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| The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles | 
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| From: Bethesda
Category: Video Games
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $24.00
You Save: $5.99 (20%)
New (19) Used (4) from $18.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 2096
Platform: Xbox 360
ESRB: Mature
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 12700
Model: 12700
UPC: 093155127005
EAN: 0093155127005
ASIN: B000VXKSLW
Release Date: October 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new, sealed!!!
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| Features:
| • | See a world created in Sheograth's own image, one divided between Mania and Dementia unlike anything you've experienced | | • | Battle the denizens of Shivering Isles, a land filled with hideous insects, Flesh Atronachs, skeletal Shambles, amphibeous Grummites, and many more | | • | Find and wield new weapons and armor or have new ones forged for you | | • | Explore a bizarre landscape filled with twisting, vast dungeons buried within the roots of the trees themselves | | • | This expansion pack requires Elder Scrolls IV: Obilivion software to play |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
With the Elder Scrolls IV: The Shivering Isles for the Xbox 360, you'll open up new areas in the world of Oblivion so you can continue playing with your existing save game/character, or create an all new character just to explore the new content. Within the Realm of Sheogorath, players can explore the two extreme sides of the god's madness -- the sublimely creative and the completely psychotic. Something is happening to the Shivering Isles and Sheogorath himself looks to you to be his champion and defend his realm and its inhabitants from destruction. Do you have the strength to survive his trials, tame a realm fraught with paranoia and despair, and wear the mantle of a God? ESRB Rated M for Mature
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 A good expansion back November 28, 2008
I loved oblivion besides everything bad about it so I had to get the expansion. The world created is beautiful like always. This expansion will add a pleasurable experience that you will remember.
 Sheogorath is hilarious! September 22, 2008
The Shivering Isles creates a new world for you to explore, with new monsters, new ingredients to try out at alchemy, a schizophrenic world to explore, and as part of the storyline you'll get a cool two-in-one sword, the Dawnfang/Duskfang. Plus the character of Sheogorath, the Prince of the realm, is what was missing in Oblivion proper: a fun and engaging NPC with bucketloads of personality! The only NPC worth mentioning in Oblivion was the emperor (Patrick Stewart); all the other NPCs were flat and boring. Bethesda apparently read my mind and crafted a delightfully deranged character with the accent to match.
And the whole ironic storyline, in which you fight to defend madness against the encroaching forces of order, is wonderfully and hilariously sarcastic. I have to admit, after playing Oblivion for 200 plus hours, the game was starting to feel stagnant, and installing this expansion pack was the perfect swift kick to my rear end that I needed.
Bethesda has also done a great job designing the look of the environment itself; when you're in the Mania half of the world, the environment is full of splashy, vibrant colors, like you're high or something (is it a coincidence there are so many mushrooms around?). And in Dementia, the world is appropriately bleak, with nothing but browns and grays and blacks, with dead, twisted trees and swamps. It reminded me of being in an asylum or something (well, an outdoor asylum).
The Shivering Isles is a great expansion to a great game. Definitely worth your money.
Great add on to the game July 29, 2008
I recommend this game as an add on to Oblivion. Takes a bit longer to load every game now due to the add on but that is minor compared to the game time it takes to play the complete game.
So Different, Yet So Much Alike July 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Right in the middle of the Niben Bay of Cyrodiil lies the entrance to the realm of Sheogorath called the Shivering Isles. Here you'll find some bizarre things and even more bizarre people. Shivering Isles is the expansion pack to the brilliant Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Key Features:
Two New Armor and Weapons Sets
Many new special weapons and magical items
About 20-25 hours of new gameplay
A good amount of new enemies
New conjuration spells
New greater power spells
Gameplay 7 of 10
As odd as it sounds, the gameplay is not as good as Oblivion even though they are based on the same combat system and the quests are very similar. First off, even though the map is about one-fifth the size of Cyrodiil, it seems smaller. There are only 30-40 places to go. Quests are either found by talking to Sheogorath or seeking out random quests within the realm. There are caves, ruins, homesteads and New Sheoth-the capital and only city in The Shivering Isles. New Sheoth houses both Crucible and Bliss which represent the opposite sides of the Isles - mania and dementia. Side quests are sort of uninspiring. One quest entailed finding calipers and tongs to sell to some idiotic guy who was collecting them.
