The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for the Xbox 360 is one of those titles that you get to prove to people that your system purchase wasn’t a momentary lapse into insanity. And you actually insane people? Go buy a 360 with Oblivion and maybe they’ll let you go.

Summary

You are the intrepid adventurer Insertyournamehere and you did Whoknowswhat to get yourself landed into Imperial Prison. But the gods are shining on you today, for your cell is secretly the emergency exit for the Emperor to evade the assassins killing off his bloodline. He’s the only one left and with his death, an evil prince of Oblivion may overtake your homeland of Cyrodiil and probably do something freaky with your dead corpse.

Your job is to stop this from happening; not the Emperor dying, you can’t stop that (NOOOOO!!!! PAAAAAAAATRIIIIIIICK!!!!). You must find the Emperor’s lost son and get him to get off his ass and save the world. That’s right, you aren’t the main character – more like the R2D2 of Elder Scrolls – you are there for every step of the way and ultimately get hardly any of the credit. The good news is this means that you can be whoever you want to be; you aren’t tied down to the altruism of the storyline. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to play the main story line. The beauty of this concept is that you can get in hours of gameplay and turn off your system completely satisfied without ever finishing your first main-line quest. Go adventure, ya freak.

Gameplay (10)

The most noticeable change of this franchise from the last game is the fighting. The difference can be explained by the general motto of the entire development: HIDE THE RP RULESET. Sure, many actions are still governed by dice rolls and armor counts and such, but if you don’t care to know about it, you don’t have to. Each blow, unless blocked or parried, lands a hit, and even then can cause damage. All skills level up through use, and as such your character feels like it is you. No real gripes here.

Graphics and Aesthetics (9)

Everything, and boy, do I mean everything, looks beautiful. Okay, you got me. Since all of the NPCs were developed with the same character creator that you get to use when you make your character, the heads seem very odd sometimes. If you’ve ever seen the fanboy that follows you after you become the Arena Champion, then you know what I mean. But other than that, EVERYTHING. The major problem here is that in order to keep everything so beautiful, a lot of loading takes place. A LOT. Loading between zones isn’t really that bad, but the on-the-spot loading causes lag you would expect in an MMO, but not a finished console title. The good news is, this almost always happens when free-roaming and thus rarely interrupts split-second timing. P.S. Ragdoll physics, while not always realistic are very satisfying and respond to the actual conditions in the game. Ever engage in a rousing game of Minotaur-Roll? Well, you should.

Sound (9.5)

Well, the music is great. Hand’s down. That gets a 10. All attacks and incidental sounds are made by some spectacular foley artists and should win an award. The only reason I can’t give this category a full ten is because, while the voice acting is really good, and in some cases spectacular, there are only something like ten voice actors total. Each race and sex has a different default voice and this really detracts from the individualism of the NPCs. All main storyline characters are played by their own actors, but in the case of minor storyline characters and other NPCs, voices can be offsetting when the random, environmental sounds they make sound nothing like the voices you hear when you are engaging in dialog with them.

Controls (9.5)

The attack and block commands are the R and L triggers, respectively, and the magic casting is done with the Right Bumper, so all encounters are controlled with extreme ease. That is, of course, unless you are getting your ass handed to you by a Storm Atronach. The menus, on the other hand, get quite unwieldy as you collect more and more content and save your game more often. I hear this is corrected on the PC version by a third party mod, so hopefully we will get one if they decide it’s a good idea officially.

Difficulty and AI (10)

Oh, my god, does this get a 10. While we make fun of it in some cases, the character AI is nearly spotless and is to be admired. As for the difficulty, the game plays along with you and learns with you. This means there is no n00b area where, once level 25, you can go there and flaunt your uber l33t skillz. You go back at level 20 and maybe that wolf is now a Minotaur. Sorry, power-levelers. You can’t just randomly bash things until you’re strong enough to finish the game in half an hour.

Replayability (10)

You all should know this one by now. I played the entire story line and about 75% of the guild quests as a stealthy sharp-shooter and thief. Troll played through it as a custom class we dubbed “Defacerizer,” and a co-worker of mine has played hour upon hour without ever playing a storyline or guild quest (he just dungeon crawls the whole time and revels in the beauty). I’ll be playing this game, if not consistently, off-and-on until the Xbox 720 launches.

