I love that steam reviews can make companies take notice and is harder to shove away compared to other types of reviews with how it’s always there on the store page.
Hot take: Alan Wake 2 would have a lot of explaining to do if EPIC had a review system. My disappointment with that game was immeasurable and my weekend was ruined.
Hmm, I haven’t played it. I avoid everything epic store stuff (even though I would have gotten it for free, since I’m childhood friends with one of the devs). So I’m curious, what’s the problem? I’ve heard like three people say that it’s their game of the year already, so I’m curious what’s the issue for you?
I’d love to hear why, personally. Wasn’t a huge fan of Alan Wake 1, so the huge outcry for the sequel has been a bit odd for me, and would like to hear the other side of the coin.
It was a heart warming situation when I saw Blizzard’s game get mixed reviews. They didn’t release games anywhere else until now and getting a reality check was a much needed thing for them.
I still have to start the witcher 3. I’ve like 5 or 6 games on the go at the moment so it will be a while yet. I also plan to get cyberpunk goty or whatever edition for like 5 ducats in a future steam sale.
Back of the napkin math says they more than broke even on their $80M investment into the game post-launch. I enjoyed the game at launch (which I know wasn't necessarily the norm), and I largely enjoyed the expansion. Unfortunately, this is what I have to scratch my FPS campaign itch these days, but it's still a pretty good one of those combined with a pretty good RPG. It would especially be nice to see them up the ante on the RPG aspects, because next to Baldur's Gate 3 this year, you don't get anywhere near the same sense of freedom and creativity.
I also enjoyed the game on release, I had very few bugs and the ones I did encounter I was able to work around in various ways. The most memorable one was a bug where killing the enemies would prevent the next objective from being scannable, preventing it from continuing and completion. Everything else was pretty minimal and I was able to 100% the game. Post game I spent modding which I also got a lot of enjoyment out of a little over 200 hours total in the game.
Haven't been able to get to Phantom Liberty yet, and I haven't started a new playthrough for the update be has I'm attached to my save (which is silly lol). I'll get to it.
I feel you on the lack of compelling FPS games these days though. Like Dishonored, but with guns!
I have played most of the fully 3D Bethesda RPG games and I am accustomed to their game design, bugs, and janks.
But the only thing I hate about Starfield is just the way the game always talks about how amazing exploration of the unknown is (heck, your main character is even a part of the explorer group name Constellation) while trying everything it can to stop player to do just that (overly rely on teleportation, cannot travel seamlessly between planets, etc…)
It feels like you are playing an institute scientist in an fallout game, always stay in your high tech base and only travel using teleportation to the outside world
This is a major turn off for me and there is no way to fix it
100%. The best part of Bethesda open world games is exploring the open space between towns, quests, objectives, etc. Fast travel is an option, but rarely necessary. If you rely on it you will miss lots of cool stuff.
Not so in Starfield, the space between objectives is literally empty space.
And space travel isnt actually a fun adventure, but the point of a video game is to romanticize the concepts. Not make them as boring and realistic as possible
I agree. Unless that’s the whole point of the game you are making, and then it’s just the nature of the game. Flight Sim is one of my friend’s favorite games, but not so for me. At least they aren’t telling people that they are wrong about it being boring because it’s realistic and realism is better or some crap.
There is, in fact, a very heated debate on whether or not simulators that stay true to form are actually games. With the argument being, they are either toys or simulators.
“I had fun playing with it” isnt exclusive to games, as a ball is not a game but I would gladly throw it against a wall for hours by myself with some music.
But lots of people would likely shit on an attempt to rebrand those things as “video toys” when the distinction is largely only relevant to people studying design, so the heated debate is mostly between academics and pedants.
There’s lots of actual stuff in interplanetary space that you can pull on for inspiration on how to make an interesting game.
