Flagship - The Independent Magazine for Gamers

Ok no-one has posted here, set let me be the first with a couple of my favorite games.

1. Morrowind. I loved this game, I cleared it on the PC, and I am currently playing the Xbox Game of The year version on my Xbox 360. If your thinking of buying this make sure you get the Game of the Year version. The game is very rich in atmosphere, and you are totally free to wander off and do what ever you please. The character creation is awesome, you can truly make your own class with you own skills. I like to make a rogue type class, short blade, light armour, sneak and acrobatics and athletics skills. The game ending I have to confess was a little of a disappointment but still a true RPG epic.

2. Oblivion. The Follow on to Morrowind, but in my opinion not as good in many areas of the game. It has been much dumbed down to suit a larger audience I feel. It has been changed to no longer encourage exploring, being able to just pick a spot on the map, and auto move to it, many of the better spells have been removed, and the armour simplified, and the graphics on items not as good. Its been made more hands on to suit Xbox users and not quite the complex game Morrowind is. Still having said that its a close second to Morrowind, I am still enjoying playing it. Again buy the Game of Year version which includes add ons and patch fixes etc. One of he most annoying features of Oblivion is that the monsters you fight are all scaled to your current level. So you could end up a level 50 warrior struggling to kill a rat you find in dark dungeon. I really do not like this kind of system.

So in short both good games, but Morrowind despite being the older of the two, and needing an XBox 360 update to be backward compatible, I think comes out on top.

To learn more about these games goto http://www.elderscrolls.com/

John May.

This is the first time I hear someone prefers Morrowing over Oblivion. Everyone seems to think Oblivion as a 'level up' in role playing, with NPCs much more realistic when going about their daily bussiness etc rather than standing in a place waiting for the human player to come and talk to them.

I have been a Morrowind player, and played a lot Daggerfall as well in the old days (From Daggerfall both games originated) however for Oblivion I have only read reviews and heard comments as I was hooked with World of Warcraft the last 3 years. In any case, all reviews i read simply stated the perfect game (apart from the fact that to make it challenging at all times they level up everything, and in large levels you could still be defeated by city rats or something, haha!)

Yes I too played daggerfall. was a good game, I never got that far really, it was a good precursor to Morrowind.

Having written AI for games for a long time, I wasnt impressed really with Oblivion's wandering NPC's. Yes they do move around, and talk to each other. But it isnt well done, and they quickly end up saying the same things all the time.

John.