Boooooooos

• Menus are not good for the collector or oft-saver, especially since the saves are time stamped and sorted thus. So, if you move your 360 without correcting the system time, you might be scrolling for quite a while before you find your latest save. This menu organization problem also means that much of time spent in your menus (which is a lot, actually) is spent just looking for the item you are trying to use. (-.15)
• Loading is distracting while wondering through some of the more detailed areas. (-.30)
• Something like three voice actors total. (-.20)

Yaaaaaaaays

• The overall presentation of the game is freaking amazing. (+.25)
• Good for everyone, even if you don’t like RPGs, and perhaps especially so. (+.20)
• Patrick freaking Stewart and Minotaur-Rolling (+.50)

Overview

ARLO SAYS THIS GAME DESERVES A 10 = Shit Hot. Almost like a wet dream-–yeah, there’s some clean-up to be done, but it’s lots of fun to be had on your lonesome.

To be truthful, the total came out to 9.97, but apparently we don’t to hundreths. If you have a 360, buy the game. Even if you don’t like it, as maybe you’re part of the 15% of the population it isn’t geared towards, you can still appreciate its majesty and good trade-in value. If you have a really nice computer, get that version for the boobies. Speaking of boobies, Race will probably throw in her second opinion on the PC version.

The possible pitfalls of a fantasy world are partly enumerated here. Watch out. Those enormice will kick your ass. And take your clothes.

My computer kicked the bucket again recently. This is something like the tenth time and I figured perchance I should take this opportuniy to overhaul. I bought a new motherboard, processor, and RAM, and blew my tax return. This in addition to the 500 GingerBread hard drive I also purchased. I installed everything, failing to notice that all of my video cards are AGP while the motherboard only supports PCI. So, my computer lost it’s sight but gained a stronger heart, brain, short-term memory, and long-term memory. It’s like the Daredevil of Computers, except that it’s not. And I’m pretty sure that the videocard-equals-sight metaphor doesn’t really work. But that’s okay. Give me two days… and a big heap of Troll help.

And thanks to UltraMagnus for his advice.

So our e3 passes fell through this year… it seems that the more elligible I become, the harder it is to get in. This year, I’ve been promoted twice since last year, work more hours, and co-run a webcomic about the culture and they won’t let me in. Not even my “unofficial” channels that got me in my first year pulled through. But don’t worry (because I know how you get). Hope is not yet dead.

More on the Wii, soon, too.

-Arlo

Beat Oblivion the other day. Well, at least the main storyline. Now, I only have to beat the Fighter’s Guild and Mage’s Guild to get all 1,000 achievement points. Rock on. However, I’m belayed by other endeavors. This game is so much fun. It’s my cathartic Spider-Man 2 for the 360. Every trick feels so right and the images are a sight to behold. Yeah, it’s a 7.5, but who gives a shit?

So, Race went to bed a little earlier than usual tonight. And while the cat’s away, the mouse will fall over himself just coming out of his hole. Race. Please. Never let me do anything. It took me an hour and a half just to get the new strip to even show up. Apparently, everything hates me, because I couldn’t even host it somewhere else, like imageshack or photobucket. Race has gone to bed early before, as is her right, for work is teh suck, but for some reason this mouse just kept tripping on his own tail. The solution turned out to be a convoluted one. For some reason… the image was so abhorrent to any program or website as a jpeg that it could only be viewed as a png. Troll/Bosh figured that out by chance.

This is the conversation that followed.

Oddly enough, capturing that screenshot, editing it, hosting it, and making it show up here took ten minutes at the most. Of course.

God, I’m so tired after that ordeal (I mean, talking to Troll, not working on the strip) that my grammar has just gone downhill and I’m being ever so careful while writing this. If you find an error, fuck you. That’s right. Not me; You.

Oh yeah, there’s a new webcam link at the top of the page if you haven’t noticed. If we have our auto uploading on, you might even be able to catch us working on the strip. I seriously can’t wait until we move the site to its home, but I’ve been so busy lately. Priority Two. Behind getting my PC up and running again,

-Arlo

Got somethin’ to say about it? Take it to forums! I’ve put up lots of new content to look at in the Special Features section, but you can only see it if you register. There’s lot of preliminary sketches, concept sketches, even a full color mech collage! So yeah…fun stuff. Go sign up. =P I’m working on moving everything to the www.level99comic.com, and in the mean time, I’m trying to come up with some ideas for a new layout, so you can put in your two cents on the board as well.

