I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming everyone to lower their expectations for the likely dumpster fire that is The Elder Scrolls VI.
I know its old hat nonsense of a complaint but whatever Bethesda used to be it stopped being that 20 years ago and we’re all just stuck thinking they’ll put out some new masterpiece when in reality all the talent they had back in the day has likely left for other jobs and they are now just a shitty company among countless other shitty companies putting profit over anything else and stifling anyone who might actually have good ideas on how to make good games (how unsurprising).
There‘s no Oblivion remake. Go to the Steam Page and carefully read word for word what it is you‘re talking about.
I play Fantasy Critic with some friends. We allow remakes in our league but not remasters. This one counts as a remake for purposes of this site, with a flag on it to note that it was contentious. This game definitely blurs some lines on some definitions.
Wait what? Is this like fantasy sports, but with video game reviews? Do you draft developers or some shit?
Yes, it is fantasy sports but with video games. You draft games, and your points are determined by their score on Open Critic. Over 70 gains points, under 70 loses points. Every point over 90 is worth double. The way my friends and I structure our league, we have one counter pick during the draft, and the counter picker gets the inverse of the points of that game; so if I have a friend who drafts Kirby Air Riders, and I counter pick it, and it scores 67, my friend loses 3 points and I gain 3 points. If I counter pick a game that scores positive points, I lose those points instead.
The only game on my roster that has released so far is Knights in Tight Spaces, which only got me 6 points (I aim for about 13 points per game), because it scored a 76 on Open Critic, and I was perhaps a bit too risky when I drafted Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, because I got counter picked on it, and it doesn’t have a release date, so I might be stuck with a game that scores 0 points due to not releasing this year.
But you don’t always know about every release a year in advance (I mean for games that weren’t announced yet at the time of your draft)… Are there “seasons”?
Lol sorry, I’ve just never heard of this and I’m intrigued.
Edit: clarity
Correct, you don’t know that. You can speculate on releases, like I did with Pony Island 2, and get counter picked as a punishment for the risk. As long as it’s in the site’s database, it’s fair game. I drafted “Unannounced 3D Mario Game” this year, but then I picked up “Unannounced 3D Donkey Kong Game” after the draft for 1 in-game dollar (no one else put in a bid for it), as a hedge, since the rumor was that either a Mario or a Donkey Kong game would be made by the Mario Odyssey team for the Switch 2 launch. No one counter-picked Mario, so I’m allowed to drop it, and the Donkey Kong entry automatically updated to Bananza. The “season” is a calendar year. We do our draft early in January, and typically the first release of the year will be like halfway through the month, and the score that each game earns is whatever score it has at the stroke of midnight on January 1st.
Because we don’t know every release a year in advance, A) this game got a lot harder starting back in 2022, because that’s when game marketing cycles got way shorter, and B) some of the best reviewing games of 2025 probably won’t even be announced until this coming June.
Ahhhhhh OK, I see…
Do you guys curate this yourself, or is there a website or something that facilitates it?
They have their own database. If there’s a release or a rumor they don’t know about, you can suggest one, but they ask you to cite your sources. If it’s got a Steam page and you provide that link, they’ll basically add it right away, which is what happened when I got Total Chaos added. Fantasy Critic also gives league commissioners a lot of power to house rule just about anything.
Neat. Thanks for the info!
Out of interest, how does that site classify Age of Empires Definitive Edition (and aoe2:DE and aoe3:DE) and Age of Mythology: Retold?
I don’t know. As far as I can tell, it’s only searchable for the current calendar year, and we can view games we had on our roster in the same league in previous years. No one had any of those games on their roster. The site differentiates between remasters, remakes, and reimaginings, with a reimagining being something like Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII Remake. We used to not allow remakes, but we changed the rules for our league starting last year (personally, I voted against it, but I was outvoted). The league commissioner can always override a decision that the site makes when categorizing a game.