Oblivion!

W007! I got Oblivion working at about 10 fps with distant land, trees, and buildings on. I didn't put AA on for Obvious reasons, but bloom works well. I love Oblivion. I don't care what all the Morrowind fanboys say, it's just better in every way. First and foremost the graphics are vastly improved. No longer do you have segmented bodies and nasty fog (without mods, that is). You have highly detailed and randomly generated trees. Every character is unique save for the hair and items. There is amazing quality textures and normal mapping. When you look at bricks and stuff from a distance they appear to be high poly. I also love the fact that the spell effects are looking better. Invisibility and cameleon distort the area behind the target and restoration makes the target glow white-green. All the cities are very detailed and you can even see reflections on the windows (though they look sort of reflection mapped). I don't play with grass on, but I downloaded a low low poly grass mod... it made the grass look ugly as sin. I am just gonna use low poly next time. Not low low poly. I turned the eyesore grass off.
It works great with Windows Vista however you have to turn the sidebar off or else it will flicker through the game occasionally. Oblivion is a ram hog but other than that the only thing that really is of concern is the graphic card. True, a Geforce 6100 is still outdated but I have become so used to playing games at 10 fps that it hardly bugs me. Using OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) I am able to get faster loading times to the point that it is much faster loading than even Morrowind on my current hardware! I believe that they vastly improved the way they load files. I'll provide screenshots with the FPS counter enabled sometime, but for now I cannot as I am at school and I also need to do homework on the computer. It's just typing though. About 8 pages of typing. I guess if I can waste my time on this blog typing incessantly I can do well typing schoolwork. But I digress, the topic I am discussing is games.
The gameplay in Oblivion is much improved. I find it much easier and more intuitive than Morrowind. They also vastly improved sneaking. You just tap one button and you sneak until you tap the button again. This makes it easier and you will find that you will be wanting to sneak more. What is the motive for sneaking? On Oblivion, depending on your sneak level, you can inflict 2-6 times damage by attacking while sneaking. This comes in handy when you can attack your enemy with a bow and arrow from a distance then run backwards shooting at them until they reach you when you can finish them off rather easily with the sword. The only problem I have with this is that it is easy to accidentally forget you are in sneak mode and pickpocket someone rather than talk to them; moreso than in Morrowind. Other than that it is a welcome addition to the already phenomenal gameplay.
Another great addition is the schedules of the NPCs and the Radiant AI. Radiant AI as some of you may know is a new feature that makes the NPCs follow a schedule such as eating, sleeping, and working making them on the move unlike Morrowind where they just stood there looking stupid. They also do little things such as conversing with other NPCs, reading, taking an afternoon stroll, shopping, and hunting. The NPCs all are fully voice acted and a pleasure to interact with. I find that Radiant AI (although having many glitches that you can find on youtube) is an excellent addition to the game and can add new gameplay possiblities. The guards too are also affected by this though they still maintain their posts when working. Sometimes it can be fun to follow someone around town just to see what they are doing while admiring the AI. Some quests even rely on this to make you understand their schedule.
I'll go into further detail later, but overall this is an awesome game filled with replayability, excellent gameplay, great quests, fun dungeons, and lots and lots of mudcrabs. I find that every session spent playing Oblivion is one that I do not regret. I find myself playing multiple characters just so I can experience the game from every possible character, from the hero, to the theif, to the guy who follows people around like a creepy stalker, I love playing this game. Like I said, more on this next post.

Argh, Crippled Graphics Card...

I just realized how terrible my graphics card really was. I downloaded one of those stress tests that measure the performance of your GPU and decided to give it a spin. No pixel shading support. Low framerates on moderately complex scenes. Huge problems with reflections. Such is the track record of MX models of Nvidia GPUs. I have an Nvidia Geforce2MX and it's a sad day when I can't play Morrowind with somewhat of a decent looking graphics quality. Also, Metal Gear Solid 2 just chuuuuugs. I even had problems with Final Fantasy 8 of all games. Is my computer really slower than a PSX?
Back on the subject of Morrowind, I love that game. Morrowind is really my kind of game despite obvious technical limitations and inevitable frequent crashes caused by the very thing that makes them lest devastating: saving. I don't mind those so much so I can just enjoy Morrowind even if it crashes every 15 minutes or so. I really like the sense of exploration you get by traversing the land because I was always fond of open-ended games that allowed you to roam free and do whatever you like. Morrowind lets you do just that. You can fight monsters, do quests, or even quite literally get away with murder (if planned properly... good thing premeditation isn't a factor in this game) assuming you can evade the guards.
That's the beauty of this game though, no rules. They designed the game so that they gave you some items, a world to explore, a bunch of quests, but you are not obligated to do anything. This is a game where you can have endless hours of fun without doing anything related to the quest. Also, like I said before, you can be a criminal if you choose to. As there are no rules to this game except for the laws imposed by the government in the game (which you can break) you can realistically simulate being as crooked as you like. Inversely, you can be a heroic knight that stands up to the mighty forces of the Daedra and kills monsters. I prefer a more indirect approach to everything. I like to stop along the way to smell roses and stuff.
People may make games and claim that they are "Open ended" or "non linear" but fail to make it as such because they impose too many rules and boundaries. On Morrowind, there are more than a few ways to do things and bend the rules a little. Say for instance you needed to get through a gorge with an enemy stronghold at the bottom of it (you are at the bottom too). You could either:

A: Go through the stronghold kililing enemies along the way.
B: Cast a jumping spell on you and use your empowered jumping to scale the stronghold and cross to the other side.
C: Repeatedly use invisibility effects to cross the stronghold unseen and avoid conflict.
D: Scale the gorge and go thorough.

There are probably other ways to get across, but I've barely scratched the surface of this game. I really like the open endedness of the game because sometimes the linear games get a bit boring and you run out of new things to do. Morrowind has variety and lots of map area to explore. I personally recommend it to anyone who doesn't have the computer for Oblivion (the sequel) or just wants a fun game filled with variety.