Congrats, you got the joke. 

there were a few problems with camera/controls, but 98% percent of the game is not affected by them. 

my preorder just shipped from play.com a few hours ago, woooooooooooo! So check it out tomorrow / friday if you get the chance! 

Mine also, due tommorrow. It will be most satisfying. 

thank you, zwiffle! 

I know when I usually review anything I resort to taking the piss but I thought a more reasoned 'first-impressions' was deserved.

Oblivion starts by letting you create your character. This is a game in itself. The face generation is powered by 'FaceGen' software that allows you to tweak almost any part of a 3d face model but the ability to import your own face from a few photos (as seen in FaceGen retail) was missing.

It would have been useful if Bethesda gave us some template faces as most of the randomly generated ones are just too ugly to use as a base. Also, would it have been hard to include more than say 8 hair-styles per race? Just 2 or 3 styles that didn't look totally stupid would have been a plus. I'd prefer it if my Spellsword didn't look like Fabio, thanks.

Three hours later and I've designed my character. Whoosh! I'm in a cell. Holy fuck, those cobblestones look amazing! My god. Those are the sexiest bricks I've ever seen. Sometimes the beauty of the Oblivion engine astounds you, and I spent a goot 20 minutes just looking around the tiny cell. Havok physics is here for the ride as I found out while throwing bones at some shackles hanging from the ceiling. This is a big improvement on Morrowind, where the lack of any believable physics distanced the player from the items in the world.

Fast forward a little, and the Emperor is breaking me out of jail. The game introduces you to combat by giving you a gentle battering as you try and escape, courtesy of goblins and other ruffians.

My verdict on combat so far? Improved greatly from Morrowind, but not perfect. You can block and charge opponents, but somehow it still seems a little detatched. Spellcasting is a lot simpler thanks to the extremely easy keyboard shortcut system, and Magicka regenerates pretty quickly. Morrowind had me playing a warrior character mainly because I couldn't be arsed to bother with spells, but in Oblivion they seem easy to use and pretty effective.

There are lots of nice new touches, and many things which correct problems with previous games. One example is lockpicking: in Morrowind you get out your lockpick and click a few times, or many times if it's you're a bad thief or it's a tough lock. Oblivion introduces a mini game where you have to push back the pins in the lock one by one, much like in the real world.

The most annoying thing in Morrowind was travel. The mission says 'go to this small village up north', but that could mean you have to take a transport to another city, on to another town, take a boat to village X and then get the mage's guild to teleport you there. Not fucking fun. In Oblivion, the fast travel option is back! Seen as far back as Arena, you just click the name of a town on your map and you go right there.

Also, you have a shiny compass that points you towards your next waypoint... useful, if like me, you wasted too much of your life in Morrowind trying to find some asshole in some guild in Vivec.

more likes/gripes:
The graphics in outdoor areas are spectacular at times. There's a town (maybe Chorral) where there's a big chapel, and all around it is long grass blowing in the wind, and trees with hanging branches. At the right time of day the sunlight is pink, and with the HDR enabled, everything glows. That was the most amazing in-game graphics I've seen, period.

The 3rd-person camera sucks. A lot. It bobs slowly about like the cameraman is standing up in a canoe. Bring back the Morrowind camera.

The guards can be ridiculous. I got chased down and thrown in jail for (accidentally) stealing a shitty wood cup worth less than one gold piece. Piss off, guys.

Horses, yay or neigh? Sorry. So sorry. Pretty useful for running about the wilderness, but not very well animated, and the control is a bit weird. Might just take getting useful though.

Voice-acting: it's just rubbish. A lot of the dialogue is pish too. It's clear the Bethesda team aren't very witty guys. Why not get Patrick Stewart in it for longer and give his character a bit more depth?

All in all, it's early days, but i can tell this is going to be extremely addictive gaming. It's got it's faults, and it crashes a bit, but all in all it seems to have improved on Morrowind in a big way. Graphically it's hard to fault Oblivion.

As your life in an Elder Scrolls game gets better, your real (social) life gets worse. Onward, towards Oblivion! 

The 3rd-person camera sucks. A lot. It bobs slowly about like the cameraman is standing up in a canoe. Bring back the Morrowind camera.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=73

lol, i don't even have the game yet and i'm looking at mods... T_T

:P 

Totally agree with starbuck, although I find the lock picking was annoying but I soon got used to it. (possible spoiler maybe) Speak to someone in the Leyawiin mages guild about a shrine ( you must be lvl 10 to speak to shrine ), then may your lockpicking needs be forever fulfilled...

Ive got 49hrs played so far and have completed darkbrotherhood, thieves guild, fighting arena, some fighter guild missions and can enter the last part of the game but am holding back as im only level 15 atm and wasnt sure if the game ended if I completed it.

I highly recommend this game to everyone (I didnt particularly get hooked on morrowwind). Oh yea, i'm also a vampire!!

