• 12Oct 09

  Oblivion STINKS!

  I am so tired of hearing the same tired, old rhetoric! "Is it like Oblivion?" and similar dribble. ALL my friends have played that game, even the ones that cannot even truly appreciate it's genre. Let me tell you all something: That game (as far as gameplay goes)is the worst example of what an rpg is supposed to be about! I will be elaborating on my opinion shortly. First though, I must admit I enjoyed it after a fashion and to some extent as well. So I am just as guilty as the rest of you.

  I was in it for the story and immense world to play in I must confess, but I have since learned that those things can only hold a game together for so long before I start getting annoyed at the other things. The game play is what I am concerned with. And this blog is about just that: the game play. Now we all know what an RPG is. You make a character of your own design. You tweak it's statistics, race, face, hair, combat style,exc... The designers of the game hopefully made a rich and beautiful world for us to explore; with plenty of adventure, mischief and mayhem.

  The thing that really ticks me off to no end is that I played the game all the way through, and will never play it again.I got to somewhere around lv40ish with a melee based character (paladin motif.. sue me! ) with healing and protective spells. The way they designed this peice of crap is that you have to use your skills to level. Not only that, but you only get stronger with an ability when you use it repeatedly to raise it's level.Well, anyone who has played the game knows that playing a hybrid character in that game, and making it function right is very very difficult! If I encountered a gang of brigands (so to speak) and the situation warranted more use of my healing magic than my weapon, I would level up through my healing spells, as well as make those stronger. I am basically neglecting weapon skill in favor of more survival ability. Now, in theory this works fine. I become a healer instead of a "Knight". But, anyone who has ever played RPG's before this one knows what they want in a Paladin. I want decent damage, decent healing, and decent protective spells.

  Saying that brings me to another problem. How many people out there have played a character with the shield spell? Did you find yourself basically leveling through that spell? You gimp everything else because you neglected your fighting ability in favor of more defense. Trust me, I know this is not intentional. All we wanted was a character with a bit more survival ability, not to completely neglect our combat prowess! I found i was leveling all the time. So fast was my leveling process that I hit near 30 before the end of the main quest-line. But when I would look at my blade weapons skill... "Oh no! That SUCKS!". Throw some choice cursing in there and you pretty much get the idea of how pissed I was.

  Ok, so that's aspect one that annoys me about this game. The second thing I will complain about is the impossibility of playing any other character classes from melee. Yes I am saying it! You cannot play mages or ranger classes in this game without tearing your hair out! (at least on Xbox360). For rangers I say the big problem is the random hitches in frame rate (lag) we get when we are aiming up our shots. I found it almost impossible to track moving targets with a bow. I had to become a completely stealthy character; making sure I made sneak attacks often, and they were almost always one hit kills! Then when the other enemies attacked I would either have to hope I could track and shoot them before melee engagement (b/c all this time with ranged weapons made my blade skill poor), or I would have to run and hide somewhere until they went back to their patrols. I really hate exploiting these mechanics. That is not what I had in mind when i built my character for ranged combat. Maybe a one hit kill to weed out the weak, and then a few shots to kill the strongest one in the pack. Then, finally mopping up the last one with a melee kill. If I could have aimed during that fight I might have kept playing the ranger. Nah! I immediately thought of trying a mage.

  Magic.. Oh YES!... OH NO! Playing a mage in this game is painful and boring. For one, we run into the same skill leveling problem as any other class. The buffing spells seem to level up more often than the attack ones. Secondly, the attack spells don't do very much damage for their magicka cost, and that's IF you can even HIT an enemy. Nevermind that all the elemental spells for touch and target based attacks look exactly the same! Fireball at a lower level looks exactly the same as a fireball at a higher level. Yeah yeah, I know you can put an area effect on it. But, oops.. Now I have a spell with twice as much Magicka cost. Did any of you get tired of casting a high level fireball only to have it miss it's target? Remember the frustration of having half your magicka depleted? Well, I was determined to drag some replayability out of this peice of crap. So I did what we all do: fire at the monster again! OH.. MY.. GOODNESS! I look at the health on the monster tick away by a mere 1/4. "You have got to be kidding me," I thought. "That was a spell that exausted ALL MAGICKA WITH TWO SHOTS!?" The cursing at my TV screen ensued. I think I actually grabbed at my hair on that one.

  I felt cheated. It was such a huge, wondrous world with so much to offer, but mired by graphic hick-ups and shoddy game mechanics, that made alot of character choices unworkable. I have played many RPG's in my time since Final Fantasy II for SNES (North American version). I have played the really good ones where, "playing at your own pace," and "customization to your own unique playstyle," actually works and pays off! This game is not one of those games. Melee classes are the only classes that seem to work in it.

  I think the last thing I will discuss is the point of view. I mean the character point of view and the choice between first and third person perspective. Oh how i love this topic! I like third person perspective. However, I only like it when it is done right. First of all, why did these people design this perspective in this game with the camera orbiting the player's head? Could they not see that we can't see who we are shooting at? (yes I like to play every class in third person) Well, after realizing that third person would not be functional for ranged characters, I decided to keep playing those characters in first person... What a disappointment. All they would have had to do is make the camera orbit above the player's head.. Thats it! Just make the darn thing orbit above the player. Not to the side at the same level as the character's shoulder's (cough), like in Fallout 3. I won't bash that game at all really, but I have to play that one in first person as well, but that one at least feels like a shooter.

  The bottom line is an RPG should feel like an RPG. Make it hack and slash if you really must. Heck, I don't mind a good action RPG, but I believe if a game character has statistics, those statistics should work for the player. When I think back to playing Oblivion I think of a game that worked against me in every way. My spells should have hit my targets based on my statistics if the cost to use them was so high. My leveling process should not be counter productive to my "vision" of what I want to play as. Lastly, I should have full control of my environment, much in the same way a real person does. Nothing should hinder landing my hits or otherwise getting things done, unless it is an NPC trying to trump me up with a special skill, or exploiting my Line of sight. All in all I think Oblivion is trash. I wish people would stop glorifying it as a masterpiece, when it's bad points overshadow it's good ones so completely as to make it a game in it's genre mediocre at best.

  • Posted Oct 12, 2009 2:37 pm GMT
  • Category: Rant
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