[AuroraProject]

Alright, now I'm mad. My pre-order of the Oblivion Collectors Edition was through Best Buy, yesterday the status changed from "will ship 3/20" to "Backordered", now this morning it shows as "Sold Out". This is the second time I have experienced this with BB. I just ordered a regular copy from gamestop.com, hopefully it'll get here quick!


I will never pre-order a video game from Best Buy again.

 

[Mercuttio]

My Gamestop that I preordered at left me a message yesterday saying it would be in today. I got the special edition... wish it wasn't a cardboard case though.

I can't wait to throw on my DT770-80s and fling myself into this game!

 

[lewtz]

Well been playing for about 2hours now.

Initial impressions are good. Combat is a lot better I think. Controls are not to bad overall, just take a little bit to get used to. Interface could use some work I think.

Graphics are very good. I am using an Athlon 64 3700, with 2 gigs of ram, and Nvidia 7800GT videocard. Running it fine with most everything turned way up.

Overall though, game seems good, we will see though.

 

[SennFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject Alright, now I'm mad. My pre-order of the Oblivion Collectors Edition was through Best Buy, yesterday the status changed from "will ship 3/20" to "Backordered", now this morning it shows as "Sold Out". This is the second time I have experienced this with BB. I just ordered a regular copy from gamestop.com, hopefully it'll get here quick! I will never pre-order a video game from Best Buy again.

Best Buy is the worst. Countless times things like this have happened to me there, def not dependable in the slightest. Always go through EB for game preorders, those guys are really professional and fair about preorders.

 

[SennFan]

Any XBox 360 Oblivion impressions....? I'm looking forward to hearing from you my trusted fellow head-fi'ers!!

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

I just picked up my copy a few minutes ago

The guide is pretty huge, I picked that up too. I didn't think the collectors edition was worth the extra $10, just a coin, little book and a making of DVD.

 

[Ripley]

I'm interested in 360 impressions as well, given that I might actually be able to find a system in the near future (according to the latest press releases).

So, details! Details!

 

[SennFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ripley I'm interested in 360 impressions as well, given that I might actually be able to find a system in the near future (according to the latest press releases). So, details! Details!

You could always do what I did and buy a Premium 360 for $550 off Ebay

which sucks...

What sucked even more was how the guy included the receipt that showed that it only cost him like $330 b/c he worked in a store and had a discount

 

[humanflyz]

I walked into an EB Games today, and on a whim, I asked the store manager if they have any premium Xbox 360s in stock, and just my luck, there was one left in stock. So I bought it on the spot with a copy of Oblivion, and have been playing it for 3 hours. I must say, everything is pretty much better than Morrowind. The character-customizations are absolutely amazing; you can totally spend an hour just tweaking your character to your exact liking (example, there are about 6 or 7 different parameters for your chin alone). Combat is much better: dogding and blocking actually mean something now. Graphics are obviously MUCH better. Instant-travel has been a life-saver, and NPCs are much more life-like with lip-syncing and actual recorded dialogue. I don't want to go on further to spoil anything. But suffice to say, if you liked Morrowind, you should absolutely get Oblivion.

Another question: does anyone here use the VGA connection with their Xbox? I don't have a HDTV, and the dorm space doesn't exactly allow for one. So I plan on buying the VGA cable, so I would like to know about the image quality, because the image quality is less-than-optimal running through the composite cable through my TV tuner *shudders*. At least the game is good, so I can ignore the sub-par image quality for now, but I would imagine that the VGA connection provides a much higher resolution than 480i and better quality. So if you are using the VGA connection with your Xbox, please tell me your impressions so far.

 

[AuroraProject]

So I managed to pick up the collectors edition in my local Best Buy today, and of course cancelled all the other orders I had. I've got 2.5 hours in it today and it is quite stunning. Far more interesting to me than Morrowind. I'm playing on the 360, and graphics wise it's not as good as I had hoped, thats not to say it looks bad, but I guess I had set my expectations too high. I'm still trying to figure lots of things out, but I've managed to close an Oblivion gate already, so that must be good! Combat is good, as mentioned blocking and dodging are actually effective. There are so many options for character creation, it's unreal.

Glad I found a copy today, I'm off to play!

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by humanflyz Another question: does anyone here use the VGA connection with their Xbox? I don't have a HDTV, and the dorm space doesn't exactly allow for one. So I plan on buying the VGA cable, so I would like to know about the image quality, because the image quality is less-than-optimal running through the composite cable through my TV tuner *shudders*. At least the game is good, so I can ignore the sub-par image quality for now, but I would imagine that the VGA connection provides a much higher resolution than 480i and better quality. So if you are using the VGA connection with your Xbox, please tell me your impressions so far.

My HDTV is waiting for repairs, so I'm using the VGA cable to my 19" LCD. Any LCD or monitor capable of diplaying 1280x1024 or 1280x720 will work best. Just some games will only support widescreen and will either be letterboxed or stretched, like old kung-fu movies if your monitor is standard 4:3 aspect ratio.

Incidentally, GRAW single player campaign is letterboxed on a 4:3 monitor, but multiplayer online is glorious 1280x1024 on my PC monitor. Very nice.

Don't know about Oblivion, since I don't have it yet.

-Ed

 

[humanflyz]

I am seriously in love with the character creation process. I started a new game just to create another character. The customization options are just AMAZING, by far the most detailed and precise character-creation process I've ever seen. I've seriously spent an hour tweaking all the physical aspects of my character.

 

[SennFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by humanflyz I am seriously in love with the character creation process. I started a new game just to create another character. The customization options are just AMAZING, by far the most detailed and precise character-creation process I've ever seen. I've seriously spent an hour tweaking all the physical aspects of my character.

Glad you like the game so much, that's awesome! Are you using the 360 or PC version?

 

[humanflyz]

I have the 360 version, because my PC isn't up to par to run the game at the settings it was meant to be run in. Although when I do upgrade my PC later on, I will probably pick up the PC version as well for the construction tool-set. But for now, the Xbox will keep me satisfied.

 

[asmox]

Well, I've always loved TES. In fact, Daggerfall is among my favorite games of all time.. and Arena will always have a special place in my heart for several very specific reasons.

However, IMO Morrowind was a huge blunder. Your hand was held like a little baby throughout the entire game, which really put me off. The plot was largely uninteresting and drawn out. Character advancement was a joke, as was difficulty scaling.. and most of all, it was just boring. Coming from the awesomeness that was Daggerfall, I was basically disappointed to the extreme. That being said, it wasn't really a "bad" game.. and I didn't lose faith in BSW.

I won't be able to pick up Oblivion till Friday, but I'm expecting it to be mostly faithful to what TES can and should be. I'm still expecting issues with the Radiant AI, though.. take a look at this scenario -

You break into some poor lady's house and steal her apples. There's a certain farmer out there who delivers apples to this lady on a daily basis.. though unfortunately, you went off and killed him. Growing impatient and hungry, the lady heads over to her next door neighbor and steals his apples, only to be killed by the guards. Now you've screwed yourself out of any quests that involved this poor lady, not to mention what would happen if she had anything to do with the main plotline..

Unlikely, maybe, but possible.. and I'm sure you can imagine many more scenarios in the same vein. Granted, BSW did say that they've taken measures to prevent anything "game-breaking" from happening, but I'm still expecting something silly to crop up. Radiant AI is a really cool thing and can do an awesome job in bringing a world to life, but it isn't without drawbacks.