Is it me or is Martin, Sean Bean. 

also the game doesn't take 49 hrs and could be done alot quicker but Im loving faffing around the place, and at least 10hrs I was furiously masturbating over the graphics. 

ah sweet, cheers necros. I'll definitely use that. I played 3rd person most of the time in Morrowind, and I don't usually whine about camera controls or anything, but this is just... SO bad.

Gib, yeah it is Sean Bean :D
Oh and I've probably notched up at least 10 hours in that manner too. 

and at least 10hrs I was furiously masturbating over the graphics.

Yeah but have they turned it into a minigame? 

you may want to peruse the addons list on http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/
there are some other addons that look to fix technical aspects of the game (i don't know how relevant or good they are as i can't use them yet, i'm just going by the descriptions).

for example, http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=129 reduces the range at which guards can 'hear' crimes, supposedly making it more realistic.

some other addons are along the same line-- tweaks that may or may not unbalance gameplay. i'd need to have played the original game to be able to tell you though. but check it out, anyway.

others are purely cosmetic (one adds a bunch of different coloured eyes to choose from) 

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=21 is supposed to help smooth out outdoor movement by removing the loading screen... apparently it only really works if you have a good machine though because the game still does pause, it's just not abruptly flashing the screen all the time. 

hdjsd 

Anyone have this? Complete Edition came out yesterday, has IL-2 + IL-2: Forgotten Battles, Ace expansion, Pacific Fighters... so you can fly for USA, Russia, Germany, Britain, tonsa missions/campaigns...

http://www.pacific-fighters.com/en/

http://www.gogamer.com has it imported in USA, since it's only being released in Europe. But hey it's $35 DVD, there is no Starforce.

Here's some more info/screenshots:
http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16507 

got it, too. some impressions after two days of playing:
graphics are nice, indeed. but wtf? it's running so slow on my machine, even with reduced details. what i dislike is the spectecular rendering or what it is called - the shininess of everything. something like this works in environments like doom (base), but looks silly on natural components like stone or wood. i set it down to the minimum.
with all the moving grass and trees it looks much more pleasant than morrowind's wastelands. a pity i can't set details higher to have less 'popping up' of them at short distances.
fast travel is ok, though at the same time diminishes the immersion a little i think. well, one still has to discover places before it's possible to travel to them of course. will probably get used to it.

i am somewhat annoyed by the controls, as the cannot be customized the way i want - at least it's impossible to change the mouse configuration by regular means. also, i have to change the keyboard settings everytime i start the game. :(
what really sucks is the translation of my localized version. the voice acting is ok, but the text..! a lot of words are still in english; sometimes sentences are a mixture of both languages. some spells have the wrong names, too, e.g. a healing spell has been called 'fireball' by mistake, and so on...
much of the text (because of the awkward, way too large font) are cut off the screen, or abbreviated in an incomprehensible manner. fortunately, it can be changed in the .ini.

i haven't played very far yet, but still seen some beautiful places and had some very original quests, like the painted forest and the dream world. it has greatly improved on morrowind, also in terms of lifeliness, even though it still feels a little artificial in parts... maybe i'm just biased and spoiled by gothic. 

e.g. a healing spell has been called 'fireball' by mistake, and so on... good god o.0 maybe just pick up the english version unless you have a hard time with it? that sounds really irritating :\

and yeah, you need some pretty hefty hardware to run the game at max.

i have an r850xt and it still struggles at times in outdoor areas with lots of grass (although interiors run perfectly fine)

i'm really liking the game so far, but it's irritating me the way monsters are spawned...

i liked in morrowind how there'd be areas with monsters that would completly destroy me, actually making me scared to go there until i had leveled up a bit and gotten some gear...

now, no matter where you go, the monsters you meet pretty much match your level, so that there is no real danger of going anywhere.

i ended up downloading a mod that changes the leveled lists so that high level mobs spawn irregardless of level. :P

also, i found fast travel sort of made horses redundant. having a mount is cool, but i fail to see the point of it when i can just click and be there instantly. i ended up downloading a mod to be able to store items on my horse, which actually now makes them useful, and not a burden (getting attacked when mounted is a pain, as the dismount animation is about 1.5 seconds long, and you are getting hit during that time (and using spells is less effective because they are in melee range by the time you can cast them)).
it would have been really cool if there was a different, faster dismount animation for when you are in combat.

also, dodging enemy spells is ridiculously easy from someone who's played quake for... well, too long. ended up downloading a mod which increases the speed of the cast projectiles by 250%.. now it's a lot more difficult, and makes the 'speed' attribute a lot more important (so you can move faster to avoid the shots). unfortunatly, it also increases the speed of my own cast projectiles... so hitting things is pretty easy now.
i wish casting was more involved... like in WoW, there are two different types, channeled spells and casts (there's also instant casts, which function the way oblivion has them now). for normal casts, when you get hit, you get delayed in your casting, and if you move, the cast is interrupted. (most spells have a set duration that they take to cast, ie: 2.5 seconds), so if you get hit, you can be delayed from 0.5 to 1 seconds, which adds a bit of strategy to casting.
channeled spells work in the opposite manner. typically they are dots that will continually damage, and if you are hit, you loose the duration of the spell.

