Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
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Why? It’s a pretty bad game in many ways. Also good in other ways. I can totally see why it’s polarising
To me it was a disaster because I expected it to be way more next gen after all these years. And it was very expensive compared to the quality I got.
Meanwhile my friend was all like “Eh, it’s fine. Pretty much what I expected.”
So I think people had very different expectations.What I absolutely cannot comprehend is those who say “10/10, game of the century!”
Come on… No way. If you really think that, you have really low standards or haven’t played a new game in 8 years.I expected it to be way more next gen after all these years
It is “next generation”:
- It’s the next generation of huge.
- It’s also the next generation of empty.
- It’s the next generation of pretty.
- It’s also the next generation of soulless.
I mean, it basically heightens all previous design parameters for open world games, does it not?
It is absolutely NOT the next generation of “pretty”. Can’t even sign up for the qualifiers for that competition.
Starfield has fantastic art direction and ambience. The gunplay is really good, perhaps the best gunplay of any RPG, and a surprise coming from Bethesda. Story hits some good beats, and exploration is rewarding, though repetitive about 50% of the time in the typical Bethesda fashion (remember Draugr crypts?).
That being said, the game has some shortfalls, primarily in the roleplay aspect. The ship building and crew management is good, but it doesn’t feel great, and is sometimes just frustrating, so you never feel truly immersed in your own ship. Lack of low earth orbital and terrestrial flight is immersion breaking (even if players might opt to skip it if it were present) along with the fact that the ship is relegated to being a flying mule and most transportation is basically instant teleportation via menus, which IMO hurts the isolation and exploration RP and challenge. Ship combat is straight up mediocre for a space game in 2023. Gun selection and modding is decent, but far from top tier. I would describe the apparel as a bit on the bland side, few of the clothes and armor pickups made me go: I want to put this on, I’ll look badass (Cyberpunk 2077 syndrome).
In fact I think starfield shares a lot with Cyberpunk 2077: massive budget, AAA art direction with gameplay spread across so many systems and features that a lot of them leave you wanting more.
The gunplay is really good
Is it really though…?
I was just thinking this. The gunplay is serviceable.
I’m not review bombing it. I’m also not buying it. Bethesda screwed up with 76. That’s not forgivable. They can release a new game but that doesn’t forgive the scorn they inflicted to me and so many other players who paid good money to them and got consistently screwed ever.
I agree that 76 sucked. SF is pretty great though.
Screwed over? What promised stuff didn’t 76 deliver on?
For me it seemed like Bethesda wasn’t entirely sure what they wanted from 76, except that they wanted to create a multiplayer version of Fallout, and make money on micro-transactions. Todd tried to drag it in the PvP direction, which was ridiculous when its their first multiplayer and fallout haven’t exactly been known for being balanced. Someone internally dragged it in the coop PvE direction, someone else towards roleplaying and building. And after a backlash, they reacted by focusing on getting NPCs in and on PvE coop. And house building because that sold.
I liked the initial story personally. The changed story with NPCs became too disjointed from the world already built. And had no driving force in it. No reason to care except seeing one faction win.
I didn’t get my canvas bag with my preorder and the whiskey I ordered was a joke. It was just a regular bottle of whiskey in a plastic shell.
The whole point of the whiskey was for the bottle. Same for the preorder. I wanted the canvas bag. Not some cheap bullshit.
Oh yeah, forgot the preorder crap. Didnt think of that as part of the game.
That’s fair. It technically isn’t but it was sold alongside of it as an incentive so I still feel it’s part of the overall issue with their management in general.
Somehow they made a shittier NoMansSky.
I have tried to play NMS four separate times now. I just cannot get past a certain point where it feels like repitition towards some kind of story line that is always one stept away of “something interesting”. The mechanics of the gameloop are maybe a bit too obvious, which takes away form the immersion. I end up shelfing it because something else catches my goldfish like attention. Then a year later a major update comes out, and I think “maybe it’s good now”?
Am I doing it wrong?
I would guess that any platform-exclusive game is going to have some level of that, just because you’ve got fans of Platform A and fans of Platform B. And Starfield was purchased by Microsoft specifically to have an X-Box (well, and PC) exclusive, so…
Go back to the 1980s, and it was “Mario sucks” or “Sonic sucks”.
I play games almost entirely on the PC, so the Starfield acquisition (as well as the other recent acquisitions by Microsoft or Sony or whoever that have been driving the antitrust concerns) haven’t really been on my radar, but if I had a popular game coming out on my platform and then someone paid to ensure that I didn’t get it, I’d be kind of irked.
I did use a Mac, many years back, and I remember being annoyed when Bungie – then a major game developer for the Macintosh, in an era when the Mac wasn’t getting a lot of games – was purchased by Microsoft in 2000. Halo did come out for the Mac, but Halo 2 didn’t, and I imagine that a lot of people who were on the Mac then were probably pretty unhappy about that.
