Modding – My Game Reviews

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is one of the standout games of 2025 Graphics

Oblivion Remastered has to be one of the best surprises of this year. Being a big fan of High Fantasy, this game was a treat to enjoy.

Being released in the spring, this felt like the perfect game for such a season. The screenshot above shows why here. This is a section of the Cyrodil map near the center of it and this is just a small pond here. The water lilies and the flowers are just so magical in this new version of the game here. I just had to take some time to take screenshots.

The Elder Scrolls Games, specifically Oblivion and Skyrim are games where you can just relax and enjoy the scenery. It is a great game just to engage with when one wants to just explore over following a linear set of objectives.

I have written about why I enjoyed playing Oblivion Remastered. I was bigger fan of Oblivion over Skyrim. I thought that Skyrim was a game which, while great, was too earthy for a fantasy game. I like the color and graphics of Oblivion. The new remastered graphics show why remastering these games is so important for preserving the efforts that brought these games to us gamers.

In an age where many video games just seem like a waste of money, this is a great achievement in here to get the industry back on track, so it is more vibrant in here.

The gameplay was already of great quality and the remastering helped to refine it.

However, the graphics have given the muddy looking yet colorful game another lease on life which is what they were trying to achieve with this edition.

In comparison to the original version, I think that the strongest aspect are the mountains. In the image above, one how much better looking such mountains are in comparison to the original version.

The one thing that I will give the original version is that it has brighter colors. There is this browness in the grass in the Remastered version which makes it look more like Skyrim in comparison.

When it comes to Weye right next to the Imperial City, there is something truly beautiful about the rustic country buildings in the evening light here. The flowers on the vines on the stone walls also provide a beautiful color contrast here.

The Remastered edition’s ability to render shadows really elevates the graphics. While the color is desaturated and not the best, I like how the nearby NPC’s clothing is interacting with the shadows and light in a complex way here.

It is during the night that I think the remastered edition’s color palette start to surpass the original versions. The lighting effects are greatly improved in the Remastered version have a softer presence, which I think helps to elevate the night especially in cities such as the Imperial City, and other urban areas.

While the color scheme isn’t really what I wanted, I think screenshots such as those above, explain why people keep coming to Oblivion even after playing Skyrim. There is something that the game manages to capture in the natural environment of the game.

This game had many pretty entries but this remastering of Oblivion is among one of the best I have seen.

The Demonic Realm of the Oblivion Gates: Oblivion Remastered’s Incredible Graphics and Style

In comparison with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Oblivion is very different game in its style. Skyrim takes in a time of change, and it seems that the Septim Empire is no longer the great juggernaut that it once was. It is a time of the Nords reawakening to their ancient imperial past and the Imperials are finding themselves in an age of much greater competition than had existed in Oblivion.

The catalyst of this imperial decline and turmoil? The Oblivion Crisis caused by the Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction. Unlike the other Daedric Princes, he is blatantly a chaotic and vicious entity and the amount of damage he caused by his armies descending upon the Septim Empire can’t really even be seen in the game. However, if we were to think about it realistically within the confines of the lore and culture, the Oblivion Crisis severely weakened the whole empire, causing the Mede Dynasty to come to power and the metaphysical strength of the empire gone and various Mer and Beasts rising to power in their various realms.

Unlike the Dragons in Skyrim, the Oblivion Plane of Mehrunes Dagon is a land of contrast with the land of milk and honey in Cyrodiil in spite of the bandits and the dangerous creatures walking around in that area.

When you enter the Oblivion Gates, the graphics of the Remastered Version showcase the power of the original design with a new coat of paint.

Many games do not even come close to how powerful this demonic realm appears to the player, especially in the new version.

Here is a gallery of photos showcasing the immense weight of the Oblivion Realm.

While it does not have much color variation, the details in the Remastered version are incredible; this is also only on the GeForce Now version. On more powerful computers, the quality must be even higher. The Oblivion Gates are huge contrast to the world outside; everything is twisted and vicious. Even the plants seem demonic and more akin to violence than giving life in this realm. There are no butterflies, no flowers, no lilac pads of any kind. It’s just black rocks soaring into the sky with rivers of lava everywhere.

This is a truly unique experience. It makes you understand why saving the world outside the Oblivion Gates is so important. Unlike the Dragons which are so easily hit by arrows in Skyrim, the separation of the Oblivion Gates from the regular world helps to provide the importance to the mission of the hero in this story.

There is nothing greater in Oblivion than being able to close those gates and reenter the world of Cyrodiil knowing you are standing against the forces of Mehrunes Dagon and engaging in a great struggle of survival.

It is what makes the game interesting and have the weight that has kept it fresh for so many years after its original release in 2006. Oblivion Remastered show that age on a video game can truly make some great wine that everyone wants to enjoy.

Civilization 7 Review: The Worst Game in the Series.

Civilization 7 is the worst game in the series. There are some who want to say that it has new ideas and not recycled ideas. I am guessing these are casual gamers or people who are easily swayed by marketing because this is basically SimCity Societies from 2007 in a Civ Game.

The issue is that the players who played the older games before Civ V have been seeing the changes and that it is becoming very much like Angry Birds and other forgotten mobile games, just a brand to put on mediocre gameplay and hide it with marketing.

The UI is terrible and when compared to Civ 1, it shows the generational changes and the malaise we are currently in this culture.

The Civ switching was a concern of mine earlier on and I see that Fraxis was lazy and put in a bunch of leaders who are not leaders but Great People.

The game does not have England in the game but hides behind a DLC and puts in a person, Ada Lovelace, who was not a political leader, phlisophical, or spiritual leader in any sense. The leader of England should be a King or Prime Minister. I would recommend King Charles II of the Restoration Era.

The Shawnee were put in the game for politics and yet Confucius can rule them. Do not use the CIV has never been about history. It has a tech tree which contains many of the most important technologies in human history. This is not a very good argument to using here.

The crisis system is lazy and does not provide context for what is happening. Having every Civ move into the same age is silly and makes the game too easy. There needs to be consequences to not being able to catch up in tech or economics. Having a reset does not make the game challenging. The Civ Switching doesn’t even stop the snowballing that they say they wanted to not have.

It is clear that the game has increasingly become attached to politics in America more and not just a game about history.

The map generation is terrible and worse than 20 year old games.

The positive reviews are people who generally enjoy simpler, easier games. While Microsoft is no saint of a company, they have made AOE 4 into a game that appeals to casuals and power users. They even encourage people to improve their tactics while also being a great platform for teaching history about multiple cultures, without being myopic about it.

Civilization 7 is the worst in the series. Civilization V was a strange experiment on launch but they did not railroad the player into 3 mini games.