I keep trying NMS hoping to find a good game in there somewhere. I’m over 100 hours now, mostly because I’m a dork who likes collecting spaceships.
But all the mechanics – the crafting and movement and languages and even the terrain generation – are frankly pretty terrible. It’s like Hello Games intentionally hired people who don’t know how to design these things.
Why do all the space stations look identical inside? Why do I have to learn one single alien word at a time, including “a” and “the”? Why are there no rivers or waterfalls or glaciers or swamp basins? And why can’t I customize my ship appearance when the game itself can clearly generate one from a dozen random parts?
Honestly I agree. I think it’s a great game though, at least what it has become, but I think I keep getting disappointed with certain things that are just an issue with the core mechanics of the game. There’s only so much value to adding tons of content if the game is dull at its core.
I have over 350 hours in NMS but every time I try to pick it back up I realize why I stopped before.
You play a space archaeologist, and the big central mechanic of the game is translating things written in the Ancient language.
Ancient is written using ideographs, and more complex ideas are represented by combining glyphs that describe the concept, like ever more complex compound words. There are art of speech markers, glyphs that describe how other glyphs in a word relate to each other, intensifiers, and even a few cases where super common words are just the combination of other basic glyphs into a single composite like a Norse bindrune (for example the symbols for creature and knowledge overlap to make person, an intelligent creature). 46 base ideographs, but that includes digits, so it’s only 10 more than English.
So for example, a word that reads NOUN-person-Sub/Obj CONNECTOR-NOUN-knowledge-person means “Emperor”, because noun-knowledge-person means “law” and thus the result is a person who the law belongs to, aka a ruler or in the context of an empire the emperor. Replace that noun marker glyph at the beginning with the adjective marker glyph and you would have “imperial”, the quality of being emperor-like.
One of the longest words to appear in the game translates as “mouse” and it’s 21 letters long and is literally something like creature-CONNECTOR-many-many-Sub/Obj CONNECTOR-ADJECTIVE-NOT-ADJECTIVE-CONNECTOR-many-creature-CONNECTOR-ADJECTIVE-ABSTRACT NOUN-person-CONNECTOR-light-NOUN-plant-CONNECTOR-rock, which is several words stitched into a compound word, where some of those words are themselves compound words (the idea is something like “creature like a very small pig”, but the word I’m calling “pig” means “creature that is happy in the soil” where happy is something like “the quality of a person who is metaphorically full of light” and “soil” is “plant-earth”). Those CONNECTORS are letters that are used to build compound words.
I’m waiting for patches, mods, and a sale before playing Starfield, but it did get me thinking about space games, which led me to purchase KSP. I’m really loving it. I used to play a game called Spaceflight Simulator until the dev fucked over the entire player base that supported him since his game released. That game was basically the same concept as KSP in sandbox mode but in 2D. Making the jump to 3D graphics/physics has been really cool, and I’m glad to have filled the hole in my heart SFS left.
Weren’t they floating codename Deckard a while back? If they can make a handheld that plays modern titles reliably, a standalone headset on par with the Quest seems about the right speed as far as next steps goes.
I keep forgetting I have X4. Loved X3. Hated Rebirth. Got X4 after joining a thread about it and thinking they were talking about Rebirth, and then proceeded to never actually play it lol
I'm hoping for a Steam controller 2. I've been using a PS4 and PS5 controller ever since they discontinued the original Steam controller. The gyro on the PlayStation controllers works great, but the touchpad isn't useable (or even reachable) like the Steam controller's trackpads were.
I've been thinking that would be their next product ever since they released an official dock. Seems like the two make sense together.
edit: OK I just read the article and it's probably not a controller. :( It's something with a 5Ghz radio in it, meaning it connects to wifi. A controller with a wireless dongle would only be using 2.4Ghz.
Ik you edited your comment but I also really want a steam controller 2 The first controller is great although running into modern problems like micro usb being trash and rechargeable AA batteries get stuck in the battery compartment. But a new controller with dual thumb sticks would be fantastic! Even if it would make the controller a slight bit more bulky
I’ve got both a DualSense and a Steam Controller – they’re useful for different things. AAA titles with console ports are great with the DualSense (e.g. I’m also using it for Starfield). But the Steam Controller is the one you want for strategy games or anything that doesn’t support controllers at all.
It’s also surprisingly good for flight simming, so long as you can spend the time with customizing the scheme.
That's what I've been doing as well, only using the Steam Controller for strategy games. That means I don't use it much these days (which is too bad, since it's a great controller), but I since it can't be replaced now I figure I'll only use it for the games it really needs.
I’m currently away from home and I’ve downloaded Resident Evil 2 (remake) onto my Steam Deck. I’m an hour or so in loving it so far! I’ve only ever played RE4 (the original version) before and it feels quite different - less incentive to shoot enemies.
I have played most of the originals, but haven’t played any of the remake yet. I have heard great things about the remakes though, so may go through all of them sometime.
Do share you opinions once you have finished the game.
So I finished Leon’s ‘half’ of the story yesterday. It was great! Loved all the puzzles (which had a classic videogame feel to them) as well as the various settings. It’s a beautiful looking game and the gunplay is very satisfying.
I was a bit disappointed to learn that playing as Claire is just the same thing again, although it does have a few different story beats. I don’t mind too much though as it seems like a fun game to play through multiple times.
This seems like a great way to remake an old game. Reminds me of FF7 remake in some respects.
ya this happened to me too. starfield was supposed to he thr star citizen killer, but it looks terrible. star citizen is miles ahead of this fallout reskin
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