Inane Game Review
Unfortunately I can’t provide a link for this post, since this is a review that appeared in a newspaper.
A local newspaper called “Today” published a review of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion yesterday and I think it easily qualifies as the dumbest review of a RPG ever written.
It started off well enough saying “Once in a blue moon, there comes along one game that seems to get almost everything right”.. Completely true I’d say 🙂
A paragraph in it says “the potential greatness of the Elder Scrolls is evident right from the start (sic) You can customise just about everything – from the class, face features, hair, skin colour and even the jaw-to-face ratio”. Okay, first of all, any goddamn RPG or MMO these days offers incredible customization of the player character (World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, GTA:SA and so on). Note that the reviewer hasn’t said anything about the actual different races the player can choose as part of the review of character creation.
After this, there is a brief intro to the initial part of the game, the reviewer talks about the game graphics, side-quests, a brief mention of the voice acting (whose? the player’s? the NPCs?). Abruptly, he mentions “the game will even recommendd a new player class for you after observing how you play”. First up, what is this sentence doing after talking about graphics? Next, why isn’t this part of the paragraph on the initial part of the game?
A brief discussion on improved combat follows and then praise for the replay value (here briefly, the several races a player can choose are mentioned – 80% of the way into the review and only briefly). There is some criticism of the loading times of the game, which is fairly true.
Before I come to my favourite part of the review, let’s review what not’s been talked about so far shall we:
- What’s better in Oblivion compared to Morrowind?
- The fantastic NPCs of Oblivion
- The Mage Brotherhood, which is sort of the main point of the game.
- The main point of the game! Yes ladies and gentleman, the entire review hasn’t mentioned what is Oblivion, or the Hell Gates at all!
And now for my absolute favorite part of the review – this line “In addition, there is no multiplayer option”. At first I thought maybe the reviewer was joking, like gamespot did in its review. But then I look down at the game summary, and in the Cons for the game, it’s there again – No multiplayer option. WTF? I mean WTF???? Does this reviewer even know what a typical RPG is?? Or is he some pimply faced youth, whose idea of a “great game” is Halo on the Xbox where he can smack-talk and indulge in modem standby, while believing himself to be the L33T gamer who can pass judgement on every game that crosses his desk?
I understand that newspapers have restrictions on length of articles which would force the reviewer to skip certain points, but honestly, I think Oblivion would have been better served not being reviewed by this newspaper than being subjected to this mockery of a review :-X
No multiplayer..god :-&