Reviews from

in the past


I've ridden a chocobo with a motorcycle exhaust pipe sticking out of it while attacking enemies with Devil May Cry animations and spells that shoot my enemies into the sky. I've made all the guards tiny so I can laugh at them. I've also beaten all the quests without making any changes to the game.

I've been playing Oblivion for over 15 years now, and I have countless stories from my time in Cyrodiil. I've owned Oblivion three times: first on PC largely without mods, then I put another couple hundred hours into console save files, and then I modded it to hell and back on Steam. It's one of my favorite games because I'm the sort of person who likes to make my own fun. I have a couple dozen console commands memorized so I can change my attributes or the attributes of NPCs, add items, bring people back to life, lock people behind gates, create impossible spells, become invincible, fly, and do all sorts of wild things. That's before even touching the thousands of mods available to add areas, quests, monsters, graphical improvements, or even complete conversion mods to play a whole different game.

The base game is such a delight with an atmosphere that I adore and find absolutely nostalgic. There are quirky oddities to discover all across the land, and it has to be the funniest game I've ever played just due to the wacky emergent gameplay. It's not a perfect game, but I find it impossible to stay away from after all these years, and its charm makes up for its missteps (not to mention I can just mod anything I don't like!).

If you mod the Xbox 360 out of this game, it's pretty enjoyable. Perhaps even better than Skyrim.