Once in a while, you just have to stop, pause the game that you are playing, and say to yourself out loud, “Wow, that was cool.” Unfortunately, lately, that feeling of joy within certain games is occurring less and less; thanks to commercial video game companies who pop out mediocre titles one after another like the Brady Bunch’s parents. We all experience the lack of this “good feeling”; at least until another Half-Life or Halo game comes out, and that is very rare. So, if you want to wake up tomorrow, and load up a game that gives you that joy, but don’t know what game to load up yet, I have four words for you– Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Like all of the predecessors in the Elder Scrolls franchise, you find yourself starting the game in a dark and depressing prison. A “create-a-character” menu pops up, and just like most RPG’s, you get to pick the traits that you want your beloved hero to have. You first pick one of ten wonderful and creative races that Oblivion has to offer, and now the rest of the character-building is up to your imagination. Don’t have an imagination? Look in a mirror and create yourself, the NPC’s of the game can’t tell if your character is ugly or not.

There are many options to develop and shape your character, most of which you’d find in a standard MMORPG or Sims game. Choose from hair style, face style, face shape, (ears, eyes, chin, cheeks, lips, facial hair) body composition, skin tone, and many other small variations that are fun to tinker with. Once you have created your made-up hero, this RPG like no other blasts off, and never stops.

The king of the Province of Cyrodil bashes in your cell, alongside some guards. He talks to you, saying that he has seen you in his dreams, and that evil minions have killed off the remaining heirs to the throne. Conveniently, the king’s escape route is placed through a secret passage way found in your dungeon cell. The stone wall opens disclosing a hidden hallway, revealing sanctuary for the king, and obvious freedom for you.

Within moments, you are split up from your party, and are attacked by abnormally large rats. Fortunately this isn’t a turn-based RPG, so the basic FPS controls apply here to attack and move. To switch weapons, you have to open up your inventory, but you can set weapons, spells, or anything else that you can equip to the 1-10 number buttons as hot-keys. After the entertaining rat slaughter sequence is over, you’ll learn about some new game elements in Oblivion.

One of these new elements is the new “sneak” feature. You can crouch down, and hide in the shadows so enemies won’t see you. An eye icon replaces the cursor, and when the eye is lit up, the enemies can see you; when it’s grayed out, you are unnoticeable. It’s really fun to sneak behind a cave goblin and attack it from the back with a power hit. Or, you can crouch in a corner and pick off rats with your bow until their notice you. This adds to some very fun moments in the game if you ever decide to loot houses at night.

The AI of enemies and allies seems aggressive, and seem to react as a human player would. Wolves attack deer, while warriors alongside you will look out for you, yelling if an enemy approaches. Enemies dodge and deflect blows from a sword, or jump out of the way of shot arrows, and multiple enemies leave room for others so they can attack in sequence. If you decide to steal, the guards will notify each other in each city of your arrest. They won’t stop until you are seen in prison; so prepare yourself for a good and challenging fight, even if you have the difficulty on easy.

In Oblivion, you can experience first hand the world of Tamriel: one of the most realistic fantasy worlds since Middle-Earth in “The Lord Of The Rings.” Tamriel is a living breathing world with no boundaries or limits. Every single NPC in the game has a full 24-hour schedule, meaning humans actually sleep at night, wake up, and do as they please throughout the day. Because of actual simulated time sequences, weather simulates change, and the sun, moon, and skies act accordingly as they would in real life. This is one of the most realistically complex and developed worlds that has been seen in a video game, and Oblivion wouldn’t come close to it’s greatness without it.

What has awed everyone and hyped up this game since E3 has been the foliage, architecture, and world effects within Tamriel. Now after witnessing the visual effects, they are all that anyone would hope them to be. Wonderfully modeled and textured trees sway in the wind, and billions of blades of grass fill the land for as far as the eye could see. You’ll find yourself taking a trip and hiking up a mountain just to look out at the gorgeous view. The draw distance seems to go on for miles, overlooking lakes and trees which populate the wonderful virtual world.

You may ask yourself, “Since this world is so huge, wouldn’t walking from city to city take me days?” The answer to that question is no, thanks to the wonderful invention of horses! There are many stables found throughout the game, where you can purchase (or steal) any horse of your liking. Hop on the back of one of nature’s automobiles, and traveling all across Tamriel is more fun than taking a pony down the Grand Canyon. You can also “teleport” to the many different regions of the world once you have found them and placed them on your map.

There are a lot of features of Oblivion that set it a part from the regular RPG, and because of this it seems like future RPG’s will have to live up to the level that Oblivion is on, in order to even be noticed. Oblivion’s previous advertisements have read, “The RPG for the Next Generation,” and truthfully that is exactly what it is . There is a large array of quests, missions, and other objectives that you can be apart of, and they seem to never stop. You can look forward to a great helping of 35 hours + of game play, which will just get you the completions of the main story and missions. But, because of the game acting differently based on the one of ten races you choose in the beginning, it seems like this will be one of the games that people keep going back to for years. The mod development kit shipped the same time the game did, so you know you can look forward to a huge modding community, (not that it needs it.)

Possibly the only negative thing about this game is that you’ll need a pretty high-end PC to play it. If you don’t have a 128MB video card or later, this game won’t even launch. However, a 128mb AGP 8x card will only allow you to the lowest graphical settings, and unfortunately Oblivion will feel like something is missing. If you don’t have a decent video card, why are you even trying to play it anyway?

Pretty much all of today’s PC games require way better hardware than your year old PC has, and without the right components, these next gen games won’t feel totally next gen. (Picture running F.E.A.R. on a 640×480 resolution, with all low settings ). If you’re a PC gamer, then you’ll obviously know that you need a lot of memory, and 1GB of RAM is advised for this game. If you have anything lower than that, prepare to face loading times that are over a few minutes long. Also, don’t forget about the processor, a 3GHZ core is recommended for this graphical beauty.

Every time you complete a quest or goal in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something. You won’t be able to put it down, but when you have to, you can be guaranteed that you will say to yourself, “Wow, that was cool;” many, many times.