bit-tech Shopping: Bethesda Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PS3)

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2

Strengths: Great graphics and soundtrack, exciting combat. Great storyline

Weaknesses: Game of the Year addition is available which includes all the expansion packs.

Summary: Lord of the Rings meets role-playing game. If you like role playing games, then you will love oblivion. Storyline and scenary/settings reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. The storyline is very engaging, the graphics and soundtrack are awesome, and there is a large world that can be explored. This game is the highest ranked game on the PS3 by many gaming websites. If you want to see how the game looks like, here's a link to video review which shows a lot of the game play. SPOILER WARNING http://www.gamespot.com/video/934605/6168017/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-video-review

Rating: 10

Time with product: 54 Days

Strengths: Hours and Hours of entertainment and fun!

Weaknesses: none

Summary: As you play the game, you'll get stronger. You don't earn experience points as in a traditional role-playing game. Instead, your skills become stronger as you use them. This means that if you stick to using a sword, you'll get better with blade weapons. If you primarily use magic, you'll become a stronger caster. It's an intuitive system that eliminates the need to go out of your way to train and strengthen your character, which lets you focus on the more enjoyable aspects of the game. No matter how strong you become, you'll never feel invincible because all of the enemies that you fight in the game also level up with you. This does deflate the ego a bit because even after putting hours into the game, on the default difficulty you'll often find a respectable challenge fighting even the most common enemies. But there is a difficulty slider that you can adjust at any time, just in case you find yourself having a hard time staying alive.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 4 Months

Strengths: everything

Weaknesses: nothing

Summary: this game rocks, its the greatest, i love the whole thing the adventures the fighting the killing everything, i would highly recommend it to anyone who loves adventurous games and fighting games and killing games.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2

Strengths: everything

Weaknesses: eat your precious times?

Summary: I think this is the best game including all of the shooting, RPG, action, sports, and so on. It has everything as a game, gameplay, smart AI, storyline flexibility, graphics, sounds and so on. Play and feel it.

Rating: 10

Time with product:

Strengths: Immersive, good graphics, long open-ended gameplay

Weaknesses: Some glitches

Summary: I've played Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the original Xbox. It was buggy and crashed quite a bit, but it was still an enjoyable game. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is still buggy, though less so than Morrowind, but is also still enjoyable. I've only just started my foray into Oblivion on the PS3, but I've also already played a little bit of it on the PC. First off, the character creation in Oblivion seems more than a little more complicated than character creation in Morrowind. In the end, it's still not what-you-see-is-what-you-get. You might spend hours trying to get your character's facial features right in the character creation screens, only to find that the in-game character doesn't quite match what you thought you created. Like Morrowind, the game starts off slow. You're not given a whole lot of direction, but are given a small nudge towards the main storyline when you start off. After talking to all the different people you run into, inquiring into their stories, inquiring about stories you've heard, tried to join some guilds, etc., the number of things to do or that you have to do grow exponentially. That's when you start getting sucked in and wondering where your day went. For RPG players, this is a must-buy game. That's kind of a no-brainer because there aren't that many RPG's on the PS3 right now to begin with (that'll soon be a different story though). The PS3 version of Oblivion comes with the Knights of the Nine expansion pack built-in, which is supposed to be $30 extra. The Game of the Year version comes with the Shivering Isles expansion pack as well. I still recommend this regular version for newcomers to the Elder Scrolls series though, because it is now discounted and lets you decide if this is the sort of game you like before investing more money into it. If you buy this version and find that you want more, you can still get the Shivering Isles expansion for $30 from the Playstation Online Store or on Blu-Ray disc from retailers.