I don’t think BG3 got review bombed, and that one is not available on Xbox.
It’s apparently coming out shortly (like, this month or next). But, more to the point, the delay apparently wasn’t because a platform vendor purchased it to be an exclusive, but because the dev team hit some kind of technical problems with the port. That is, it’s not in the group of “Mario and Sonic” exclusives used to sell a platform, and Microsoft’s acquisition was to make Starfield one of these.
EDIT: Split-screen on the XBox Series S is apparently where the problem is:
Larian has been struggling to get Baldur’s Gate 3’s split-screen co-op feature running smoothly on the Xbox Series S. Despite the feature working as intended on Xbox Series X, Microsoft policy demands that Xbox Series X versions of their games cannot have any features that Xbox Series S editions lack. This means that canning the feature on Series S simply isn’t an option for Larian.
Both Sonic and Mario sucked. Alex Kidd rocked!
Nah, not serious. I, like everyone else, wanted a Nintendo.
I can’t tell if I don’t like Starfield, or playing games anymore. I got it on September 1st, and played it for a few hours that night. I played it for a couple hours the night after that, and then I played it for like 30 minutes yesterday. I haven’t really been hardcore about any game since before the pandemic. It’s not the same now that my gaming machine lives at the desk that is also my home office. I’ve typically wanted to just get out of this room when work is done, so a game has to be really good to keep me sitting here.
I’m considering moving my PC to the living room for this exact reason.
It’s a good idea, but my eyes aren’t good enough to read my screen if I park my ass on the couch and need to view the TV to read dialogue text :(
Easy. Get glasses and a bigger TV
No see… I have glasses and an 65" TV… I really can’t get better.
Sounds like maybe you need a new eye exam… Are you unable to get to 20/20 with corrective lenses?
I have glasses and I game on a 46" TV from about 12 to 14 feet away and I can read most (if not all) in game dialogue…
I did struggle a bit with Pentament but that was part of what helped me realize I needed a new eye exam.
It seems like my eyes are just deteriorating quickly now. I end up getting a new prescription each year in December.
Fair enough
That’s how mine are these days. I just noticed that my prescription expires after a year (the paper one), so if I’m tempted to get an updated pair of frames, it’s going to mean an eye exam for me.
I did, and it’s great. Really helped to have it somewhere I don’t also work.
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Not that buying more stuff is ever the answer but… As someone who also spends way too much time at the same desk, getting a Steam Deck has totally revamped my love for gaming. Most of the time I’m not bringing it out with me (although I have traveled with it), but just being able to play PC games from bed, on the couch, or even outside in the back yard has been a ton of fun for me.
I’m with you. The intro was pretty lackluster, the main campaign doesn’t interest me at all, and new Atlantis kinda sucks imo
Then I joined the crimson fleet and suddenly 50 hours was gone.
Huh. I was just watching a review for No Man’s Sky that made virtually the same point about that game, down to the 50 hours. The review said that the first couple hours were very boring, but once the intro and early game was out of the way, it got way more interesting. His pinned comment reads "I have now sunk in 50+ hours into this game. It keeps showing new stuff. Please help me. My family hasn’t seen me in days. "
Maybe open-world game developers need to see if they can streamline the intros somehow. Even if the intro isn’t a large percentage of the time you play the game, it does make the first impression.
I made a post like this sentiment elsewhere in this thread but I agree 100%. I was kinda forcing my way through some parts because I was just barely interested enough to continue. Then I had a few ohhh shit moments like taking over my first varuhn great serpent fanatic pirate ship and some of the UC Vanguard missions. I don’t know how they could improve/streamline it but they should work on it for sure.
I can’t tell you how much I need a separate office space to separate work from play.
I feel you. I just started spending my work day in bed then playing games at night.
I can’t tell if I don’t like Starfield, or playing games anymore.
I don’t know your tastes, but it’s probably the latter if you only stick to the AAA realm of games. I sure as hell have burned on them - the indie and mid-budget space is where you’ll find games focused on simply being fun. Hi-Fi Rush, Pizza Tower, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to name a few that came out this year.
To me it’s less about the user reviews, and more about how as now some time is passing, listening to professional reviewers in podcasts etc, more and more the mood turns… tepid?
It’s not that anyone is underwhelmed. More just… whelmed.
It just a bad game
I am really enjoying it. The emergent story-lines that have cropped up just from me doing stuff is great. Having to really focus my skill points into perks forces me to stick with a play style and the gunplay and upgrades are fantastic. I love just fucking off to some random corner of the galaxy and finding a whole entire storyline to explore. Yes, the lack of low orbit flying is glaring since I played a lot of NMS but the story telling here is top tier and I just keep wanting to go back and play. Even now, I am just writing this one comment and then I am off to betray the Crimson Fleet >:)
I’m having fun zooming around the galaxy as a tough bounty hunter/vanguard. Has all the good bits of Fallout (exploring abandoned buildings, weapon variety, base building etc). I swear people are not even playing the same game with how they describe it.