You can have counters with shady trader types that are only in the vast gulf between the systems, there could be rogue planets with billion year old abandoned cities to explore filled with automated defences for you to fight and interesting loot at the end. Distant ancient asteroids that contain the seeds of the first life in the universe that when you interact with temporarily give you status change that you can only get from asteroids and temporarily gives you super strength or something, allowing you to complete missions in a way you otherwise would not necessarily have done.
The way these kind of side quests are supposed to work is the player is plodding along trying to get from point A to point B and on the way they get sidetracked by this side quest (the clue is in the name Bethesda). Maybe it changes their priorities or how they’re going to tackle and upcoming mission. Side quests are not supposed to be independent standalone things, they’re supposed to integrate with the main story. They’re not supposed to be something you find easily there’s supposed to be something you come across on your own as you’re exploring the environment, but you can only do that if the developers bothered to provided environment for you to explore. If they just teleport you to your destination then there’s no opportunity for this kind of emergent gameplay.
Loads of stuff you can put between the star systems.
That’s a fair opinion to have, but my preference is actually exploring the towns. I love that Starfield removed many of the middle of nowhere winding dungeons that I got so bored of. (Dwemer/Nord ruins in Skyrim and office buildings/other skyscrapers in fallout 4.)
Yeah it’s quite an accomplishment to make the vastness of space feel claustrophobic and small.
Some of the response to the reviews is bizarre - one seems to try to claim that the planets are not boring because they’re realistic and the real world is boring, and that the player is probably just overwhelmed by the awesomeness of it all.
It almost feels like the game Devs have convinced themselves that they’ve been working on the greatest game ever made and when told “no you haven’t” they’re responding by saying “you just don’t get our vision”.
It’s an ok game. I’m actually less bothered by the loading screens and more by the old fashioned story telling. This game would have been amazing if released closer after Skyrim. But it’s been 12 years and we’ve had Witcher 3, Cyberpunk and Baldurs Gate 3 that have changed expectations. All of them are better at evoking a sense of emotional engagement with the game, and actions having meaningful consequences in the plot. Subplots like the bloody baron in Witcher 3, or Judy in cyberpunk have stuck with me in a way characters and events in Skyrim and now Starfield just never have.
Problem is I suspect Bethesda will focus on all the loading screen / sense of scale complaints and not register the more important (imo) issues with the stories, characters and gameplay. Less but better is the real lesson I think.
Funny thing is, they don’t care. As long as they have fans who will complain but still buy their product at full price… they simply don’t care. This is evident with every product of theirs. Fallout76 had bugs originating from FO4 that were patched by community but were reintroduced in FO76.
Good. I pre-ordered the collector’s edition of Witcher 3 and it was worth every penny. After the Cyberpunk launch debacle they need to earn back that trust.
its fun, I liked the main story although it does have its slow spots, the vanguard terrormorph quest was pretty cool, but after a while like all games it gets kind of tiring, this game still feels like it needs some work, hopefully it will get even more post release content than fallout 4, there is a lot of space they can add stuff
There may in fact be a few games where empty spaces and a sense of vastness actually contribute to the atmosphere and make for an enjoyable game. But NOT in a game that’s divided by fucking loading screens with not a single “vista” to look out at.
I need to get back to playing W3. It seems like a great game by all accounts. But, I will not be purchasing another game from CDPR until at least 6 months post-release given the state of CP2077. Not only was it released in an unacceptable state, it wasn’t the game that was promised. There have been so many good games released between last year and this year, I can wait until ~2030 if they need to take their time polishing it and making it a complete experience.
Not only that, but their PR person gaslighting people with the article claiming that the game wasn't bad, it was just "cool to hate" has left a really bad taste in my mouth. The game could be absolutely amazing now and the expansion pack could be the game that we were always promised, but the experience and the follow-up has been so bad that I'm similarly waiting until post launch (heck, perhaps even until GOTY with included DLC) for any future CDPR games.
I personally couldn’t make it past the “no object permanence” issue, where NPC’s would just spawn into and out of existence depending on where the camera was pointing. It was like a magician brought a clear cloth to the table to perform a trick, and we could see how the trick was performed the entire time. It doesn’t make his performance less impressive, but it sure would make it less immersive.
