Im bored. Im going to talk about how good Oblivion is:

Current Score: 6/10

+ Good internal fps.
+ Prettyness overall.
+ Good faces overall.
+ Good variation of quests.
+ Good spookyness at time.
+ Good loading times.
+ Nice effort on dialog recording.
+ Good lipsync.
+ Moddability.
+ Good lighting effects.

- Medium settings on my 7800GTX averaged 25fps outside.
- The devs overshot the true system requirements.
- Samey dungeon layouts.
- View distances on grass break immersion.
- Item textures very good.
- That stupid "slime" on all things magical.
- Some faces odd. (Burned with acid grannies, butch lesbians, etc...)
- Guards stay on the same spot forever. Dumb.
- Smashed up shops/houses with no reaction from owner. Dumb.
- Broken quests.
- Stupid "follow" quests.
- Getting "critically hit" or whatever. Fucking annoying. happened to me 7 times in a row by a goblin. Exactly the same motion every time.
- Enemies & Loot levelling system totally unnatural.
- Powerhousing too easy.
- Farming too easy.
- Combat stats non existent.
- No tactics.
- Still an overall clumsy feel.
- Cant customise house as in MW.
- Some enemies disproportionately difficult.
- Map limits.
- Unnaturally high population of hostiles in the wild.
- "Imperial city?" HAH! Dont be funny. Its a village.
- Imperial province? HAH! Its a disgrace.
- Hardly any weapons.
- General lack of "feel" for most weapons.
- Hack n Slash, no "kinetic feel" at all.
- No enemy combat characteristics.
- No location damage
- Why does it still rain through roofs?
- Warriors are always the best. Ghey.
- Whats the point in having the ability to "pick up" stuff if you cant handle it?
- XBox interface for TV, not high res monitors. Crap.
- No decent keyboard conrol.
- Cant edit mouse controls.
- In-game menu navigation awful.
- No journal editing options.
- Dialogue is always skipped, so dont waste your time on recording all of it.
- Distant textures are awful.
- Respawning food on tables. Wtf?!
- Crashes when i enter a new cell.
- Cant name savegames.
- No smithies to make weapons & stuff.
- Voices too similar. (E.g. people in Bruma)
- "Cities" too small.
- Bumping into items sends them flying.
- Unknown topics show up in coversations.
- Too easy to meet Counts/Countesses.
- Knockdowns/Special attacks dont work.
- Goblins too tough.
- Rats too aggressive.
- The whole lockpicking affair.
- "Hit" sounds too violent. (E.g. when rat hits you).
- Torches always conveniently placed.
- Too easy to catch disease.
- Pointless caves.
- Blocking, but you still get damaged. Wtf?!
- No lighting for houses.
- Underpopulated realm for one with so many caves/towns/bandits...
- Waiting causes delays in real-time sometimes.
- Routine RAI duties become obvious after a while.
- Lockpicking always starts on slider 3.

Heh, that's a much fairer analysis imho, yeah, I can agree with that. Maybe even some parts of #1, but more related to the dumbing down the inventory etc for the xbox.

I can relate to part of your gaming jadedness...a game has to REALLY show me something before i'm overwhelmed these days. Maybe I should stop reading games mags and webcombing for trailers too.

I followed oblivion for months and months before it finally cameout. :p But yea, I'm a jaded gamer too. 99% of the games that come out are crap.

*waves* me too, I'm a jaded gamer! Everything looks shit atm (cept Spore). Stupid Peter Molyneux... I blame him. Oh, Sacred 2 looks awesome too hehehe. But its like Halo 3; loved the first one, 2nd one was ruined, #3 looks like they're going the same way as 2, i.e. "ooooh look if we make this shiny and then put this cinematic here, and make this film-sized storyline here... and, oh yeah, better put in 5 mins of shooting enemies too". I'm all for good graphics and attempting to make a good story, but when you forget good gameplay, wheres the point?

Anyhoo yeah I'd say you expected too much Derf. Like me and BnW2. (though they really DID screw that up). Yeah it has a huge list of things wrong, but how many games have a list that big, even if you combine the good AND the bad? Not many.

Though with our return policy at work (if you don't like it/complete it within 10 days, exchange or refund), I get pretty grateful for any game that gives 20 hours gameplay, because 90% of the returns are "I finished it in 6 hours". Trouble is so many companies now need to churn games out every 3 months just to compete with other companies (or they have EA breathing down their necks forcing them to make games) that they just can't waste time making a decent length game.

Guards stay on the same spot forever? I've seen Guards patroling etc, standing watch, and in both cases, being relieved of their duty by another guard.

I suggest melee character, no alchemy and as little magic as possible. It makes the game harder and more interesting to play. Magic is too easy and alchemy well ruins the game.

One of the biggest negatives to me is how the villains automatically scale with you. Bandits with glass weapons and armor. What's the point of leveling if it doesn't make you any more powerful?

Yeah i've just had a quest where some shopkeeper gets some lowlife burglars and you have to guard his shop at night. Well i've never heard of a thief sneaking around in full glass armor outfit. The fluorescent green will blind all guards probably.

Agreed. (though I sneak in glass armour all the time )

I'd much rather it had been a blend of levelled oposition and regular oposition.

I don't really see much problem with raising the lower level enemies just to keep travelling a bit more interesting (though maybe not to the extent it currently does), but dude if I fight a giant freakin monster I want it to feel like I'm fighting one.