A popular topic in the forum seems to surround Oblivion. A reasonable occurrence, I suppose, as my own gaming life hasn’t seen much variety as of late. And considering that my character has low strength and hand-to-hand, relying simply on punching to pwnz bitchez is becoming less and less of a fun pass time as I progress through levels. I have to rely a lot on sneaking and sniping, which can prove to be quite mentally draining. After I conquer the Thieves Guild quests, I think I’m going to take a little break from Oblivion for a bit. It’s getting so bad that I dream in Oblivion. Plus, I’m a little pissed at being kicked out of the mages guild (I HAD to kill him, I SWEAR), and sitting on my ass a lot has sparked a new inspiration to get off it.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll destroy something while I’m up.

~Race

The saga continues… to disturb! Once again, the theory that any noun can be enhanced in humor tenfold by adding the suffix “-age” is put to the test — and it passes!

I am so glad we are doing this story line because I can’t think good right now. Oblivion isn’t so much the greatest game ever, as it is all comsuming. For instance, Tarbosh, Lord of the Four Moons, Destroyer of Worlds, and Bringer of Chaos® may consume all sentient life in his path, but he’s maybe, like, the forth coolest God — just beating out Geoff, God of Biscuits.

Troll just created his character. He doesn’t really have any interest in a game like this. He just wants to punch people really hard… in the face. So he created a character called “Markistehsuck” and a class called “Defacerizer.” He needed me to spell it.

When this story line is over, you can be guaranteed that Race and I will be compelled to make a strip about it. Await your doom with pee soaked britches. Good Lord, what is wrong with me…

-Arlo

P.S. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention the supermegaimportant news. We registered our new domain over the weekend. You can now change your bookmark to http://www.level99comic.com. Right now, it’s just redirecting you here, but when we do make the switch, you’ll be ahead of the game. Exciting things will unfold now that we have a new domain. Exciting things. You should probably just wear a diaper at all times. I know I do.

What’s this? Where is this going? You’re ending the strip on a cliffhanger?! More butt sex jokes? I have to wait three whole days for the next installment? Quitcherbitchin’. I can’t wait, either. ::rubs ego::

So no sleep tonight. We got the strip up even later today. I don’t like this trend. No, wait…. I do. I like it because the reason we got it up late is because we were both, on our own, lost in Oblivion. You should see my avatar. He kicks ass. It took me a week, 100 saves, and 24 hours to get through the Thieves Guild chain of quests by work on Tuesday. So very cool. The ending of the quest line is pretty nice, what with the rewards and stature and all. Which leads me to the Dark Brotherhood quests. While I was on a certain later quest for the Gray Fox, I ended up killing a very dangerous vampire before he even saw me (I found out he was a vampire the hard way… up to 200 saves, people…). Killing an NPC without being provoked is, technically, killing an innocent person, for which the Dark Brotherhood visited me in my sleep. These quests are seriously the coolest in the game I’ve so far encountered (including the main story line). To this point, I’ve faked a murder, switched medicine with poison and never met my victim, and participated in an And The There Were None party (as the done-it!). It’s like a fantasy, expansive-world Hitman. I am so thankful, though, for going through the Thieves Guild quests first, as the l00t and skillz I earned there greatly helped me here. So satisfied. I’m sorry, Suikoden V. You’re gonna have to wait.

Two more things before I go…

1) Naruto. This one guy came into work yesterday to pick up a copy of Kingdom Hearts 2. Sigh. I want to know this boy. He has to be at least 17 or 18 and is definitely over 6 feet tall. He comes in every time with his grandmother… and decked out in the Naruto headband and gloves. I love these people. Yeah, I wear clothes with the logos and names of the games and shows I love…. but I don’t have to invent reasons to wear items of clothing that I would not otherwise. There are, however, expections. This is hot*. He was not. You already have the headband and gloves and 6-foot-plus thing imagined, right? I have seen him three times in the last month and he has worn the same thing each time. Literally. Same thing. Down to the last stitch. That would be interesting, maybe, but what he always wears makes it in-freakin’-credible. Throw this in your mental etch-a-sketch: a plain blue shirt, a zippered sweater/jacket, and blue sweatpants. Sweatpants. I can understand going outside in sweatpants. I’ve done it. But 100% of the time I’ve seen this guy, he’s been out and about in sweatpants. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad, but here’s the kicker: he was wearing Uggs (get it? kicker?). I’m so confused. Sigh. Let me into your world, young man. And if you are reading this, please don’t take offense. I respect you, in a weird way.