you can also be interupted while casting, causing your casting in that school to be shut down for a short duration.

as it is, with a fireball spell with explosive effect, i feel more like i'm playing quake with a rocket launcher... :P i get into melee range, try to trigger a melee attack, and back off quickly to fire. go go shambler trick. :P


the melee system is more interesting though... you don't miss now if you are in range, unlike morrowind where the computer would randomly decide if you miss or not.

now, you loose stamina when you swing equivalent to how heavy the weapon is, so heavier, more powerful weapons take a larger chunk from your stamina (which recharges over time). plus you can do interesting power attacks to knockdown, disarm, stun or paralyze enemies as you become more proficient in combat, which adds a little something to melee. also, for some more powerful monsters, it's usually best to dodge attacks altogether so there's no shortage of running around, and no standing around like a zombie clicking the attack key. 

i am somewhat annoyed by the controls, as the cannot be customized the way i want - at least it's impossible to change the mouse configuration by regular means. also, i have to change the keyboard settings everytime i start the game.

I was confused by how to configure mouse controls when I first started too; I'm glad I'm not the only one.

When you change your controls, just click the arrows to the left/right of "Keyboard" and it will switch to the Mouse configuration screen.

I'm not sure why it's not keeping your changes--that's really weird. You could try manually editing the .ini (in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion), but that's going to be a bitch since it uses hex values for everything. (wtf)

I'm loving the game, although, yeah, it does have some warts. The autolevelling loot and monsters sucks donkey balls and takes all the challenge out of being a newbie, and all the satisfaction out of being godlike. I'm running a mod to fix that, and a few other mods.

My current mods:

Sagerbliv's Monster Balance Fixes (comes bundled with a version of Tom Servo's loot fix).

A mod that makes traps much deadlier.

Dejunai's Harvest Mod that makes plants and mushrooms and shit actually go away when you pick them and then respawn when they're ready for harvest again.

Khajitt and Vampire night-eye mods that change that ability to a toggle rather than a fucking spell you need to cast over and over (dunno what the hell Bethesda was thinking).

A mod that reduces the font size of your inventory so you can see more than, oh, five or so things at once without scrolling like a madman.

A mod that makes it easier to drag around ragdoll bodies and put them in obscene and embarrassing positions.

A birthsigns mod that makes bonuses from your birthsign stack on top of the 100 max (e.g. Steed birthsign makes 120 speed possible).

A mod that changes the screaming green look of the Light spell to something a bit more subtle.

Oh yeah, and the "Juvenile Mod" that adds a "Show Me Your Tits!" option to most common dialogue trees. When you pick it, the character looks surprised and removes (unequips) their shirt for a short time. It never gets old.

I was in the hospital last week for major surgery and can't play for much more than a couple of hours without feeling shitty and having to lay down, but I'm loving the game. The dungeons are huge and cool, the game is gorgeous for the most part, and the new melee system is really fun. 

I'll write more when I get the time, but atm I'll just say I'm ~15 hours into it and digging it so far :)

I'll repeat what others have said with regard to the retarded auto-leveling of monsters; I don't really understand the bloody point of having a levelling up system when the monsters are gonna auto-adjust to provide the same challenge no matter what.

Overall though, the good outweighs the bad quite substantially :} 

Best wishes in healing! I hope everything is in order now, except for the stitches. 

Thanks, I appreciate it. :)
I had just under a foot of small intestine removed (long-term Crohn's disease damage), and the rest splunged back together. The new(ish) plumbing does seem to be in order, but I'm not going to be doing any sprinting anytime soon.

[/off-topic] 

the mods that fix leveled monsters rock... i love it now as i might run into some crazy ass ogre or other high powered beast thing, and spend a good amount of time trying to take it down, instead of dropping the same wolf in 4 hits all the time. :P

god damn though... the minotaur looks cheesy. 9_9 

and i think a map with architecture similar to the ayleid ruins would totally rock... however is responsible for that style is cool. ^_^ 

I'm rather reluctant to mod the game before I've finished the quest as the designers intended (yes, I know, that may take a while :P), although I appreciate that the goal of completing the game is somewhat secondary to the experience of just exploring the world and doing your own thing. As I said, I've played around 15 hours and I've barely scratched the surface regarding the main quest; I haven't even done the bit where you meet Sean Bean yet. 

I've been playing the first one in the series on my dad's laptop, how many levels are there supposed to be in this ?

at the end of the second mission, it tells me "Congratulations, oyu have finished blah blah. Please visit the website for more details."

I check my install folder, there's sound, texture and music files for upto six missions but the levels folder only contains files for only 2 missions. It's a 1 Cd version, I got it off the net, but it doesnt seem to indicate that there's multiple discs or anything.

Anyone else played it ?