I was originally thinking I'd be writing this review raving about how good The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Despite being a great game, that isn't going to happen, simply because the story is an abomination - if they had spent half as much time on the story as they did with the graphics then I'd be constructing a pagan alter to worship them. Sadly, I'm not doing this, and I did for the previous Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind, and I hold such a grudge against the story that I refuse to call it anything better than good.

I hold the utmost belief that an RPG should have a strong story, but Oblivion's best feature is that it is open-ended and lets you do anything you want in the world. So, despite my refusal to admit that this game is on par with classics like Galactic Civilizations 2, Battle for Middle-Earth 2, The Sims games, Half-Life games and generally everything made by Sid Meier, I believe I have found a way around it. I entrust our editor, Geoff, to say it for me: [Wow, talk about passing the buck lol. Yes indeed, this really is up there with all those aforementioned classics! Ed]

Hopefully with that said, by proxy, I can get onto describing the game for what it is. The basic plot premise is that the Emperor Uriel Septim VII is about to be assassinated and there's a secret escape tunnel, which just so happens to be hidden in the cell within which you are being held. Allowed to tag along, while you're protecting the emperor he tells you about his visions and hands you the Amulet of Kings before he's killed. You're then sent to see Jauffre, the head of the Blades, who sends you to Kvatch to find Martin, Uriel's illegitimate son. The only problem is that Kvatch is under siege by forces from Oblivion. This is where you make your first venture into the Planes of Oblivion, hacking every scamp that comes your way as you look for a way to close the portal.

When you first meet Jauffre, he explains a bit about what's going on. The Daedric Lord Mehrunes Dagon appears to have had a long beef with the Septim bloodline and has killed off all of the emperor's heirs, except for Martin. Nevertheless, Dagon has to be killed to close the gates to Oblivion and that is the story. There aren't any plot twists in the game; quite frankly it's an awful story and compared to the mystery they managed to keep in the beginning of Morrowind, it makes for a severe letdown.

The graphics are quite frankly amazing and have not only raised the bar, but put it into low Earth orbit. However, my major concern is that it seems to be at the cost of what makes an RPG, like epic plot driven stories and deeply constructed characters, both of which are totally absent. In Morrowind you go up against the god Dagoth Ur in an assortment of major plot twists, whereas Oblivion has none of this and is extremely linear, at least when it comes to the story side of things.

Another concern is the major drain on graphics cards; as it is top of the line, any system under the line is going to struggle to run at the settings needed to make it playable, so possibly wait until your next system to play it. However, one place where they got it right is the Imperial City; I found myself just running about trying to get different views of the Emperor's tower. It will, most likely, make your system run like a tortoise chasing a snail, but you'll probably kill your keyboard from the sheer amount of drooling, and I personally recommend taking a trip to hospital and stealing a bedpan, just so you can look at it long enough to do it justice. The landscape is extensive and so intricately detailed that it's only done justice by seeing it - as a hay fever sufferer, I do have to say I prefer frolicking through computer animated meadows than real ones... although I've never heard of someone being attacked by a pack of wolves in a real meadow as, without a doubt, it would have made the news.

Elite is still hailed as the best space adventure game, even above all the games in the X series, despite being released in 1984 and having the computational power to render roughly one polygon. In my opinion, Morrowind had good enough graphics, but it also had a great story, whereas Oblivion spills the beans in the tutorial, which has to be the biggest sin of storytelling. It does redeem itself, as ninety percent of the game has nothing to do with the story, so while the story is still a blight, there is this amazing feature of the game - you can ignore it! Oh how I love open ended stories.

There is so much in here to roam through, with nine major cities, twenty-five settlements and over two hundred hand crafted dungeons, the latter of which are all darker than Morrowind's, which can be interpreted as both good and bad, depending on your perspective. However, if you're afraid of the dark, there is an overabundance of torches lying around the world, as well as magical light spells. There are over a dozen types of spell with numerous strengths and potions for each. Also, there are literally hundreds of items that you can find, including ingredients for spells, around four hundred books, each with several pages of text, and over nine thousand independent objects that can be moved.

You can also purchase homes and decorate them, which seems like a bit of a steal from Fable, and while it isn't exactly well done, it does provide a great place to store your swag. Each one of these is in one of the nine major cities, with each city having its own style, ranging from classic Romanesque to wooden rural and rundown buildings, which gives each city a unique feel, although it does seem a little strange, with the extreme Roman feeling the Imperials have.

