Man, reading that old 2005 PC Gamer article really brings me back to older, better and happier times of gaming journalism too. It even mentions the bundled DVD with demos, mods and goodies you’d get each month. Those really were the days.
Sure but… I’m subscribed to Humble Monthly. So instead of getting a CD with a magazine containing a bunch of demos, I get a bunch of keys for full games. A lot of them pretty neat indies.
Hehe. So, I’ve got 243 hours into Starfield. Level 45.
For me, the game is side quests, killing bad guys all over the place, and taking over as many ships as I can.
I’ve completely ignored the main mission. Haven’t really done any crafting other than upgrading weapons. I started a base and forgot where its at.
The companions are all horrid. I hang out with the robot guy. He’s got good guns.
I use Heller’s Cutter, Arc Welder, and Auto-Rivet. Nothing else. Seemed fitting for a miner. And people burn real good.
I mostly don’t use ship storage except for uncommon stuff. I go through the ridiculous torment of tossing all my junk on the ground in a hold of my ship. Silly fun.
I don’t do a lot of space combat. I’ve got a stack of Class C ships whenever I get around to optimizing them. At some point that will be a new piece of the game that I’ll play.
I may never pursue the main mission. Looks kinda dumb. Can’t tell you exactly what I’ve found fun in this game where I’ve opted out of most of the game. But … every now and then I quicksave and just start burning down all the civilians. A lot of em won’t die. But I keep trying. And then I load my save, because I want to be able to land there again.
I may never pursue the main mission. Looks kinda dumb.
It very much is, and the ‘ending’ was enough for me to drop the game and uninstall it same day. I barely made it to the end, and goddamn was it not worth it.
I don’t really want any magic powers or some final culmination. If I’ve used the (100 cells!) on my cutter, you get to meet my welder, and if you’re out of reach, eat some rivets. I’m not playing some bad guy, but almost the entire game for me is bloodshed, up close, and hardcore. Ya fuk the main mission.
I never really understood that. Everyone hyped up skyrim so hard and when i played it it was… Meh? It was all grey and jank that apparently is enjoyable for some people.
I really liked new vegas and when fallout 4 came out, i never watched a trailer or anything, but i was sick on release day, so on that day, i watched the release trailer and thought why not. I was truly shocked how god damn ugly the game was and how shallow and broken it was.
People had high hopes for starfield and i thought i was taking crazy pills. It’s just the same thing again but somehow even worse. I think i just don’t get it.
The problems of Starfield, the ones that prevent it from being great even if only through modding, are engine-level problems. Those can’t be fixed without remaking the entire game from scratch in a new engine, and nobody wants to do that.
Maybe in a couple decades we’ll get Starfield Remastered made in UE9.
Not really an engine problem, but Bethesda not caring to make the setting even remotely believable and making the mechanical parts feel isolated and meaningless is what hurts the game the most.
Exploring and collecting materials almost serves a purpose, as you need them to craft/upgrade armor and weapons, or to create stuff around your base, but you can just buy the stuff you need off vendors, which makes both the exploration and the point of having a base pointless. Crafting is almost something you might care about, but you can buy pretty much anything you need off vendors (heal kits, drugs) or get them as drops. None of the crafting targets the ship or its parts, for whatever reason.
If the game was just Dungeon -> Vendor -> Dungeon loop, it’d be much, much better rated and less hated. The lack of variety is felt very early on anyway, it’s not like cutting the bullshit would make it worse to endure.
Also, considering how nearly everyone using UE besides Epic themselves seem to do a really shitty job, including Bethesda with Oblivion Remaster, I’d expect that SF remaster to be even worse than the original 😆
Fans patching the Bethesda games is as at least as old as Daggerfall, if not earlier. Daggerfall didn’t have Helseth and Barenziah as Dark Elves until fans fixed it. Pickpocketing in Morrowind is broken unless you use the code patch. The Oblivion leveling problem punishes you for playing the game.
Like every guide for every Bethesda game is going to start with download this unofficial patch, and the unofficial patches for the DLC, and this installer. They’ve relied on fans and treated the community like it’s an FOSS community, without realizing that without good product, the volunteers won’t come.
Yes, but that shouldn’t be the norm, or an expectation, of the developer. “Oh, we don’t need to worry about the game, the fans will just mod it and it’ll bring us lots of money!”
Seriously - what is a good space exploration/trading game that doesn’t require a huge learning curve? (I’m not a fan of flying stuff and too much trading is boring, but I do like exploring)
E:D has a pretty steep curve, there’s a ton of external information that needs to be absorbed to get the most out of the game, and then once you get into it, you discover that “it’s lightyears wide, and one inch deep”. That said, I gotta hand it to the devs who are constantly trying to keep it interesting. I earned my carrier, thought “and then…?” and that was kinda it. Might give NMS a try just for something different.