I think you mean pressing buttons in menus to teleport across the galaxy
Yeah, you’re right, they need a “fast travel to tracked quest next location” button so I don’t have to futz with the menus. But at least I’m not arbitrarily waiting several minutes to get to fun whenever I have to go somewhere.
You can fast travel to tracked quest location, I think as long as it’s not a new location. On Xbox you open the main menu/wheel thing, hover over the quests option at the bottom and just press x.
Man some people just can’t be pleased. I’ve been playing the game all week, and it’s fantastic. It delivered exactly what I thought it was going to be.
Sure there are some bugs, and some complaints about a few minor things, but as a whole this game is spot on.
I’m just not sure what people are expecting. It’s Fallout/Skyrim in space, and it’s exactly what I thought it was going to be.
I agree that it’s a fun game – about what I expected as well (no bugs for me, though) – but my major issue with the game is that the lore is so damn boring. Unlike in past titles like New Vegas and Oblivion, I find myself skipping through the dialogue in this one so that I can go back to enjoying the game. The game doesn’t give me any reason to care about these various factions and their internal drama. Nobody ever has anything interesting or funny to say in Starfield ever. I never once felt the need to dig deeper into the lore like I do with Fallout, reading timelines and listening to developer insight and whatnot. I just skip skip skip.
Also there’s the fact that space travel is done almost entirely through menus. The only time you actually have to fly your ship is during dogfights.
If it weren’t for those two things, this would be a 9/10 game for me. I love the massive cities, how many mods there are already, and gunplay is satisfying once you tweak the damage values to make everyone less of a bullet sponge (Including yourself). Can’t wait to see what the future holds for this game once we start getting DLC and story mods.
tbf this is pretty par for the course with Bethesda, the writing just isn’t good. The people that wrote Morrowind and most of Oblivion left half way through Oblivion, from what I remember Todd Howard did not get along with the writers at all.
Everything ever since has been just, well it’s been there. Todd is more interested in spectacle and exploration than writing. And unfortunately that’s been incredibly successful for him
I just did a quest where the New Frontier and the UC put aside their differences in war to fight a common enemy. The dialog was all touching and mused on the equality of each soldier in a war.
Meanwhile I’m over here like “Dude, I have no honest idea what dumb reason there is that you two idiots are even at war with each other, and you’re writing the dumbest WW1 Christmas story I’ve heard.”
People like to claim any big ticket game that doesn’t get like 8/10 or higher is being review bombed. Seems as if people have legit criticisms of the game and it’s pretty fairly reviewed.
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Metacritic’s user rating system is just shit. You see the game rated higher than deserved and you can either
- give it an honest rating resulting in the total score dropping by 0.01
- give it a zero rating and have the score drop by 0.1
Of course most people chose to rate it in a way that has more impact on the total score, so it’s no wonder we see 0/10 and 10/10 more than anything else.
This phenomenon will be even more exaggerated if critics ratings are undeservedly high, as is the case with Starfield.
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The reason it’s lower on metacritic is mainly due to the fact that the critics rating is too high, imo. This leads to disappointed players leaving extra bad scores (i.e. 0/10) to offset the total score. In a way that’s review bombing, but only as a reaction to the inflated critics’ reviews (which I often suspect to be bought or bribed).
Usually the Steam reviews are a lot more reliable. As I said, metacritic’s system is shit and encourages rating manipulation.
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Because my initial comment was about metacritic and my argument is that metacritic is a bad indicator of review bombing because it actually encourages it
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This game is just ridiculous. Overhyped advertising, terrible optimalization, 10 years old graphics, so many loadscreens, plain story, no real space exploration, perk wall to do anything, horrible UI and they call it next gen open world space exploration RPG. I stopped playing after 10 hours so I can make a good assumption but it got only worse and worse. I don’t have time to waste it on this. Even if it starts being more enjoyable later it doesn’t excuse all the issues.
I feel you. The first 10-15 hours did feel like kind of a slog. I will say, I hit a point where I’m legitimately enjoying the game and things seem to have coalesced in a way they just don’t in earlier game. I’m 20 hours in though. That’s a slow starter if there ever was one.
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Mostly yes.
You’re a patient man. If you enjoy it, that’s good. But that game is not for me. Last game I enjoyed from Bethesda was Oblivion so I’m not much surprised. I’m quite picky…
When is the next Mass Effect coming out?
Not soon enough 😭 Probably won’t be what we want from it anyways, they’ll take all the worst parts of Andromeda and leave the good on the cutting room floor, somehow.
I fear you’re right, but as long as the franchise is alive there’s a chance they make it right some day.
I’d love it if the franchise had an XCOM style entry.
Someone took whelming and placed it above the game
