Spring Break, Oblivion, & Disney World!

I just saw the Godfather (part one) for the first time. Good movie... pretty long, too. It must have had half a dozen different climaxes. In the car ride home, we were all kind of checking the seat behind us nervously to make sure no one was going to... uhh... get revenge or anything....

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For the past week I've been on Spring Break... woohoo! :) I've been getting some good web site work done... maybe by the end of next week I'll have put some parts online.

That's going to be waylayed, though, by a "trip out of the country," as my dad calls it -- a trip to the self-contained, totalitarian microworld known as Disney World. (Seriously, they should secede from the Union.)

What'll my favorite attraction be? Why, same as last year, of course - Star Tours! :D

If I have a chance, maybe I'll report live from the Mouse Front. Or not. We're being airlifted in at 08:00, or something like that. I'll send in a little report afterwards, at least... well, if I remember. :)

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So what have I been doing for the past week, aside from web work and prepping for insertion? Living in an entirely different world. Well, in the few spare minutes when my brother isn't. :)

That world is Nirn, specifically the 16 square mile Cyrodiil province as seen in the RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, available now for Xbox 360 and PC. (The second installment is remembered for an environment twice the size of Great Britain, but the land in Oblivion is much more varied.)

This game has earned almost universal 9/10 reviews or higher. Complaints about framerate or load times are not totally without reason, but are an utter non-issue. If you play this game, trust me, you won't care either. It's just... well, HUGE, and it presents endless possibilities. Buy and sell; barter; buy a house; buy a horse; steal a horse; go to jail; break out of jail; repeat.

Jail is actually kind of fun, which I suppose is a bad moral for kids to learn. ;) You can try to pick the lock, which is hard -- harder in the bigger prisons, like the Imperial City Prison. You could also try pickpocketing the key off the guard. (But if you do and you're recaptured, watch out, 'cause they're not dumb enough to give him the key the second time.) In smaller cities you might be paired with a jailmate. I once escaped by starting a fight with another prisoner and then running out the door as the guard came in to intervene.

I could go on for hours. Many reviewers do. Google it; you'll find some. If you have an Xbox 360, I highly recommend it; if you have a PC, chances are you won't be able to run it. But if you have a state-of-the-art computer that can handle the graphics and physics, go for it. :)