For the last few days I have been playing Oblivion, the sequel to Morrowind. Now, some of you might be saying that this is an old game. I won't argue, but I completely enjoyed Morrowind, so wanted to play Oblivion. Life and family however demanded other things of my time and money. My brother bought an XBox, and bought Oblivion for it. He has been playing it, and while he gripes and bellyaches about the game, he keeps playing it. I recently gained some down time, and felt that I would play it as well. Somebody had long ago given me their copy of Oblivion, and I dug it out and loaded it on my computer. Now that I have played a while, I feel able to speak.

My brother and I are playing the same game, but on different systems. It has totally affected our style of play. He is going for every advantage he can, while I am running around hopping mountains seeing what comes. There is a difference in our personalities, but there is also a difference in our systems. I tend to feel that if I was playing on the XBox (or any other game console) that I would play it as he does -- and probably not be having half the fun.

You see, I get to save when and where I want. If I run into something and get a stupid idea, I save my game then go try my stupid idea. My brother only has save points, so he has to play safe or do it all over again. I have gone into people's dreams, gone into paintings, roamed over the map checking out various caves, mines, and underground temples. He has stayed with the main storyline, improved his fighting in the arena, improved his skills by busting out of prison, and generally stayed near a city as much as possible. In my opinion, the computer gives one a much better game because it encourages the fun of making mistakes.

One thing that I enjoyed about Morrowind was that there was not one way to play it. Most games I play and finish with the attitude of been-there/done-that. Morrowind I played three times before I reached that conclusion.

I don't really know if I will play Oblivion again, as the main storyline is not that entertaining. I however appreciated the designers showing off their improvements in the game. Morrowind had real trouble handling multi-character situations. Most battles in Morrowind had me killing my own comrades. Oblivion tends to assume that your attack was meant for the bad guy (and it was, but your comrade still moves to place himself in front of you). That weak pitiful character that you are escorting still rushes (I mean RUN, as in takes off with enthusiam) into battle, but they just go unconscious when they die (often before you can even get there). Overall, I found the character interactive parts of Oblivion less traumatic than Morrowind, and that helped me get through the main story.

The side quests in Oblivion are much more numerous than in Morrowind. The monsters are much more varied. The game also seems to have more control over encounters. Instead of things being set in an area, threats come from various places and tend to be at the appropriate level for you to handle them. Instead of returning to places expecting them to be clear (because I had already been there), they were restocked with something different (usually less in number with the traps and doors not reset).

Just for note, I am presently level 9 and have only sealed one Oblivion gate. I did that by running through it -- I was not strong enough to fight all the monsters, but ran past those at the end to grab those gems. One nice thing about Oblivion is that you can do things like that. One warning about Oblivion -- those monsters CAN move through doors, so you do not leave them behind when you change rooms. I got Martin up to that northern stronghold, and he can stay there. I am going back to jumping mountains and handling the side quests. It will be a while before I bother to do the next step in the storyline.

Of course, my notes are about the computer version. The exact differences in the computer and XBox version I cannot say. From speaking with my brother, the main storyline issues I had are common with him. He however is playing in a computer different manner than me, and even though I started some time after him I have done many things that he has not. If you have questions or comments, feel free to add them.

Okay, finished Oblivion. My overall opinion is not that good. I never gained the connection to the story or world that I did for Morrowind.

1) The fights were not fun. The monsters were all designed to be overly powerful attackers. If the monster was not a overly powerful attacker, then it summoned another monster that was an overly powerful attacker. Just as with most other games made today, fights became mad rushes to each other then slam/slam/slam until somebody dropped. While I saw my hit points disappear with each hit from an opponent, I barely saw their hit point marker reduce. The fights thus never seemed fair. I did advance in level to where I could manage a fight with a single opponent, but never did I find a fight fun.

Note that I did up my Strength at each level, so my problem was not lack of strength -- but I found myself pitying those that did not up their Strength at each level. There were special attacks, but they seemed silly -- and when they were used on me they looked silly and really did not hurt me (although most other attacks did). I thus tended to ignore the special attacks.

I finally gained the attitude of not attacking. I fought when I had to, but also simply ran a lot. I actually considered it foolish to attack anything once through an Oblivion gate, but considered it an obstacle course. I ran from town to town and let the city guards of the coming town kill all the monsters that rushed behind me (you could not run away from monsters, but they followed you) while I slept in one of the guilds.

2) The economy was poor. I managed to gain my stuff for free off the carcasses of those I killed, which ended up being rather quality stuff. That was good, as I never could afford the good stuff sold in town (I never could figure out how to up my mercantile skill). I then earned my staff from the Mages Guild, and that was a 3200gp suck to recharge that I had no way to finance. How those that used staves managed to recharge them, I do not know. Note that weapons and armor degrade as you use them, but buying hammers quickly becomes the cheaper option than having someone do it, especially special magic items which also ran into the thousands of coins.

3) The story was boring. Some missions were fun, but most were not. The main story was however NOT fun. From boring walks with stupid comrades (more on this later), to being put up against wave after way of oppressive powerful monsters, I really did not enjoy the main story.

I lost most of my enjoyment of the game right off when it turned me into a vampire. I did not like that, and the extended process of needing to cure myself destroyed my appreciation of the game itself. I did begin to regain some of my pleasure of the game after I finally got cured, but by then the first impression had been ingrained in my mind.

Oblivion did improve on Morrowind only in that necessary NPCs did not die before they could die. This meant that I would not have to waste my life/time/money keeping the damn NPC alive until the final part of the mission. Just as with Morrowind, I found myself laughing as You-Must-Protect-This-Person up and committed suicide at the first available opportunity. Worse, that I-Am-Weak-And-Need-Protection person will rush ahead of you to fight the coming monster (I am trying to establish some strategy, then I have to make a suicidal rush to save someone).

I entered one place to rescue a person, and met a soldier who was also going to try and rescue this person. He tells me to follow him, then rushes off. A trap that I had long ago learned to watch for (and even had to use in one place to open a door), he rushed right upon it and got squashed, and squashed, and squashed (I found it funny).

Another place I entered and tried to respect the property. I however hit band of powerful monsters after band of powerful monsters, and I got really annoyed. I then found the person sleeping and unable to be wakened. That really annoyed me, and I went back the way I came (the game wanted me to take an easy exit) completely robbing the man of anything of value.

Overall, I give Oblivion low marks (2 out of 5 stars if one must know). I played it, but I am not playing it again. If they come out with another Elder Scrolls, I hope that they get more creative game designers.

Thanks for the reviews!

I'm a big fan of Morrowind (I played it first on a friend's Xbox, then bought it for myself for PC). I've now completed Morrowind twice (with a couple of games I started, but then abandoned).

Still, I think I can get a few more games out of Morrowind -- lots of replay value, as you said. So I'll probably hold off on Oblivion.

Have you played the Morrowind expansions -- Tribunal, Bloodmoon? I haven't, so I was wondering if you had and what you think.

No, I never did play the expansions. Mostly because no one ever spoke of the stories. I tended to think of the expansions as simply new places to explore and fight monsters, not as a new set of characters and puzzles. I could have been wrong, but such was my opinion.