I just finished a half hour of Oblivion, a game I haven't touched in years and for good reason. I hate Oblivion! I hate hate hate hate it. Why? Let me go back and tell you a tale.
About a year before Skyrim came out, I was talking with a Gamestop employee down in Easton. He asked me if I would like to preorder Skyrim. I said I didn't know anything about the Elder Scrolls, I was more interested in the developer's, Bethesda, other works: Fallout 3. He told me the Elder Scrolls were similar to the Fallout games. He claimed that the Elder Scroll games boasted large worlds filled with treasure, enemies and adventure. I was immediately excited by his statement. Another world like Fallout? I had to get my hands on Skyrim. The next day I preordered Skyrim at a local Gamestop and started my search for the previous entries in the series. I have a policy, I don't play the newest game unless I get my hands on the older games. This only applies if I can get my hands on the previous ones, obviously I didn't get the previous Fallout games. In any case, after weeks of searching, I finally found a copy of Oblivion for the PS3. I paid $40 and headed home to start a new series.
The first thing I noticed about Oblivion was that the graphics were subpar compared to Fallout 3, but I had expected this. Oblivion was several years older, this was the case with all the older games I had bought. The second thing I noticed was that Oblivion was a hack and slash game. Swords and bows replaced guns and grenades. The third thing was the landscape. A lush land filled with forests and ruins replaced a barren, radiated wasteland.
Unfortunately, that is where the niceties end, now I'm going to rip into this game. The first time I created a stealth character, to my ire, I am more of a brawling character. So making a stealth character when I dive head-first into a fight isn't a good idea. Today I'm have a bit more strategy but back then I sucked. I started the game over and created a fighting character. Everything was going smoothly until I got bitten by a vampire. Guess what happens when you get bitten by a vampire. All of a sudden, people started to avoid me or scream at me. I couldn't walk in daylight which cut down on my travel ability. Thankfully, a quest appeared that would let me cure my disease. I headed to an old lady's house and she told me how to cure my disease. She told me I needed the ashes of a powerful vampire, garlic which took me forever to find (I didn't know houses had garlic), blood grass which only grows in dangerous areas, and my "favorite," nightshade, a plant that haunts me to this day.
I spent hours trying to find this plant, I had no clue where it grew or what it looked like. After hours of exploration, I threw up my hands and looked up the location of the elusive flower. At last, I found the flower...in the exact opposite direction I was going. Now I knew where the flower was but I was still a vampire. I had to hide in caves until the sun went away. Even when I found the plant I had frustrations. The game randomly selects whether or not you will succeed or fail in harvesting the plant. After a frustrating experience in finding the flower, I headed back to the old lady's home for the next ingredient only to be greeted with a glitch. The stupid game wouldn't let me continue my quest. I looked up the quest online and found that this was a common glitch found in the game. I decided to call Bethesda and see if they could help me. They said there was nothing they could do.
Now that really grinds my gears, why release a game with such a horrible glitch in it??? I could only do one thing, I deleted my character. Hours of work gone in seconds. And since then I have never touched Oblivion until today. I still bought Skyrim and was extremely pleased with it. I recently finished the game. I'm actually filled with a bit of melancholy. I don't know what to play next, I think I want to play another long game, like Grand Theft Auto or something. Something rich in story and gameplay.
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