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• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion -- page 2

• By Vicious Sid
• March 24, 2006 00:37 AM PST
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Sticks and Stones
In terms of down-and-dirty gameplay, Oblivion offers three primary schools of play. Combat-oriented players wear heavy-duty armor, wield massive swords and axes, and wade straight into the thick of battle. Stealth-focused players tend to avoid combat, take potshots with the bow and arrow, and bypass locks and security systems. Magic-oriented players can perform an enormous variety of tasks: fortifying their physical abilities, enchanting items or creatures, or hurling lighting and fire to inflict massive damage. In short, there's a play style for everyone.

Oblivion's hand-to-hand combat system is light years ahead of other role-playing games, including Morrowind, but it still comes up a bit short in places. Because the enemies prefer to swarm over you, you'll find that the Block skill is almost indispensable -- there's virtually no way to live without it. And though the basic hack-and-slash swordplay is viscerally satisfying, the simplistic enemy attack patterns grow stale in time. On the bright side, there are plenty of ways to leverage your melee abilities, from rapid slashing attacks to a formidable array of lunging strikes. If you get skilled enough, you can stagger, trip, or paralyze enemies, giving combat-focused players plenty of reason to practice their skills.

The stealth gameplay shows off a different side of Oblivion, and is more reminiscent of games like Thief: Deadly Shadows. Here, the enemy intelligence is a notch more realistic but still not up to the level of dedicated stealth games like Splinter Cell. But creeping through the shadows definitely has its advantages, and the new bow and arrow marksman interface is an enormous improvement over Morrowind.

Magic offers the most diverse lineup of abilities, and is divided into multiple categories: Destruction (fire, ice, lightning), Conjuration (magic weapons and pets), Restoration (healing and resistance), Alteration (shields and water-walking), Illusion (paralysis and concealment), Alchemy (magic potions), and Mysticism (reflection and absorption). You'll probably find yourself wishing that the designers had simplified this wide array of magic disciplines into three or four disciplines -- Mysticism, for instance, is of limited use outside of recharging Soul Gems.

Combat Fatigue
As a whole, Oblivion's combat controls respond well, though nailing the rhythm to blocking and aiming takes practice. Far more frustrating is the game's menu interface, which demand an unusual amount of effort from the player. A good example is the inventory screen, a beast of a menu that requires that you sift through page after page while searching for a particular item. Similarly, the hotkey system, which maps actions onto the directional pad, is functional but ungainly. It's hard to imagine that Bethesda couldn't have come up with a more streamlined solution for organizing in-game actions like spell casting and weapon swapping.

And though it's barely worth mentioning, the save system in Oblivion stinks. In our experience, the save/load interface scrambled the order of saved games, which made searching for the newest save file a trial-and-error process. And oddly, the game's auto-saving system seems to be inconsistent and erratic. Frequent, manual saving is highly advised.

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