Are user reviews on places like Metacritic or Steam ever relevant? Review bombing happens consistently any time anyone is slightly miffed at something, which in gaming is literally all the time.
I'm not exposed to that many "gamer takes" lately, luckily. I watched a recent dunkey video on Starfield reviews, that had some thumb-headed idiot screaming in falsetto about the pronoun switch (oh, the horror, for such a thing to exist! oh, the humanity!). Other than that I haven't seen that much complaining about that specific thing. While it could still be about that, I also think it could easily be getting underwhelming scores because it's... a bit underwhelming. (So far, anyway, I haven't played a lot yet)
I hate Steam’s review system, though. Binary yes or no is not useful to me. I want to know if a game is good (maybe a play eventually) vs absolutely amazing (where I might prioritize playing it right away). Such granularity is also useful because a 10/10 might be worth it even if it’s not my favourite type of game, but a 7/10 can be very worthwhile if it is the type of game I adore.
It’s a shame that user reviews on sites like Metacritic are just consistent trash. Too many users only know 0 or 10 and the user reviews are often review bombed. I wish regular users could at least give numbers like critics. No professional critic is gonna give a game a 0 because of a handful of problems, for example, but average people will totally give a game a zero for that. Only problem with critics is that they often have a perspective that makes them detached from the average person, since they spend all their time reviewing. Ideally user reviews would fill that gap, but users are incredibly fickle.
I think Steam’s Yes/No system is the best option we’ve got for user review scores. As you said yourself, for most people, it’s either 0 or a 10. And while granularity can help, it’s worthless when it differs on a user to user basis. One users 5 is another users 7. And is the difference between a 1 and a 2 even remotely the same between a 9 and a 10? Probably not.
The biggest argument I could see is that “Mixed” option where it’s neither option, but I feel like that doesn’t really help anyone overall and is just indecisive.
If you just ignore a score of 0, then why even have it and conversely, why not show the same treatment towards the equally as ridiculous score of a 10?
for the most part it seems to work better than on Metacritic or other review sites with 5-10 star ratings. a lot of people are very unreasonable with 0 star reviews where they’ll give it a 0 for a slight inconvenience even if the game is completely playable
might as well lump the 0-4 star people together on a 10 scale
I’ve seen some pretty absurd complaints, like the not being able to land on gas planets, or people complaining due to ridiculously high but present area limitations.
Absurd complaints always seem to surround the media people whom people blame of being “woke”, which is why I usually give the media being criticized the extra benefit of a doubt since people will make or criticize shit for reasons they don’t say out-loud. I usually find out it’s not really that bad, but it’s just amplified because they create an environment of criticism that other people that have no underlying agenda still follow.
Then there’s the real complaints about performance, which I personally haven’t experienced because of a top tier PC (although I’m curious what people on the Xbox have to say, as Microsoft would hang them if it wasn’t playable on it as one of their new hallmark exclusives for it), and people not liking the Bethsoft sort of gameplay loop, which this is and has definitely improved upon IMO. Not only will this game be played for years on end like Skyrim, but I suspect it will also spark a much needed MMO off-shoot in the space genre just like their Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games did.
Just tried starting it this morning on a Series X. It crashed 5 times on less than two hours. The last time, I was barely into the “learn how to pilot a ship” part of the tutorial, and I’m already over this. I’m so disappointed. I was really looking forward to getting sucked into a new game.
I’ve played about 40 hours so far on a Series X. It froze on loading twice in that time, but otherwise I’ve had no performance problems. I even tried remote play streaming from my Series X to my PC and it worked well also.
That said, Starfield is fine. It’s not great- I don’t think it would be considered GotY even if BG3 and TotK hadn’t come out this year- but it’s otherwise solid. If you like the Bethesda formula, Starfield plays it absolutely straight (for better or worse). The usual critiques of Bethesda games in general apply- it has that look of a Bethesda game, the NPCs have the facial animation range of a post-botox Barbie, Radiant quests abound, the exploration gameplay loop is pretty shallow, etc.
Don’t get me wrong- there’s a lot it could do better, much of which other games already do. It’s a sci-fi fi version of Skyrim, and that’s good enough for me, but it probably won’t live on in the gaming zeitgeist.
I would agree with you in that if Starfield has any longevity, it would be because it would serve as the foundation for mods rather than on its own merits. But I disagree that it could stand on its own as-is.
I can’t play it because I own neither.a gaming PC nor an Xbox, but the impression I’m getting from all the reviews and reactions I’ve seen is that it’s basically a good game, if it had been released in 2008.
It looks like they did the best they could, but they did it using an outdated engine that simply cannot be used to make a modern game.
I’ve been seeing similar, with people saying they would have liked Starfield more if they hadn’t played Baldur’s Gate 3 first. That’s where I feel like a fair number of the “meh” scores are coming from. It’s like people are saying it’s really good, but not mind-blowing.