Not rendering != despawn entities and respawn entirely new entities every time your camera changes direction. They also advertised it as NPC’s each having their own unique routines, etc. Talk about overpromising and underdelivering. This broke immersion too much for me to play the game. The second I hit the city and saw how NPC’s were handled, I was done. It’s unfortunate, because I thought the map design, sound, graphics, and gunplay all seemed really good.
Unpopular opinion: I liked the characters and lore a lot, but I found that the sloppy controls and sluggish movement made the world frustrating to interact with, and most of the encounters were so repetitive that I was bored before long. I ended up switching to easy mode so I could finish the story without having to spend much time on the tedious gameplay.
IMHO, if you were to rush through W3 in story mode and skip the side quests, just to get the background before playing W4, I don’t think you’d be missing much.
I have only played a few hours, but I recall what I thought was a side quest involving pigs, which was a great quest. Are you suggesting that memorable side quests are infrequent and can/should be skipped?
I actually found the side quests’ writing pretty good, and indeed, sometimes even memorable. Unfortunately, most of those quests share a handful of nearly identical tasks, so the good writing started to feel like little more than window dressing before long.
The map encounters were worse, though: Lots of question marks telling me exactly where to go meant there was nearly no real exploration to be had in this open world, and arriving at them led to the same copypasta events over and over again. If you happen to enjoy those events enough that you can’t get enough of them, then that’s great, but I was bored after the first dozen or so. (Skyrim was far better in this department.)
I remember liking a lot of the main quests, and the characters, and the story, and the world building. It’s just that the bulk of the gameplay felt like filler content, with forgettable combat and awkward controls. (I swear, Geralt, if you plod forward one more time when I pull back on the stick, or let one more candle get in the way when I try to interact with something useful, I’m gonna smack you.)
I hope Witcher 4 maintains (or even improves upon) the writing quality of its predecessor, and adds responsive controls and interesting gameplay beyond the main plot points.
You realize cyberpunk wasn’t the only game they’ve made that needed fixed after release right? Both W1 and 2 had enhanced edition patches to fix the broken shit in both games. W1 was a 7/10 game on release by multiple outlets. W3 was the first game they actually took their time with and delayed multiple times to avoid the enhanced edition patches. Anyone who thought cyberpunk was going to be flawless on release was breathing in that hopium.
I wish these idiots would quit trying to tell the people playing the game that they are wrong for not liking it. Like, no man, listen to them, this is feedback. You can’t take all of it without a pinch of salt but if you see a common theme, then you should address it.
It also bugs me that Bethesda keeps saying that the game is about exploration and finding new planets, but so far every planet I’ve visited has some kind of building upon it. Its clear that people have been on this planet before, so why the hell should I explore this planet? At least give me some incentive or a better reward for finding a true empty planet.
You’re not wrong, but OTOH, it’s pretty funny to see a planet having a building on it equated to the planet being explored, considering Earth was still being explored thousands of years after the first buildings.
Yeah thats true. In Bethesda’s dictionary exploration means: find minerals, 7 life forms and 3 unique geological formations. And by unique we mean like on the other planets.
Landing on the boring planets wasn’t my problem with the boring game.
The ground combat was terrible. The space flight was terrible. The space combat was terrible. And it was wedged into every activity for no reason other than lazy design to pad things.
And then there was the UI…
You can’t “feel small” when the game makes you a fiddly murder hobo in the tutorial.
For me it was super boring until I left Constellation, fun for 10 or so hours after that, super boring for a few more, and now I haven’t played it in over 2 months.
I actually just peaced out of constellation right away because I felt like the reason I was there was bullshit. I had 30 hours of fun doing side quests, came back to constellation because I heard there were powers I was missing. Acquiring them was tedious and they weren’t even that useful. I grinded out the main story and quit once I got the credit roll. Zero desire to go through it again
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