This morning’s walk from the parking lot to the office revealed a long-held secret of the videogame universe, a space that’s notorious for its long, summer drought of new releases.
I passed an African-American woman with buzz-cut bleach-blonde hair and a bright yellow shirt. A short-haired blonde Caucasian lady wearing black from her high heels and spandex to her tight shirt and earrings. A 20-something guy wearing ripped jeans whose tattered maroon backpack hung halfway down his torso. But it was the guy just beyond those three, the unassuming spectacled dude in a navy blue t-shirt, who caught my eye.
His shirt had a large Scrabble logo across the chest, with a white tagline about being top-ranked on the world’s online leaderboard. My instinct was to give the guy a smirk, maybe even let slip one of those throat-gurgle laughs that sounds like you’re hocking a loogie. But I looked into his eyes and saw something familiar, a quality I’ve seen hundreds of times in the eyes of my fellow gamers.
I envisioned the thousands of people wandering the now-defunct E3 wearing gaming t-shirts. The hundreds of people clamoring for free game-related posters. The hordes of mouth breathers jostling for position to get one free pack of Tomb Raider mints. Those people live and breathe videogames, and they loathe the summertime lack of new game releases. Well, this pedestrian obviously lives and breathes Scrabble, and I can only imagine how difficult it is for him to be a slave to his day job rather than be playing Scrabble online (O-N-L-I-N-E = six points).
This summer, like every summer before it, saw a nigh-unbearable drought of videogames. Sure, we had NCAA Football 07, Prey and Ninety-Nine Nights. But the minute we wrapped up those reviews, which game did we hop right back to? Save for the downloadable Xbox Live Arcade games, the period that just concluded with Labor Day had just one game, one title, one experience that mattered. And in that game lies the answer as to why summer 2006 had so few new releases: The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion.
Bethesda Softworks has in Oblivion the singular explanation for why we needed so few new games this summer. I’m personally on hour 139, have a character at level 39 and haven’t yet made my way halfway through the campaign. I haven’t gone through more than a dozen random dungeons, and I’ve only closed five Oblivion gates. There’s far too much to do in this game to warrant buying, let alone playing, any new games until this holiday season. Bethesda’s game required a summer drought this year, because it just offers so much.
Some people might call it obsession. I call it passion. I’m passionate about Oblivion. So passionate, in fact, that I’ve been too busy to write this site’s review of the Xbox 360 version. You want my review? Here you go: Oblivion is the best game I’ve ever played, bar none. No questions asked, no time to think about it: Oblivion is the best, not only at what it does for the genre, but for what it does for redefining what constitutes a “game.” I simply can not get enough, and as a result, I haven’t really been all that affected by the summertime drought.
There are plenty of people who returned from Labor Day weekend glad to see summer come to a close. To them, the lack of new game releases has been awful, and the signs of fall and winter mean a deluge of new games and even two new consoles. But to me, it’s more of the “same old, same old.” I played Oblivion Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I might just turn it on again tonight.
I don’t walk the streets wearing an Oblivion t-shirt. I don’t boast about the number of skills I’ve mastered or items I’ve enchanted. But quietly, in the privacy of my own home, I wander Cyrodiil looking for my next great experience. Mr. Scrabble probably feels the same way about his hobby, quietly lurking the online lobbies looking for his next opponent. More power to him for not being afraid to show the world that passion as he walked across the street.
Then again, maybe he just snagged his shirt at Goodwill.
I still say Oblivion is the reason we had a summertime drought this year.
— Jonas Allen