I played BG3 first. Near the end of it now. What could Bethesda have done to measure up to BG3?
Be less buggy? SF is a more complicated game than BG3. More stuff than can go wrong. Also BG3 has a lot more bugs later in game, in the part that hasn’t been out for early access for years now.
Have more story branches? If ME didn’t convince Bethesdas earlier games to put in more choices, why should BG3? Most people know what they get from these games.
Better writing? Thats a very subjective thing. And BG3 have a lot of already existing lore to build on top of.
Some times the quality of a game comes down to luck, timing, and what skill you got available. And trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best” is a waste of time. We should be happy we got two good new games. In two different genres. And measure them against their prequels instead. Has the game evolved since the last game? BG3 has two parent games, BG2 and D:OS. It has improved on them both in combining them. Starfield was born from Fallout. Definitely an upgrade too, while staying true to what we expect in that line of games.
Thats my take on it. If a new XCom came out tomorrow, I wouldn’t be disappointed it wasnt BG3, I’d be happy and hope it had improved on XCom 2.
It’s not about “trying to figure out which of two good games is objectively the “best”,” but more like Horizon Zero Dawn coming out right after Breath of the Wild. Horizon is a truly great game, but it suffered from coming out right after what turned out to be a definitive open-world game. It’s not about better, it’s about timing. People would have had different expectations of Starfield had it come out before BG3, just because BG3 changed some people’s expectations of things like quests and ways to do them.
And again, I’m just going by what I’ve seen in reviews and something I’ve noticed in them. I’m never going to play Starfield (nothing against it, but I physically can’t play first person games), so I can’t say one way or the other about what the quests and worlds are like.
I would take the whole “old crappy bethesda engine” meme with a grain of salt.
IMO it is a good engine, it is getting updated by them on every new game like any other engine. And there are a lot of changes all over. For that reason modders have to develop new tools to create meshes, reverse egnineer the changed data formats, etc. Saying that it is the same engine as Skyrim or Fallout 4/76 is just not true.
It is also one of the most mod friendly engine. The content creation tools from Bethesda and modders make it really easy to work with, even for people not able to code themselvs.
And personally the game looks and works fine. Of course you can critique the game itself, but attacking the whole engine is exagerated. Sure it has bugs, and you can attack bethesda about not fixing them, but suggesting that they throw away the whole engine because of a couple of bugs or subjective “looks bad” opinions is ridiculus.
Also, I don’t think just using Unity or UE4 (where bethesda devs first need to learn them first) magically fixes every complaint and bug. But it might make the game not as easily moddable.
Is it just an exaggeration, though? It is old. It is... kinda crappy. I've played and loved a bunch of Bethesda games, but they do tend to fuck up in some pretty characteristic ways. So characteristic that they happened in Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallouts 3, NV and 4, and now apparently Starfield. In my hour or so of gameplay I already encountered the "corpses somersaulting around" thing, a tradition since at least Skyrim.
True, it doesn’t have raytracing, like most big game engines now. And the first city you come to is VERY plain and clean and oversized and underdetailed. It would probably be better if one started out in Akila or Neon or The Well somewhere with more details. But not every game, particularly one as open and customizable as this, can have EA level models or Cyberpunk level details. Nor is it the engines fault. Seen the Unreal Engine? How old is that one, 1998 i think? Nobody complains about that.
It is the fault of what they want to create. They want an engine that can do big open worlds, with interactable and persistent junk of all kinds, but that they can also very quickly create new content for. And is easily moddable with as little risk of mod conflicts as possible. And a very simulated AI, one that doesn’t need handhelding through pre-placed paths, but can navigate freely even through user-created buildings and chaotic situations. They end up looking dumber than other games AIs, but thats only because other games rely more on the illusion of a smart AI.
I agree! The content of the game is the issue, not the engine. Bashing Bethesdas engine is just a meme, at this point.
Linux is 32 years old, people wanting to throw everything away and start new, just because they don’t like certain aspects of it, are crazy.
Personally, I don’t really care about raytracing, or even improving the graphics that much, IMO they should reuse assets and code if that will make them invest more of their time to improve their writing, quests and let people go their own paths through the quests instead of just having 2 or 3 options (do the quest, don’t do the quest and sometimes rat the people out to the authorities). So that we have BG3 level of writing and quests, in different kind of game.
And for god sakes, do simple things like let companions whisper when sneaking.
Also, New Atlantis doesn’t look build for Humans but for giants, too much scaled up.
Is whispering while sneaking so easy though? It would double the voice acting budget, time, and the audio asset size. Theres no magic audio filter for making believable whispering out of regular voices.
Well, maybe there will be once game studios start using AI voice actors.