As with the previous games, there are various guilds you can join - the Fighters' Guild, Mages' Guild, Thieves' Guild, The Dark Brotherhood (assassins), the Arena (gladiatorial), The Blades (imperial spies) and numerous other orders, or you can even become a vampire if you like. Each guild offers dozens of quests to undertake, making for almost endless gameplay outside of the main story. With the Mages' Guild your overall aim is to get into the Arcane University, with the ultimate ability to become the Arch-Mage (head honcho); all the original guilds have this ability to take over the organisation. The quests for these guilds usually depend on the type; for the Mages' it can be anything from finding ingredients or rare plants like the Nirnroot to a quest I completed, which was going into someone's dream to put his consciousness back together. One of the weirdest quests I discovered involved going into a painting to fight painted trolls and save a painter's life, but it's well worth it, as painted troll fat is in great demand on the common market!

To earn a living you can do any of the above, or you can simply become a forager, essentially living off the land, hunting deer and picking plants, plus the occasional fight with a wolf. [My you have big teeth Grandma! Sorry. Ed]. One wolf a day is usually enough to get you bed for the night and everything else is profit. Another thing you can try is to explore all the old ruins, which usually means killing a dozen necromancers and skeletons with the possible plundering of coffins. As well as this, battling for power over Cyrodiil are five courts and you can carry out quests for each of these, although you can't join them and they're not my favourite types of job to do, as I don't like messing with the balance of power; indiscriminate killings holds much more fun and challenge. The other organisations, like The Blades, only have a single level, and are only really useful as another boasting point to the somewhat butch-looking females in the game.

Yes, if looking at pretty women is your thing then you're going to be disappointed - it's like a genetically engineered bubonic plague struck the world and killed off anyone who even looked remotely attractive; all the females look like men with breasts, which is rather disturbing and, added in with what can only be described as a mass outbreak of leprosy in the population, it begs the question why they couldn't have spent more time on the character models. These poor models also translate over to most of the monsters in the game, with the exception of the Deadroth, which is basically a magical walking alligator, oh, and the deer.

The combat system has notably changed from the previous games, as many of the dungeons and dragons rules seem to have been removed. Traditionally, mages are forced to wear light armour or none at all, so it doesn't interfere with spell casting and they also can't wield swords; however, this has been taken out, along with the actual spell cast function. Now a player can cast a spell with equipment in their hands, which just appears to be a major betrayal of the traditional RPG gameplay, as well as of fans of the series, to acquire more of the first person shooter market. This isn't helped by the introduction of a scaling system, either, meaning that enemies get tougher as you level up, which sounds good in theory, but it defeats the point of levelling up in the first place. Worse still is the balancing of skills - if you're a social character and you've put your levels into mercantile or speechcraft, then you're going to die, but if you put them all into combat it's going to be a cakewalk through the entire game. This problem has already spawned a ton of mods, so don't fear, I'm assuming you have the Internet and can remedy the problem.

These aren't the only changes for the worst, either - the controls have been simplified too much and the reintroduction of fast travel kind of defeats the point of horses returning, not to mention that the horses die a lot, as the AI enemies seem to attack these docile and harmless creatures instead of you, the person with the big sword. Speaking of the AI, it really is moronic. Yes, it has advanced a lot since Morrowind, but running in front of me when I'm casting a spell to kill the enemy isn't helpful when I accidentally kill a guard instead. I spent most of my time cracking people I was working with over the head instead of the enemy, and the most annoying thing is that you can't pull your arrows out of your friend's head if he's still alive - they cost money and it happens a lot! They do however have initiative, and if one of the NPCs is hungry then you can occasionally see them hunting deer, or in my case shooting me in the eye with an arrow. I'm not 100% sure if he was hunting or just trying to kill me, but alas I ended up a murderer. What? He asked for it!

The sound in the game is great and although the voice acting has some dodgy moments, it does have the superb Patrick Stewart as Emperor Uriel Septim VII, Sean Bean as the emperor's bastard son Martin (he's illegitimate), Terence Stamp as Mankar Camaron, who leads a cult that worships the Daedra Lord Mehrunes Dagon, and Lynda Carter as the Nord and Orc females. The music is top notch, as it was with Morrowind; in fact it's so good that I believe it's actually on sale somewhere online.

One strange thing I've noticed is the vast abundance of food that NPCs eat, yet you don't need to do this yourself. Your character also has the ability to sit, which would obviously be helpful for using the toilet, except there aren't any. Nowhere in the game have I seen a toilet, yet they have a vast abundance of oversized sewers that house giant rats, Daedric cults and full skeletons. The biggest question is, if there isn't a toilet, then how the heck do people get down there?

Outside of the main story, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is great fun to play and allows you to do the greatest thing in gaming - to make your own story. However, the change to simplified action instead of storyline makes me very apprehensive of the next game (if this trend continues) and I wonder if it will even be classed as a role playing game - perhaps First Person Stabber will be more appropriate. People wanting big, immersing RPG stories would be best advised to look at The Longest Journey games instead, but most fans of the series, despite the various changes that have made it more of an RPG-Lite, will not be disappointed by what Oblivion has to offer.

Reviewed by Nik Gregory for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).