*you’re kinda cute, too, Race.

2) Support. I want to take this time to mention those webcomickery peers that have supported us so far in our venture. If you’ve been to onlinecomics.net, you’ve noticed that we’ve gone red. It’s Ice Cream time. Plus, if you sort the gamer comics by popularity, we’re on top… right above vgcats. w00t. Here’s to those that have corresponded with us in some way. If you are reading this and we haven’t responded lately, it’s because of this no sleep thing.

–Coin-Op was the first comic to link to us. You have a special place in our hearts.

–T3h 1337 5t1x befriended us randomly over at myspace and I really wanna show him some support. Plus, T3h annoys Race.

–Aaron at newgirl is another one of those who found us instead of the other way around and I want to take the opportunity to give him a shoutout. He’s a beginning webcomicker, as well, and I’d like to show him the support that we all need.

–Wes over at Sunday at Ten shot me a personal e-mail requesting link-stuffs so he could tell his readers about us. Plus, he said, essentially, “Yeah, the art may be cool, but the writing kicks way more ass and Race sucks.” Well, maybe he didn’t say that, but sometimes it’s nice to read your own words. It leads to much less confusion. Great duo over at that comic.

Wow, I need to go to bed. And Race needs to go to work. HAHA!

-Arlo

This edition of the Superhappymechafuntime may not be as proposterous as you may imagine. A couple of years ago, I went to the Anime Expo here in Anaheim and stumbled upon this panel. I didn’t really know what to make of it. On one hand, it was quite fascinating, discussing the prospect of building a real mech and how it could be implemented, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help but think that they were just a bunch of geeks who lived together in their hippie commune hangar, living off a diet composed of Maruchan and 80th generation VHS copies of Voltes 5. I shouldn’t be so closed-minded, though…I bet they thought Leonardo DaVinci was a giant nutjob when he drew plans for his spinny, flyingy thing.

I never thought I would get into it, but I found myself skirting aside my responsibilities to the comic yesterday to play Oblivion. (Bad Race, bad!) I know, I know, I’m awful. To make it worse, while I was working on it, I went to go lie down a little (without an intention of sleeping) and just konked out. Poor Arlo had to stay up waiting for me while playing Oblivion. Anyway, it’s a great game. The attention to detail is palpable, and after a few tweaks (thanks Blaine!), my mountains don’t look like shit anymore. I haven’t been really paying attention to the main quest, though. I just joined the thieves guild and have been punching everything…except for deer, they’re super fast. My hand-to-hand still sucks, but meh…punching things is fun. (Meatslappers!)

Dognabbit, I want Maruchan now.

~Race

So what’s up with my gaming life? Well, not much really. I finally got to Syberia, have been playing various NES roms on my PSP, oh, and I finally picked up what’s-it-called…oh yeah, MOTHEREFFING OBLIVION. It seems that everyone has dropped their lives entirely to engage themselves into it, and who can blame them, really? It’s a disgustingly immersive game, and quite pretty to boot. Now, I haven’t played an Elder Scrolls game since Daggerfall, but I’m surprised that it kind of feels the same. Aside from the fact that you don’t have to swing your mouse to attack anymore, or that quests are no longer randomly-generated, it still has that certain charm that I loved about Daggerfall. Elder Scrolls is what Fable tried to be, and in my humble opinion, failed miserably. FAHBLE?! PSHAW!

As I already mentioned, it looks really good…at least, on my computer. *points and laughs* I’m running it on 1280×1024 and large texture detail, on an Athlon 3200+, 2 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 7800GT. It’s a very beautiful thing. Most everything looks great, and it doesn’t lag, not even in the rain. I also don’t seem to have that problem of objects “popping” into view, a grievance I’ve heard from both PC and 360 players. As far as I can tell, it’s all very smooth. My only problem is the freaking mountains. They look awfully mushy and primitive…but my dungeons are gorgeus! =D

I made meself a “ninja” class: a stealthy, agile, thiefy character. For some reason, I couldn’t get a screenshot and I was too lazy to download a screencap program, so I just took a damn picture with my old camera that was lying around.

