I'm not kidding. Take a look at this, if you have'nt already, and you'll know what I'm talking about. It makes F.E.A.R (or for that matter, the infamous stalker car in HL2: Episode One) seem like PG-13 material.
I don't have the patience to provide a synopsis here, and the video does a great job anyway - so just go ahead and watch it.
It suffices to say that a retro psychadelic look, little girls, and a decaying underwater utopia form an unsettling combination for insane phychological horror.

This is one game I'm not looking forward to play. 

Phew! Sixty hours into Oblivion and I'm still on level 10. I'm not even halfway through the main quest and I've hardly explored a dozen dungeons.

I'm going to stop. No doubt Oblivion is one of the best RPG's ever made, but putting it bluntly, Oblivion is flawed. NPC interaction is constricted, the AI is coarse, and most NPC's seem to enjoy behaving out of character. Of course, you're too sucked in at the beginning (say the first twenty hours) to notice, but eventually, every object (yup, even my new shiny enchanted dwarven armor), every NPC and every quest seem like the same.
Like the title says, I'm burnt out.

So I'm taking a breather, and looking at what's been happening in the other world. Er...I mean the real world. It's incredibly amazing, actually. Not having to see shiny faces with pointed ears, no pixelated rocks or jagged edges, and best of all, not having to listen to the story of the Daedra being driven out of K'vatch for the umpteenth time.



So that's about it. I've still got to see if the Gray Fox is for real, so I'm not quitting. Not yet. Oblivion still has far too many treasures for an adventurer, goblins for a skirmisher, undead for a dungeon delver, and vampires for a vigilante to hunt down - and I'm game. Well, in a week or two, at any rate.

After restricting myself from playing Oblivion during weekdays, I found myself plotting and day-dreaming about what I'm going to do I play it next. It's not taken over my life yet, but I can see it happening - in the near future.

Thanks to http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=27&CIID=36222&p=1, I can now run the game with a  significantly better image quality - I've even stopped cursing my 6600GT. 

There's enough to write about Oblivion to keep me occupied for hours, but I'd rather be doing something better - no prizes for guessing what. I'll update this blog as soon as find time. 

The unbelievable hype surrounding the Elder Scrolls 4 : Oblivion, was hard to believe. Stories of players getting lost in Tamriel, claims of 100+ hours of gameplay, gorgeous visuals - you get the picture. Owing to a number of reasons ( including 1>the fact that it would make my 6600GT seem like junk, and 2>I have a real life I'm quite content with), I stayed away from it all this time, until, at last, I could bear the temptation no longer.
              I'm hooked. There's no other word for it. I've never had the patience to play an RPG, (Inventory management, shoddy combat, stupid AI....Bleh) but Oblivion has changed all that. Despite the fact that I'm running it at 800X600 at medium settings (at 100% view fade, with distant lands off), it still feels incredible.
I'd like to write more, but I've better things to do. Like closing magical portals.
See you in a hundred game hours.

It's been over a month since my last blog, perhaps because I have'nt played anything new since then. A startling lack of topics to write about coupled with my laziness, I suppose. After all, writing a review is hard work- especially if it's been a while since you've played the game. Hope to add some new content in the month of August.
For now,
Check out www.tweakguides.com - It's a totally original, down to earth collection of performance guides for most of the graphically intensive titles out there. As a bonus, it has the most comprehensive windows xp tweaking guide on the web - and it's free, of course.