Tank

I'm hate-playing it until I've got my $80 worth. Also, everyone who defends the game says the same thing-- "It's a Bethesda game, you're supposed to find your own story." I remember not liking Fallout 4 at first because I played it like a straight-line narrative and missed stuff. So I told myself with this one, I'll try to find my own thing to do and see how that goes. I found some motivation for my own head story: I am going to be a masked space vigilante. This was my inspiration after finding the hideout of "The Mantis" who is exactly that. Only the Mantis is dead and has a Dread Pirate Roberts mantle-passing origin. The game starts you off getting fucked up by space pirates, so I decided they are my enemy. The game makes them a faction you can join if you want. My late ego is a low key, mid-level with a spaceship for hire. I take shipping jobs, some passenger transporting, occasional survey work, and a bit of smuggling. This gives me a cover for seeing the galaxy, and also makes me money, which funds my vigilante operations. I've got a big ass hefty cargo ship for doing this work, a couple outposts that farm resources for doing all the mod-building you can for weapons and armor. As The Mantis, I'll take the occasional bounty, I'll help settlers plagued by pirates, raid pirate strongholds, and I have the Mantis' ship, which I've streamlined into a fast-attack craft that I use to stalk and hunt pirate ships. I nuke most of them, but the bigger ones I highjack and then sell for funds after I steal their cargo. The Mantis ship also has an effect/chance of scaring pirate ship off when you appear. On this path I run into lower level criminals, which I will often do work for if it is non-violent, letting them think I am working for them, when really, I am just using them to get to higher up bosses, or operations I can shut down and loot guilt free. I did see by accident on a player guide that if you get arrested you can trigger a storyline where the law basically makes you go undercover into the pirate fleet. Realizing this was perfect for "my story" I went into the nearest shop and stole a bottle of water to get arrested. To the games credit-- I've been able to do this all pretty easily. This covers tons of missions, multiple story beats, random side missions, and action found exploring. So once I decided this was my story path, damn if the game isn't making it totally doable. There's people out there starting resource farms to get rich, people with drug empires, people who play out being s space pirate as part of that faction. The ability to make your own story is actually pretty amazing, and the deserve some credit for that. That said-- why try to force me into a main story at all? I think it's BS-- they either want you to play your own story or play theres. Just commit to one. The there is the fact that if you don't have motivation, it is kinda lifeless. There's no real performances and the PC isn't even voiced. There's no deep emotional connection to the story. And then there's the glitches, the poor resource economy, the stupid ass encumbrances, and all the other stuff I talk about in. my previous posts. So it's really mixed. I think about this cool story I've made for myself, and I get excited to play. It's fun to clear pirate outposts... until they start repeating layouts. The starship builder is actually a lot of fun... but you need a lot of in game money to do it. So I think of the potential and get excited to play, have fun for a couple hours, then get stalled out due to glitches or poor game design and get irritated. It's just incomplete and not well thought out it too many ways. The said, I'm sure after a couple years of big updates, mods, and some DLCs, it could get there. I was insanely disappointed by Cyberpunk, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Fallout 4 in the OF versions-- but yers later they are among my favorite games,. Its just sucks that it requires years of extra development, and n entire fan community to get it there. And again, I paid $80, I deserve some entertainment!

Back to the Starfield hate... I admit I keep getting sucked back into playing... but then after a couple hours get frustrated every time. The economy and resources just don't work. You want to build A but need X to do it. You find a way to farm X, but it also requires B. You can buy B but only in small quantitates, so you figure out ho to farm B, to farm X, to build A, but then find out it won't work without Y. All this eats up mass and you get encumbered almost instantly in this game. Gone are the settlements of Fallout 4 where you could build creative, personalized post-apocalyptic townships with NPCs working toward your resource needs... now, even YouTube's "best" outposts are basically just seas of cargo modules plays build to be able to hold resources properly. Ship building is fun, until you realize only certain parts are available in certain locations, you can't save parts you aren't currently using, you can buy ships but not sell... even setting up a ship-building system at your own outpost won't let you access everything at once without a mod/hack. The funniest part of all is that somebody at Bethesda is butt hurt about the mid reviews on Steam and has been responding to them saying things like "when NASDA went to the moon for the first time there wasn't;t anything there to find." Cause you know-- comparing actually going to the god damn moon to sitting in a gaming chair and guzzling Monster while visiting a location with nothing to do, or at least a three minute walk to get to something, in a VIDEOGAME totally makes sense.

That's a problem? Sounds awesome!

Here's a decades old post from a knob that aged well.

Scifi-horror is my favorite subgenera but I didn't LOVE love Dead Space. Maybe I should give it another shot? I've got a Starfield update post coming. I'm definitely hate playing, but I am enjoying it a bit more... but there's still stuff inherently broken and/or poorly designed with this thing.

I actually played Outer Worlds and liked how quirky it was. If it had been any longer though I would have gotten annoyed with it for sure.