I pwnz bitches with my fists!

For some reason, I find gratification in punching giant rats to death. It’s strangely therapeutic. Well, and amusing. Mmmmm…rat meat.

In other news, I was checking out this week’s Photoshop Phriday on Something Awful, and I was inspired. I totally missed the boat on the whole process, since I haven’t shelled out the $9.95 to join their forums, so I just did this for fun because I’m kind of lame like that. The subject was “pretentious video games.”

As you can see, I combined “Ghost World,” perhaps the most pretentious comic/movie EVER, and Starcraft: Ghost, a game so pretentious that it’s too good to be released!

Christ, it’s already 6:43 a.m. and I’m still not tired! Maybe I’ll go punch rats some more and steal their meat. For the good of alchemy. Otaku-dom, here I come!

~Race

Wow, it only took us two strips to make it to the AnimeXPO. And this will not be the only hit on nerds and hygene before this arch is over. It should be noted that Fanboy’s shirt has a picture of Misty from Pokemon on it. You know, I had to go to the Official Pokemon Website to look up her name… How did that show go so wrong? God, children suck.

So more Oblivion… Read the previous post for a take on it. I am writing this at 3:30 in the morning because I forgot to do it after lettering the strip. ::sigh:: I’m just about 15 hours into the game. I really want to finish the Thieves Guild quests and the main story line before I crack open Suikoden. So many people have asked me why I bought another game when I just bought Oblivion. Well, man, I don’t even get Suikoden IV in my store anymore (so… much… rhyming…) so I need to snatch up a copy while I can. I actually had to get it transferred from another store. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get maybe one more copy in before they delist it. BTW, you can check up on my progress in Oblivion here:

Right now, I’m a cat burglar in the Thieves Guild and haven’t gotten very far in the story line. It’ll be a while. I’m glad I have two days off in the next three days.

Another thing. You can make your own class in this one, as before. Lou was at my house testing the waters with this Oblivion Whatchamagig and created his own class. The NPC guessed he was a monk and we tweaked that a little. He asked me what we should call this new class. The conversation was as follows:

Me: “Well, let’s see what your specialities are…. Seems to me like you’re kinda like a stealthy, sneaky monk type…”

Lou: “GASP! …. Like a….. NINJA!?”

So he made a Ninja class. Instant cool points. For some reason, the fact that the game let him sneak around inside it being called a Ninja legitimately and on his own terms led him to really enjoy the game. He got in some really cool bare-handed stealth kills, I have to admit.

Well, back at ‘er.

-Arlo

Read a review in OXM (whore, I know) and they gave Oblivion a 9.5. Said the only thing holding it back from a 10 was the loading times. Apparently — and this may come as a shocker — the game has to LOAD when you do that quick jump thing instead of streaming info as you hoof your way to a new town. Well, duh. I kinda expected load times. They also say the framerate can drop when you enter a town and quests can get befuddling when you have characters that have their own motivations. Sometimes…. just sometimes… that lady you are supposed to steal the ring from doesn’t take it off when she goes to bed. Kinda cool if you ask me. So, then that leaves Loading times and framerate issues. Expected. Not even getting my hopes up about that.

Played a little Burnout Revenge lately. The original version looked realy good, so not much than the rubbing paint changed. Criterion did take this opportunity to tweak some of the misfires of the original release, which I appreciate. The replay download is cool, but as the whole game is full of amazing crashes and close calls, I just avoid these snippets altogether unless specifically requested as vital. Why would I want to wait to download something YOU did when I could be spreading the destruction myself? (Me’s Note: “Spreading the Destruction” is much like “Spreading the Love” except without all the herpes… ok, maybe a little herpes.)It will get cool, however, when they start having Warthog Jump-style videos. ::crosses fingers::

I am currently ranked worldwide at 1588. Not too bad, I guess. One of the friends on my list is ranked at 79, though. Bastard.

Hey, if you have a 360 and xbox live, hit me up.

-Arlo

Plus, this hamster is wicked fast.

Can you count how many times in this post I wrote a sentence with no subject? Implied grammar rocks.