Duck and Cover

Discuss

I'll myself wait before giving any opinion since I haven't played it enough.

Sucks

gobble gobble

i'd buy something from here instead:
http://www.kraftwerkk9.com/

Dialogue is still shit.

It's still in the mail.

Does it run well? I have a crappy computer, but there's ini tweaks and other modifications available on the net, so I'm hopeful.

The Codex people say it's shit but they're biased so don't believe them.

i got it okay but geforce fx cards aren't playable with it. And I'm not really going to update my computer yet, mabye in a few months if I do at all.

Megatron wrote:i got it okay but geforce fx cards aren't playable with it. And I'm not really going to update my computer yet, mabye in a few months if I do at all.

I got Geforce FX 5900 and it's mid-range according to this(scroll a bit down). It's my 1,7 Ghz processor I'm worried about.

I bought today some additional RAM, just for Oblivion. So it better work!


EDIT: You might want to try look for ini tweaks, like this one. Don't know if it works, but it's worth a shot.

"The Codex people say it's shit but they're biased so don't believe them."

Actually, quite a few kids there are enjoying it. The consensus seems to be that it's good but not great. A lot of the complaining is about it not living up to the hype and not being much of an RPG etc.

I've played it for a couple of days now. Here's the sum of it.

The game itself suggested I'd play it on the lowest resolution with everything but polygons and textures turned off. That lagged as hell. I turned everything on, and it stopped lagging. Who the hell coded this thing?

The character creation system is pointless, as there's nothing you can do to keep your character from looking like a retard. I made a Nordic gunslinger called Clyde, and after an hour or two of killing rats in the king's royal dungeon, I got to pick a class for him. The guard suggested I'd be a circus performer, but instead I made my own class which was basicly a bard without magic ( I don't want any goddamn magic ) and called it Striker, to impress on the Communist party of Oblivion. He then said "Well, I wasn't far off" and I shot him in the ass with an arrow, but he just ran away.

Anyways, I was going to play this game the way I usually do - emphasis on charisma and dialogue - just like in real life. The system for "Speechcraft" ( what the hell ) is the same as with "Locksmithy". Your skills hardly seem to matter as the whole deal works based on your reflexes and the ability of thinking ahead. In fact, that applies to most everything, only way I ever got to know any benefit of my skills was through the loading screens which are filled with information about "apprentice bulletdodgers being able to eat waffle cakes while dodging bullets" - not that you'd notice.

The point of "Speechcraft" is also beyond me, as I've basicly made the whole imperial city fall in love with me without getting much benefit for it. Fine, I told a hobo some joke and that gave me the location of the thief's guild meetings, but come on. People still snap at me, guards still give me shady looks over their shoulders ( I have a menacing beard ) and I'm generally recieved as a bad customer. There's also not that much information to gather - 'Imperial city', 'Rumours' are the two main conversation points, and people still blubber on about the Emperors assasination. I was there, three months ago it must've been - I know he's dead.

Another thing, which I thought was common in games with dialogue options, but that's missing in Oblivion, is the "Get the fuck away from me with your stinky bullshit" dialogue option. I know I can skip ahead in the dialogue ( thank god for that ) but honestly, 'Clyde' is still forced to listen. I'd like Clyde to say "Christ man, I don't care, alright?". As sometimes you'll mention "Bucket" and get a detailed story about buckets from all over the world, instead of what you hoped would be a brief account for where in the house you could vomit. That sort of thing needs a "Get the fuck away from me with your stinky bullshit" dialogue option. Overall, dialogue is messed up, and there are no options except "I'm a helpful, interested goody-two shoes" ones - which isn't what I've set out to be.

The combat aspect isn't that bad, but I say that since I'm a sneaky fucker named Clyde, and handle my business in the cover of night with a Bow of Paralysis +3 or some shit like that. The encounter's I've handled with mele weapons are akin to bad Tekken strategies - button mashing and running about like a moron. I especially liked underwater hand to hand combat, in helping a retarded fisherman to some crazy pirahna-snake-fish scales. Blocking underwater was quite humorous, and the near drowning was alot of fun.

I also squatted inside people's houses waiting for them to get home, then shot silver arrows into their eye sockets. Somehow my crime is always detected by "Unseen forces" ( as the message claims ) and two guards pop out of nowhere and say "You're coming with us." I have a choice to pay a fine ( I think killing a man was 25 gold ), to come with them ( Isn't it? I never picked that one, maybe they'll get payed in natura that way or something? ) or to "Resist arrest" which should in fact say "Screw you copper", because hardened criminals don't "Resist arrests". Killing the guards is also detected by "Unseen forces", so resisting arrest is akin to power training in mmorpgs.

Riding around and raiding dungeon after dungeon isn't really that bad, but it's an mmorpg concept. In fact, they've got people running around on every road, kind of looking like dazed players out to grab the spawning banana in the house of doom, as to further your feeling that it's a living, breathing ( mmorpg ) world. I'm ok with it, but by now I know how tolerant I am with these kind of things, so the game will not likely stay on my drive for too long. The scenery is pretty gosh darn beautiful, and walking around and exploring is not as boring as it sounds. The "LOADING LEVEL" things, I don't know man, why did they even decide to show them? It takes about one or two seconds to load the next row of tree's, blending it all into the standard oblivion latency, not exactly breaking immersion - but the "LOADING OH NOE" really kind of does. Anyways, it'd be a fun time waster with a bit of coop, as overall it's an fps set in the dark ages mixed with a stats generator and retarded population simulator.

