Hello all you GamerHusbands, GamerWives and GamerSingles, it’s been a while. Portal 2 releases in a few days and God help me if you think I’m not gunna put my two-cents worth into a review of that. This article isn’t about puzzle games though, it’s about games like Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age and any other Magic Realism interpretations of medieval times.

I tried ladies and gentlemen, seriously I did, but I just can’t get in the mood for it.

I don’t mind a bit of Assassin’s Creed, but that is fairly true history and I mainly liked it for the whole overarching story of the Templars and Assassins in the future. I haven’t bought Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood because I didn’t really feel like playing the story anymore unless it was focused more on the future battle. I told a friend that opinion and he told me that the whole thing about AC is that it’s observing the past to tip the balance in the future and it’s not that important about what happens to Desmond compared to Ezio or Altair or whoever the next game is going to be about. That’s all well and good but I like the future better, just give me a sweet as gun and a great story and I’ll love the game forever.

I love Fallout so very very much, so when I went to buy myself a copy of Oblivion recently, I was expecting a similar experience. It was pretty similar but I came to the realisation that these games just aren’t for me. Kings and Queens and Elves and Orcs and swords and horses, I dunno something about the whole thing just doesn’t appeal to me. I feel like the whole medieval theme isolates me into a genre I cannot relate to (In a way any ol’ scifi action explosion bazooka game does soo well). Don’t get me wrong, Oblivion is a pretty sweet game except for the whole thing where if you aim for a stealth playthrough you will have a very hard time (first hand experience) and wizards are wayyyy overpowered. The story just wasn’t worth the effort of sleeping by accident and leveling up and being mauled by the first thing you run into. In comparison I liked Fallout because you got to see other people’s stories laid out in front of you, and you had the choice to ignore the odd pile of bones in the corner of an old shack or you could investigate why it was there (for no achievements and no experience, just purely for the immersion into the story). Oblivion on the other hand, everything is given to you in text down to the dot, nothing left unexplained. Also I didn’t feel any characters had personal or believable stories at all, you didn’t have the choice to be nice or nasty to them, and when the quest was over you still had no idea who they were. I got the impression that if you were playing as a fighter or a mage then that wouldn’t matter much because the gameplay would be supercool, but I usually go for building assassins or thieves. It was very easy to get overpowered playing like that, and the Thieves Guild quest was kinda sparse and not very rewarding.

I play games that I want to play, not ones people suggest to me or are incredibly cheap. I do not want to play alternative medieval history games so I don’t. I should probably stop here, please feel free to comment on this article and tell me what you think, or just to hate on me for hating on this…

More of my reviews/ideas/thoughts/bizarre at twitter.com/warmanator