At the very least just lower the voice volume of companions in sneak even if it’s lazy fix. I don’t need breathy whispers in my ear for funny or throw away dialogue. But that’s just my thoughts maybe other people are different.
I told my wife I’d have been thrilled to get this game in 2016. In 2023 it does feel dated though, If they don’t update the engine significantly before their next game it may actually hurt sales.
Been following this for a while now. Way before the first anouncement, even - I think devs shared some in-progress gifs on Reddit way back in the day.
If you’re interested, you can try the [white label] version on Steam - It’s a great demo of what the rhythm part of the game would look like, and the songs are fantastic too.
I’m really keen on playing a rhythm game with this level of presentation. Hi-Fi Rush left me thirsting for more rhythm games that have more character and impeccable style.
The animation looked nice but it clearly has nothing at all to do with the game and doesn’t tell any story whatsoever. I really dislike these pointless teasers.
Incredible how OEMs keep fumbling this. Just give me a Steam Deck with prosumer performance and decent battery. Accomplish that how you want. Slap SteamOS on it then let me buy it. No, I don’t want to figure out Armor Crate or MSI launcher or whatever. I just want to play games without having to babysit the thing.
I don't agree. While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it is surely an improvement to the previous ones and plays very very nicely. Try the demo for yourself
I’m gutted this is PC only as I only own a xbox series. I wonder, since Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, if they’re gonna surprise us with being able to use mods that were previously limited to pc due to the script extender, with the new next gen upgrade thats planned for Fallout 4. I’ll probably be disappointed but I can hope a little.
I wish all you guys had the same access to modding as PC crowd but I’m afraid anything like script extender would be too much of a risk for any console manufacturer. Still, they do experiment with console mods so who knows, maybe one day?
For me, it’s not so much a question of length but whether a game should last as long as it does. There’s got to be something that makes it worthy of its run time.
Case in point, I played about 24 hours of Assassins Creed Valhalla when it came out, only to sack it off when my friend informed me that he clocked about 100 hours in it to play through. Fuck that! That game would have been a decent 20 hour Viking romp but it’s got nothing to say, show me or keep me engaged at 5x that length. Hell even at 40 hours I’d have said it was inflated, but 100! It’s madness.
On the flip side, I played Elden Ring through to completion over 80 hours and would have played for 80 more had it asked. It was engaging, exciting, full of interesting locations, characters and things to fight. There’s tension in and intrigue in just exploring this unique setting and it all adds up to an experience that’s worthy of its runtime.
Similarly, one of the only JRPG’s I’ve finished in recent years is Persona 5 Royal, which took me a huge 109 hours to finish and yet I loved it. It’s full of style, flair and a sense of fun often missing from this genre that it just got me hooked. It’s not even that the story is all that great but the characters are well realised and there’s a wonderful dynamic in the core cast that really got me to go along for the full journey. I also think P5R also did the one thing many games fail at and it’s pacing, the thing just goes and despite facts like the tutorial is about 8 hours long I never felt like I was just killing time.
My point is, my feelings these days are that most games aren’t worthy of being over 10-20 hours, and even less so of being 20+. It’s not a one size fits all answer and individual mileage might vary person to person but there has to be a hook (gameplay, game feel, story, characters, setting, playing with engaged friends , etc.) to warrant time invested beyond a point.
Elden Ring is one of my upcoming games and I was worried about the length versus how much it would engage me. Glad to hear it kept you going for your whole playthrough.
Why is length a problem exactly? If you enjoy a game for 200h that’s great. If you get bored of it after 20h fine play something else. There’s no need to complete everything in every game you ever bought.
I very much do move on when Im done with a game, rather than when it’s done. I mentioned that I moved on from AC Valhalla only 25 hours in, and a more recent example is when I stepped away from Armoured Core 6 after only about 5-6 hours realising it wasn’t really for me.
The problem with length is when length is the reason I stop playing. I can love a game at first and think it’s great 4 hours in. That love can turn to like if the formula is getting a little stale or the plots not going anywhere. If this continues then my like might turn to just “consuming “ to get it done, and if I’m still plugging away for long enough in this state it’s easy enough for things to slip into a negative view of the game because it’s asking more of me than it’s giving back.
Take Final Fantasy XVI this year. It took me 44 hours to finish, but imo it peaked around the close of act 2 (a certain boss fight that went hard about 30 hours in). By then the gameplay formula was established and it’s largely the plot carrying it but (imo) neither ever really got any better in act 3 but I still had another 14 hours to go. I was invested enough to keep going but I went from loving it to just liking it as a whole because it never escalated and 14 hours of treading water is a bloody big investment. This was main-lining the game too, I gave up on side quests early on, so we’re not talking about completing a game just getting through them.
It comes back to games justifying their lengths. This is going to mean different things to different people, as well as the games themselves doing different things so there’s no one size fits all.
youtu.be
Ważne