Creatures 7 of 10
Creatures found in the Shivering Isles reflect the essence of it. They are somewhat more magical or otherworldly. Where as you'll find bears, wolves and mountain lions quite commonly in Cyrodiil, here you'll see tree creatures, giant ant-like monsters called Elytra and Scalons which resemble lizards that walk on two feet. Almost everything here is stronger and more ferocious. My only problem with the creatures is I believe I can name off all of them without even playing the game. So in terms of variety, it can get old. You'll be fighting Grummites most of the time.
Story 9 of 10
Mania and dementia are the basis of the Shivering Isles; two sides of the same coin. When you first enter the "strange door" you meet Haskill which is Sheogorath's personal assistant. Haskill makes sure you want to enter the Shivering Isles. He has a rather interesting stoicism and indifference to his tone. After this you enter the Fringe.
To get past the Fringe you must defeat the Gatekeeper- a 12 foot tall creature with a weapon attached to its right arm. Once you've done this you can choose whether to enter mania-a land which vaguely resembles the inside of Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory or dementia-a downtrodden less colorful version of The Shivering Isles. Note that either side both have the same locations.
After this you are sent to see the madman himself - Sheogorath. He asks you to do various quests and what not. It is sort of like being in a guild, but after each quest you end up with a much better reward than you normally would. The story is has a lot more of a plotline to it than the original game.
Armors / Weapons 8 of 10
There are two new armor sets: Amber and Madness for mania and dementia respectively. In the realm of Sheogorath, you must find the constituents of the armor to create it as opposed to just buying pre-armor. Amber requires pieces of amber to create both the armor and weapons, just as the madness armor does. The amber is a light armor, while madness is heavy armor. If you happen to find a matrix, this can be used to create a whole piece of the armor. There are also very impressive pieces of armor later on in the main quest line, which are much more powerful than anything found in Cyrodiil. Weapons here are all marginally stronger to begin with than regular weapons. One in particular dubbed Duskfang is very strong and has multiple enchantments.
Graphics 6 of 10
At first look the visuals are every bit as appealing and detailed as Oblivion. When you get a little closer, you see it isn't the case. Unfortunately only a few of the weapons and the Amber armor are really remarkable. Amber armor looks like a yellowish-orange glass armor set. New enemy combatants in general appear lackluster-especially the Elytras. It is almost like they left off the last level of 3-d rendering. The landscape of mania is very lit up, vibrant and rainbow colored. It is the only redeeming quality to the graphics. All said, the landscape has very little detail and parts of the trees are not even solid-you can walk right through them. Basically, instead of improving upon the graphics in the Isles, the developers actually took them a step or two down. Parts of it really remind me of Elder Scrolls III
What I would have added:
First off, you should have been able to purchase a house; though you can inherit one on one of the side quests. Secondly, there should have been a place to enchant weapons and create spells. It got really annoying having to fast travel from the Shivering Isles to the gate, out of the gate and then to the Arcane university. More monsters should have been added and more time should have been spent on the texturing and details of the landscape and creatures.
Overall the expansion is a solid 7 out of 10, but has little replay value for me. I was a little disappointed in the general gameplay and also the amount of playing time. I paid about $28 for probably 20 hours of game time, when I got an average of 120 hours for each one of my Oblivion characters. So the value factor is kind of low. Visually, the game has very few things that will wow you. So I wouldn't recommend this to just anyone. You'd have to be a pretty big fan of these types of RPGs or Elder Scrolls in the first place.
Adds new things but doesn't change much July 6, 2008
This expansion is pretty fun. Who doesn't like to run around in a world where insanity reigns supreme?
The only draw backs is that it doesn't add many new things. Oh, it does add so much. New characters to interact with. New story line, new enemies, new spells, new wea-- let's just say it adds a bunch of stuff.
The only things is that it may feel like the same ol'car but with a new paint job. Don't get me wrong. I like what Shivering Isles brings to Oblivion, it just seems like a little bit more could've done the trick for me.
I recommend Shivering Isles to anyone who wants to prolong their game play of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion or have a new world to explore. It adds several hours of game play (depending how you play) and a very interesting story.
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