Review Oblivion lubbed by GamesFirst

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

<a href="http://www.gamesfirst.com/">GamesFirst</a> has <a href="http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=1264">a review</a> of <A href="Http://www.elderscrolls.com">TES4: Oblivion</a> as well. I didn't see a score there, but I didn't really look too hard. Scores are pretty arbitrary things anyway. The reviewer recommends the game to any serious gamer, so I guess that's the score. In turn, I'll respond to that by questioning the reviewer's manhood. That aside, clip:
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<blockquote>Secondly, the game can be hard. And this is almost the exact opposite kind of difficulty we "enjoyed" in Morrowind. The developers made a sloping difficulty curve so that inexperienced gamers can jump right into the main quest, when they really should be doing side quests for a while first. This means that no matter what level you are, the enemies you face are always equally matched. That's great for the noobs, but what about level 13 beasts like myself? I don't want to find myself getting stomped by little dinosaurs in the main quest when I've just taken command of all four guilds in the game! Sheesh. I just killed the listener of the Dark Brotherhood, along with most of his advisors and bodyguards - why do I have to struggle with Clanfears?! You'd think my Longsword of Pain would kill the stupid dino with one swipe. But no. It's a real shame when you're more than 40 hours into a game and start having real troubles. Continuous challenges are good, but there should be some beasts we can walk through with no problem once we're the most afeared whatever in Tamriel.</blockquote>
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It is a rather silly dynamic. It's almost like an RTS where while you build up, the AI is building up at the same time. Of course, in an RTS, there's a decent reason why the enemy is building up which isn't the case here.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[aweigh]

I think that's the only Oblivion review you've posted that actually talks a little bit in-depth about one of the games MAJOR, potentially GAME-BREAKING problems. The guy should get a medal or something. Like on the special olympics.

 

[SpFiota]

He makes it sound as if creatures scale to your level. Hence a rat is just as challenging to kill at level 1 as it is at level 30. That isn't the case at all. The types of creatures you encounter scale to your level. So yeah, when you close your first oblivion gate you may run into a couple of two foot tall Clannfear Runts. But when you're level 13 you're facing the full-grown five foot tall variety that can tear a warrior to shreds in a heartbeat. Now before you start complaining, no, Bethesda didn't populate the world with a bunch of the same looking creatures just with different names and skin tones. Clannfear are the exception, and I assume they are the dino-creatures that guy's referring to. For the most part as you gain levels you are faced with newer, deadlier creatures. I do agree that the scaling thing is a load of shit. It pisses me off when I stumble upon a random hunter toting EBONY arrows. What the fuck? And why are bandits wearing MITHRIL armor!?!? That's just dumb. It's equally infuriating to achieve something extremely difficult for one's level, such as picking a very hard lock early on, and being rewarded with something that's no better than any other item you could find. Or stumbling upon an ominous dungeon at level 3 only to find that it's populated with low-level bandits. It takes away from the satisfaction of the game.

Oblivion's far from perfect. That being said, it's the best commercial RPG released in quite a long time, and thanks to its phenomanal sales we're going to see more single player RPGs in the future. Hopefully not all of them will be shitfests. I've always felt that if it weren't for Diablo, perhaps the shittiest game ever to be labeled an RPG, we wouldn't have seen some of the great RPGs of the mid to late 90's.

 

[SanguinePenguin]

MMORPGs seem to be more of a creative and financial drain than action RPGs. Some of them, like Warhammer Online, would have made pretty interesting single player games if all the resources spent on servers and online features went to some good writing along with that slick setting.

 

[freelance]

That sounds lame indeed.
KOTOR had the same problem as well, no matter which way you played the game enemies always scaled in terms of difficulty to some degree. Part of RPGs in my opinon is to get whipped by mobs, lick your wounds and get stronger and then return.
Silly devs tryin' to reach out to casual players! bah!

 

[Section8]

From what I can tell, Daedra (and probably wildlife) get an upgrade every 5 levels. That's marginally better than the per level upgrades for human(oid)s because it means you can get your arse kicked, run away and come back to exact revenge, as long as you do so in an orderly fashion every 5 levels or so.