

The writing style is a bit hard to read, since you write the way one would speak. There are a number of semantic and syntactic errors that crop up (if you want, I can go through with a fine toothed comb, it's always easier to have someone else proof read than to do it yourself, as you know exactly what you mean).