Finally, for bugs - I only noticed a few. Once I got stuck in house enterior after picking a door, but I was used to things like that happening from my previous adventures in games such as Operation Flashpoint. I just entered a tavern from inside the house, and everything was fine.

After stealing a horse, a part of my body teleported somewhere outside of the level ( into this gray field of vectors ), but I just reloaded. You can't pick your nose in Oblivion, without it autosaving, so whatever happens you're pretty clear. ( On that note, saving does not freeze anything - that sort of amazed me )

Something I regard as a bug, while it probably isn't, is the fact that dragging items ( With Z ) is equal to stealing in the minds of ai population, while picking it up directly ( with Space ) is as harmless as gay marriage. Once, in a tavern, I ran against a table and spilled all their beer's and dropped a bowl of strawberries. I pretended to say I'm sorry ( all I could say in reality was "Rumours" and "Imperial City" ) and started picking the things up and plazing them where they belonged. Everyone in the tavern attacked me, even the bastard who was selling the belongings of the recently diseased ( talk about hypocrite ).

Other than that, some minor things. The game also leaks memory at the double rate of troika's Vampire and crashes after a greater number of hours in game.

All in all, three Melker Anderssons out of five.

Hmm, well it runs fine on my computer, at 1280x1024. The view distances aren't maxed out, but they're not at the lowest either, and no anti-aliasing. I changed it to 1024x780 though, because it's much much smoother outdoor in huge landscapes.

Also, whoever who bitches on the graphics and view distance is a clueless moron, because it's probably the best out there.

As for the RPGing, I can't say yet. The world is like, gigantic, and I don't really know where to hang.

S4ur0n27 wrote:Also, whoever who bitches on the graphics and view distance is a clueless moron, because it's probably the best out there.

The game looks like the love child of Half Life 2 and Painkiller, graphically that is. I don't bitch about graphics, except when comparing them to performance. The performance blows due to worthlessly untweaked graphics - this we should be able to agree on. As for view distance, you should be able to max the important things out. The actors have a billion polys around their noses, so that should stay pretty low ( but beware when zombies jump at you from the mist ), but the general view distance is safe to max out. Honestly, the game is perfect for taking beautiful screenshots, but it's not much of a game per say.

baby arm wrote:Actually, quite a few kids there are enjoying it. The consensus seems to be that it's good but not great. A lot of the complaining is about it not living up to the hype and not being much of an RPG etc.

For a good game, it gets awful a lot of bitching. But given the Codex's stance since the beginning, they have no other option but to bitch about it. The review will without a doubt be bittersweet. Conclusion: The Codex's objectivity takes a hit.

For a good game, it gets an awful lot of overhyping. Of course, the Codex's constant bitching is a form of hyping in a way, too. Anyone who goes there for objectivity is not very bright.

From all the impressions I read Oblivion sounds like a game you'll really like if you thought Morrowind was ok. On the other hand, if you thought Morrowind sucked (as I do) then Oblivion probably won't grab you. I might get it a year from now if I have a new super computer with a DVD drive because I still don't have one.

it worked thanks vasikka. still a little jerky, but now i can roam the lands of oblivion and kill unicorns and whales and stuff.

The amount of hype leads me to believe it's horsedung. Probably

I might get it just for curoisty of how much crazy shit I can do in the game without it fucking up.

its not that fun. mabye it'd be more fun if i could see more than 10 yards. I jumped a horse off a bridge and we fell into a river together and drowned. That's it so far, but I don't really want to do any quests and can't explore since I can't see anything. Mabye if I had a good computer or liked the gameplay in morrowind I'd enjoy it more. But, alas. No. Glad I didn't buy it though, cheers susan lol.

I don't see why it runs so shit. HL2 and guild wars worked a lot better can't it just do those settings without it looking like shit and still running worse dammit.

St. Toxic wrote:

S4ur0n27 wrote:Also, whoever who bitches on the graphics and view distance is a clueless moron, because it's probably the best out there.

The game looks like the love child of Half Life 2 and Painkiller, graphically that is. I don't bitch about graphics, except when comparing them to performance. The performance blows due to worthlessly untweaked graphics - this we should be able to agree on. As for view distance, you should be able to max the important things out.

Agreed.

What distance slider are you taling about, though? There are like 4 or 5 if I remember correctly? I know I pushed the grass one a bit toward the max.

I just discovered what really annoys me in most fantasy RPGs : the stories always involve fighting a greater evil coming from Hell or some random generic good versus evil shit. I wish they'd make a game in which the main plot evolves around real-life matter. Say, 3 heirs battling each other to take the throne of their defunct father, or 2 empires clashing, or anything which would sound remotely realistic, would involve not only battles but politics, etc.