2006 – Game of the Year
Our pick for the best game of 2006
Tags: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Categories: DS Features, Features, GBA Features, Game Cube Features, PC Features, PS2 Features, PS3 Features, PSP Features, Wii Features, Xbox 360 Features, Xbox Features
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jan 17th, 2007
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion succeeds on so many different levels it’s staggering. The graphics are absolutely jaw-dropping, with astoundingly beautiful natural scenery, intricate structures, and wonderfully-detailed characters that succeed in showing us why everyone’s making such a fuss about “high definition”, as well as giving us our first good idea of what the next generation has in store for us.
The amount of freedom presented to the gamer is virtually unprecedented – you can essentially do anything you want. The quest to find the assassinated Emperor’s long-lost heir boring you? You can explore the wilderness in search of monsters to fight and treasure to hoard, help the local townsfolk with their problems, take on jobs for the local guilds, look for plants to use in your potions, sneak into people’s homes and steal their stuff, or even go on a homicidal rampage and kill everyone you see. The game even encourages your interests by building your skills based on what you’re doing – steal a lot and you’ll become a good thief, use a lot of magic and you’ll be an expert magician.
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What’s more, the game manages to be both tremendously vast and intricately detailed at the same time. Just exploring the entire map could take countless hours, and yet seemingly everywhere there’s some interesting surprise to be found. What’s more, it’s rare that you see characters with behavior routines this intricately designed – they all eat, sleep, have daily errands to run, and react to you based on what you’re doing and how well they like you.
Perhaps most importantly, while one could argue that much of the game is just “Morrowind, but bigger and better”, Oblivion actually manages to be user-friendly, a lack of which was arguably Morrowind’s greatest flaw. You’re always given an idea where to go next, all of your objectives are neatly organized, and you could easily take a quest early in the game, leave it to do other things and take on other quests, and come back 100 hours later to pick up right where you left off. Plus, the option of instantly traveling to any major map location, as well as minor ones you’ve been to before, eliminates a tremendous amounts of walking and makes the game move by much more swiftly.
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Sure, the game has a few bugs, and there was that whole Horse Armor debacle, but by and large these minor issues don’t change the fact that Oblivion is one of the most amazing, ambitious, addictive, and above all, fun videogames ever made, and we feel that scarcely anything we saw in the last year came even close to the wonder, majesty, and brilliance of Bethesda Softworks and Take Two Interactive’s epic title.
Here’s what some of our staff had to say:
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Jake McNeill, Editor-in-Chief
Even for me, spending over a hundred hours on just one game is crazy. I simply don’t have the time to do that. But this year, I did, and enjoyed every minute of it. I know it can’t just be me – my girlfriend has put in about 200, so I know there’s something magical here. And why is it that after 100+ hours of gameplay I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what Oblivion has to offer? Plus, with even more content still being released (including the recent Nights of the Nine expanded content and the rumored upcoming Shivering Isles expansion) I may never see the end of this game. And you know what? That would be just fine, because I’m still just as thrilled about it as the day it came out.
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Craig Hansen, Senior Editor
Not since Final Fantasy VII came out on the original PlayStation can it be said that the release of one title has so affected how one perceives an entire hardware platform. While the Xbox 360 had some nice launch titles, there was not really a single title in the initial launch lineup that really defined the platform, especially with Halo 3, Forza Motorsport 2, Blue Dragon, Gears of War and a bunch of other top 360 titles delayed from lauch for at least a year and, in most cases, more.
I’d played Morrowind on the PC, but I never expected the “life immersion” experience that Oblivion delivered by this must-own title. Over the summer, it consumed the life of my roommate so much, I almost never got to play my 360 myself. Since my marriage, even my wife has been consumed with the title and my own gaming hours – on Oblivion or anything else – have dwindled. It’s a game that can capture even folks who don’t consider themselves gamers, and take over their lives, sometimes bordering on the edge of “to an unhealthy degree.” My wife tells me more about her Oblivion exploits than her personal life some nights! But it’s a passion we both share and between us we’ve logged over 150 hours so far and see no end in sight. Some folks estimate the game has 500 hours to it, before you’ve been everywhere and done everything. I believe it, and we can’t wait for the expansion packs to make this game seem even more endless than it already is.
Daniel Pelfrey – Editorial Director
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I don’t buy games. Not because I don’t like them or because every game I want I get free. Neither is true. I just never have time to play the games I want. I purchased Gears of War, but it sits still sealed, as does Tomb Raider Legend, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and a number of other games. I did, however, purchase Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and played it. As a matter of fact, I turned down several “good” review games just so that I could have time to play Oblivion. For a person in my position, that’s a big deal.
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What makes this game different? It’s large scale map? The depth of character creation and interaction? The storyline that sits there waiting for you starting at 5 hours of play or 50? The graphics? In short, yes. This is one of the most immersive games I have ever played, one that will most likely prevent me from playing a lot of other games for a long time, and I don’t mind that.
Oh yeah, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun too!
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Tags: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jan 17th, 2007 and is filed under DS Features, Features, GBA Features, Game Cube Features, PC Features, PS2 Features, PS3 Features, PSP Features, Wii Features, Xbox 360 Features, Xbox Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
