John Yossarian said:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=564780
This is hilarious. Someone posts a negative review and they all freak out. Funny how the mods haven't closed that one even though it's nothing but bitching and cursing.
That review IS stupid:
Reviewer said:
You'll want to play your music during the game, but when you play music you can barely hear the characters, so you have to read the subtitles. I don't play games to read. If I wanted to read, I would pick up a book. They didn't balance the sound well at all.
I wonder what he would think about Planescape.
You know that story I talked about? That's almost it. For some reason the emperor is killed, and for some reason that causes portals to Oblivion to open. That makes no sense, though. I mean, if I killed George Bush that wouldn't make portals to Iraq appear in my front yard, it would just get me arrested for murder and terrorism, but that's beside the point. You have to close these portals while getting some other guy on the throne. For some reason, though, he needs an amulet, which you have to track down at the same time. What do amulets have to do with becoming an emperor anyway? Did Tony Blair need to wear a ring to become Prime Minister of Europe? I know it's supposed to be a fantasy, but it still makes no sense.
Prime Minister of
Europe?
Which also shows that, in his opinion, reading is teh hard. If he read only one book, "The Amulet of Kings", he would have understood that it made sense. If he read any other books besides that, he would have understood that it was crap, but for a different reason.
Anyway, along the way you can join a bunch of “guilds†that have you do jobs for them, but you don't really get much for doing them, and the quests are all the same. Every Dark Brotherhood (one guild) quest has you kill someone, for example. It's pretty unrealistic how little variety there is. I doubt the only thing a mob member would do is drop people in rivers. They would have variety, something the guild quests for some reason don't have.
Now, the guilds did suck, and the quests were repetitive, but just what the fuck was the Assassins Guild supposed to have you do? Pick flowers? That's the Mages Guild's job.
Also, what exactly ARE the Elder Scrolls? They're mentioned every now and then, but are they really important enough to have a series named after them?
You'd think that, since he is a reviewer, he should either try to find out more about that matter, or shut up. That's the first question in the Lore FAQ on the forums.
Also, the sound effects aren't great either. When you put away your sword, you'll hear a metal-against-metal sound. Yet the sheath isn't metal, and some swords aren't even sheathed. When you drop a potion on the ground, you hear a sound that sounds like rock-against-rock, even though the potion is glass. When you hit a tree with your sword, it makes a metallic clanking sound instead of a wood-like sound effect. In real life, if you were in a forest, cut down a tree, and heard it fall but the sound was the sound of rock-on-rock, you would be creeped out and think you were in some kind of Truman Show starring Jim Carrey. You would no longer be engaged in the task of cutting down the tree. The poor sound effects take you out of the game and may as well scream out “THIS ISN'T REAL!†Fun.
Strange, I never really noticed that the sounds weren't right, much less scream out "OMG TIHS ISNT REEL!!!1". Again, I wonder what he'd think about the games where there is a single sound effect for using objects.
The graphics definitely look nice, but they aren't that realistic. There are all kinds of different races, but none of them look like humans. They don't even seem proportional. When you go to make a character, you can't get them to look real either. Actually, why do you get to craft your character. When you have a baby, you can't just choose how he'll look. You have to get expensive plastic surgery. What happens for most of the game is that the grpaphics look good, but the make no sense. For example, there are nice looking streets, but no cars, carrages, or anything else that would necessitate a street. You can look into the sky and see moons, but they're IN FRONT OF THE CLOUDS. Also, your character is static. He never changes. Dive under water and his hair stays the same. If the YMCA pool didn't affect your hair, you would either be wearing a ton of product or you would sue the Y for putting crazy chemicals in the water. Is the water in this area polluted or something? Also, the towns are nice, but almost all of the wilderness is the same. Hills, trees, dirt, and grass. That's it. And maybe some caves. The point is they didn't put a ton of effort into the outside areas.
The elves and orcs don't look like humans. Right...
As for customizing your character, how on Earth can someone complain about that?
And your hair doesn't get wet after swimming. Yep, that's why Oblivion sucks.
Let's talk about weapons, shall we? You can get things like bows and arrows, swords, short swords, long swords, and axes, but nothing better than that. That means no guns, no missles, etc. Wouldn't the giant, menacing creatures be easier to beat with heat-seeking missles? This game takes place in 4000 something, and they've gone that long without inventing those kind of things? I know it's a fantasy, but civilizations used concrete before the Romans invented it, so why couldn't guns and missles be invented in this realm?
I don't think this requires any comments...
There's also the issue of the camera. You can play in first or third person, but in third person the camera gets really weird and you can barely move. For some reason, you can only see the back of your character, though considering how horrible they look that's probably a good thing. Still, in
The camera gets really weird? Didn't happen to me, or to 50% of the Oblivion players who play it in third person. And you can see the front of your character, although this requires, OMG, reading the controls page. "Still, in" indeed
I know that may seem shocking, but you really can't replay this much. After you finish all the quests for the guilds and beat the quest, what else is there to do? They say you can play it gain, but that's stupid. If a great band came out with one album, and everyone said they should make another, they wouldn't say “listen to our first one again,†Yet that seems like what Bethesda (the company that made this game) thinks. It took them 5 years to make this game, and all we could do while waiting was replay Morrowind, which had even less replay value to it. Why does it take them so long to make these games anyway? Ratchet and Clank has a new game every year. So does Madden, Burnout, Pokemon, and Mario Party. So why does Bethesda take years and years?
Of course after you do everything in the game, there's no replay value. But the point of replaying is that you do something different each time. "all we could do while waiting was replay Morrowind"? He said he only "knew someone who played Morrowind". And yes, Bethesda should definetly release a game each year.
Everyone claims this game is great, but it isn't. It's repetitive, unrealistic, and poorly balanced. There's no replay value to be found, and too many bad things. The Elder Scrolls 5 might fix this stuff, but it probably won't come out until the Xbox 720 is released. Until then, we're left with something mediocre and lame. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion gets a 3 out of ten. That score is not an average or anything, but does it need to be? No.
Yes, it isn't great, it is repetitive, unrealistic and poorly balanced. But not why you think it is.