Battleangel

Everyone is talking about Oblivion it seems. Though of course, nothing can quite arouse gamers like a RPG regardless of its merits. Still, having a meta score of 95% over at Game Rankings does imply that the game is worth looking into. So I did. Aside from a small scene-related () glitch the game installed nicely on my current system, which is to be fair entry level these days and touching on Oblivion’s minimum specs.

No one needs to be told over and over again about this game’s virtues. So, here is what didn’t work.

First of all the game interface is clunky, both in design and operation. Just look at the inventory. After having played modern arcade RPGs like Dungeon Siege, this feels so 1990. In fact much of the game itself can be described as clunky.

Needless to say the game didn’t run very well on my low-end setup, but on the other hand the reports that have been coming in suggest that a great many people on high-end systems are having problems as well. It seems to be more going on here than just having the hardware to push enough pixels. Could be bad drivers, 3rd party software interference or fragmented harddrives I suppose but first impressions tell me that the game’s rendering engine needs some looking over. I haven’t seen such a failure rate since GTA3 and Vice City were ported to the PC. As for the not so obvious settings the user can control, I’d suggest thinning out the pesky grass that is clearly hampering performance and jumping into view as suggested here.

As for the jumping model feature, it is a little clunky as well and one has to wonder why the developers didn’t make the visual features degrade in a more logical manner. Personally I’d rather lose the grass entirely rather than having to lose other visual perks.

Another annoying feature is the intrusive area loading not to mention the loading screen that pops up as soon as you enter or exit even the smallest shop or outhouse. I suppose that if you’re used to dealing with role playing in terms of rolling a dice it wont really bother you but it is unbecoming of a PC game anno 2006.