User:Andrewwins/Test

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Xbox 360, 2K Games

Intro - The introduction video was short but effective. There werent any dramatic, high polygon renderings but the landscape of the major city provided a basis of thought.

Getting Going - Gameplay was fairly fluid. The story started right away with the other "inmate" talking to you. There was somewhat of a learning curve but the little dialog boxes that popped up made you try new things and encourage exploration, that was a major plus.

Fun - It was entertaining but almost moreso scary. The brightness had to be turned up and still it was almost impossible to see where the mobs attacked from. Adventurous with a dash of nervousness were the ingrediants.

Visuals - The opening movie had a terrain layout that looked extremely realistic yet you could tell that most of the far away land was a flat texture. The lighting effects mixed with fog while running through the caverns added that extra touch.

Intelligence - The AI was phonominal. The allied guards talked with you while you could talk with them. They waited for you to move and seemed to always let you know, they knew where you where. The enemy AI had good pathing and gave you a chance to attack before they were aware of your presence.

Immersion - The first hour flew by. Certain elements truly added to the immersive feeling. The lighted fog along with trap avoidance and pushing logs down a hill to kill mobs are what kept the fun factor high. The graphics were incredible and you felt freedom to move anywhere you wanted.

Cameras - The camera system was great. There wasn't any clipping or fast corrections. The view looked wide enough, more of a 16:9 rather than 4:3 perspective.

Controls - Controls were a bit frusterating. As a magician, shooting your fireball attack and actually hitting the target seemed nearly impossible. The mobs moved fast and the spells took about one second to actually fire from the time you hit the button. I felt that most of the problems with targetting were the games fault. The circular interface that held spells seemed to run out fast. You could only hotkey 10 spots when you needed at least double that quantity at times. The use of 5.1 sound was the best of any game I've played thus far. You could literally tell what was making noise and where it came from within a few degrees of the sound.

Ideas - Pushing logs onto mobs as opposed to shooting them and having that option was a good idea. The enviroment had some play into stratagey. Using the voice of Patrick Stewart brought familularity to the equation.

Memory - After shutting off the game I fealt purplexed. Running through the dark, long tunnels became repetetive and stressful as you couldnt see where the mobs came from. After this you enter the outside world, it was beautiful to say the least. I fealt like there was a huge world left to explore. The highpoint of the game was the vast outdoor landscape with differening looks dependent on the time of day. The level detail in obscure objects was unreal.