I bought NMS when it was released, and hated it. Ok, it’s legendary as something that was released before it was ready and that undoubtedly spoiled it for me - endless running and nothing to do, and I’m sure it’s better now.
Elite Dangerous was quite fun for a while, but I got frustrated with the flying aspect quite a bit and after several deaths I gave up. I’m old enough to remember the first Elite, which was even more unforgiving.
But if you want something a lot more serious, a proper simulator, but also requires time to learn (for when you get bored of the simplicity of No Man’s Sky), maybe give X4 a shot.
No. Not by a long shot. You’re better off playing Fallout 4.
what is a good space exploration/trading game that doesn’t require a huge learning curve?
Freelancer. It’s old (2003), but it’s still effectively the Explore/Trade/Fight space sim that every other game gets compared to. I’ll note that it’s focus is on getting good combat ships and flying around, exploration exists but is the least developed aspect, I’d say. Gotta get it thru the high seas, tho.
Evochron Legacy is an indie game that might scratch your itch, it also lets you fly into planets’ atmospheres and it accounts for the friction, so while you can fly fast, doing so will damage your ship. I don’t think its learning curve is too steep, but it can take some time to get used to. Try the demo before buying it, as one negative review suggests
Lastly, check out Underspace’s demo. Still in Early Access, but seems promising.
Freelancer sounds interesting - I started searching and landed on the Amazon page for it, which told me " You last purchased this item on 29 Apr 2005". I have no recollection of the thing, but then I have played a lot of games. Still, worth a revisit - I’ll take a look. Thanks.
When you beat the game and go thru The Unity to a whole ass different dimension and not one single detail is different in any way. That’s what kills the drive to go onward. Because the game was fine. Once.
The whole story is predicated on a multiverse that effectively doesn’t exist. Except on 1 sidequest for Barrett.
Reading your comment, I’ve just learned more about the story that nearly 250 hrs of gameplay got me. So the end is hokey, huh? Big surprise. I hate Sarah.
You want a fan fucking tastic game that you can put 250 hours in and never regret a minute of it?
The Yakuza franchise. Start wirh Yakuza 0. Play them all. You will laugh. You will cry. You will get so irrationally angry at pixels you’ll want to actually murder them. You’ll fall in love. And cry some more. Your heart will break many times. And nothing will ever be the same.
Ever had a game or movie or book leave you in stunned silence? You spend the next week thinking about it? That’s the Yakuza franchise. It’s silly and stupid and hilarious and it’ll tear your damn heart out when you least expect it.
My friend, your heartfelt recommendation is appreciated and will be ignored because I’m not into Asian mystique.
For my part, I I recommend that you revisit the DOOM series. Of course you want a modern zdoom egine to play the early ones. Do not overlook Sigil and the other John Romero wads, which are legit extensions to the story. Proceed to DOOM 3 and discover BFG Edition, which includes an entirely new campaign called The Lost Patrol. After that play DOOM 2016. Stop there. There has never been a better video game made since. You can give up gaming now.
I picked up Yakuza 0 on a whim in 2020 and absolutely loved it. I subsequently played every main game in the series back to back (including Judgment!) and have eagerly gotten the games at launch even though I very rarely buy games at full price. They’re just that good. Even the goofy Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii connected to the main story in surprising ways. <spoiler>spoiler!<spoiler>
My main gripe with the universe of starfield is that it works on fallout logic, as in, everyone acts as if telephones and cameras don’t exist, despite being 300 years in our fucking future without any tech loss.
That “don’t you guys have phones?” Blizzard meme is ironically spot on here. They don’t. Communication only happens face to face while out of a ship.
The other thing is how a lot of the game runs on “nobody cares”. Alien ship showing up on orbit? Nobody cares. Another alien ship showing up and attacking you? Nobody saw it, nobody cares. Alien space magic? Nobody cares. Alien space magic being used to wreak havoc in a big city? Not a word on it, instant amnesia after the attack.
It actually makes sense in Fallout since it’s post-apocalyptic. Yes, the apocalypse happened hundreds of years earlier, but most people still live in squalor while only a privileged few have high tech stuff. Starfield, though? The “apocalypse” took like 50 years to happen and everyone escaped Earth. There’s no excuse for widespread telecommunication to not exist.
Lol it’s such a tremendously boring game with dated gameplay. Bless your little heart if you enjoy it, but it’s a bland, middling game at best and flat out bad in many ways.
The fundamental concept and theme of the game is trash. It literally makes everything you do meaningless, it inevitably leads to you becoming the jaded villain. It would be better if they had an end where you destroyed the universe shifting thing and were locked in one.
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