This is perfectly put and accurate. Re-reading my rambling from 2am last night it occurred to me that it was pretty amazing what I COULD do in some ways. I thought back to games I was playing as a kid and wishing I could explore more and wasn’t looking at static background. That I could go anywhere and do anything. If this game came back in time and I was able to play it at 15 I would think it was the best thing ever. But to play this now— after Mass Effect, after Last of Us, after GTA 5, or even after F04, and it seems like such a miss. It feels unfinished and basic. It’s like making and expecting people to watch a super basic 3 camera laugh track sitcom in a post Breaking Bad world. It’s like buying a Honda Civic from 1994 when you can get afford a Lexus. For the record, you CAN fly your ship— but only for combat and docking with other ships/stations in orbit. To travel to other systems, take off, or land it has to be done through menu commands that trigger cut scenes. I’m not sure why I am still playing it. I guess I am hoping I’ll have epiphany with it like I did Fallout. I did just find the lair and gear of The Mantis, which is their version of Batman with a bit of Dread Pirate Roberts. So I may now try the path of leaving the main story and becoming a space vigilante and see if that’s fun… but not holding my breath.

Okay, here's an example... I just played for a bit since my last post. Here's what went down... 1. I've landed on a frontier planet town, it has an old west in space vibe. I've seen this vibe done to death, and they aren't bringing anything new to it. The town is expansive. Tons of shops and people. NONE of it is interesting enough to suck me in. By comparison, the new vendor area added to Cyberpunk in Phantom Liberty was one of the coolest environments I've ever seen in a sci-fi game. It was familiar, but also really unique. This is not. 2. This is a desert-ish planet so when you are outside, there is a forced reshade filter that just reduces the contrast of everything and tints it slightly brown. It's supposed to be a feel, but it looks like a monitor mistake. 3. Every other person you pass basically has dementia. Get within a few feet and they jump you into whatever is on their mind. THINGS JUST HAVEN'T BEEN THE SAME AROUND HERE SINCE OUR WATER PLANT STOPPED WORKING. And of course, this now shows up as a mission for you. Most of the missions in my game journal are from snippets of conversation I walk by. Fix the air pump. Investigate the distress call. I'm not confident they lead to interesting stories, and are likely simple task quests to grind XP. 4. The mission I AM on is to help this boring ass guy I've got as a temp companion get some maps from his family that will lead to an alien artifact that the main mission faction is collecting. Get this, alien artifacts that give you a vision... which I have literally seen in so many stories, especially Mass Effect, which I just replayed. 5. Oops, can't get to the bank vault where the maps are because there's some bank robbers. Talk to the Marshal, he decides to let you handle it. Sneak in like a clever person, and try to stealth it (cause I paid into a stealth skill option) and do silent kills... but (and this happened in Fallout 4 constantly) my companion is immediately seen and starts shooting. So we kill everyone, fine. Hostages are in the vault. Before I let them out, I decide to pick the locks on a desktop safe. The bank manager, in the vault, is close enough to me that he is triggered to have the "you stole a thing prepare to get flagged as an enemy" reaction. My first thought is-- how does he see me steal if he's in the vault? The game says "oh don't worry, we'll just spawn him next to you so he DOES see." But then THAT triggers the mission response of "thank heavens you saved us and set us free" dialogue. So he's literally saying both things to me at the same time. 6. It seems to disable enemy status, so I go down to the vault to find the maps-- but nope. Have to go outside and talk to the Marshal and complete that mission first. Get the XP, and he offers to have me join his faction. Now I can talk to my idiot companion, go back into the bank and back down to the vault to get the maps. They aren't there. Find a note for him, that in theory I have to add to my inventory, then open and navigate through FOUR menus to read. But I think, it's for him, so I'll give it to him. As soon as I try to talk to him though, he immediately responded as if I have already read the note (because the game doesn't flag the difference between me having it AND reading it as two different events.) 7. So now we have to go see his dad who has the maps-- only idiot companion doesn't want to. I have to go through four very VERY on the nose dialogue choices to play therapist and get him to talk to his dad, and again remember the PC is not voiced, so all the "character" I have is broken into four dialog options. An overly supportive/positive reply, a snarky asshole reply, a non sequitur, or saying you don't care about what is happening. (This is a pretty common range for the game thus far). 8. We walk to the far side of town to find his dad, they argue, and I am given the choice of talking to dad myself even though he clearly hates me, telling idiot companion to distract him while I try to find and steal the maps, or go back to my ship where idiot companion's daughter is hanging out and ask her to schmooze her grandpa for the maps because they like each other. For the record, idiot companion has decided to keep them separate, which I can appreciate as having a toxic parent and a child... but also, what kind if space adventurer drags his kid along to his home planet but then makes her stay on the ship? I figured talking to dad myself would involve doing persuasion checks, which I haven't put enough points into and keep failing, and the game made me bring the kid, so that was likely the way to go. (Sidebar, persuasion convos are ridiculous. The game basically tells you "you have to guess what to say to people who knows how they'll respond... which is their of saying it is random, because if you follow logic, it doesn't lead you to a win. You just have a choices of things to say that cost points, and your skill "discounts" those points... but you are still playing a guessing game." 9. We walk all the way back across town to the spaceport to get the kid. Walk all the way back to the house so she and grandpa can reunite, and we get the maps. 10. Maps lead to a cave we (again) have to walk to in the wilderness teeming with rando animal attacks that wastes all my ammo. This is thankfully one of the shorter walks I have had in this game. I check progress on occasion with a long range scope I have-- but when I use it, it seems to want to lock in on something specific. I have to zoom in and out several times. I fix it by pointing upon into the sky... and see half a dozen rocks that have rendered up there instead of on the ground. Anyway, no ammo, so when we get to the location and it is full of all the surviving gang members of the dudes I shot down at the bank, I realize I need to go stealth and melee until I can pick up my bullets. I clumsily jetpack up to a bluff (because clumsily is the only way you can move in this game) to get the lay of the land and sneak in. This time I tell idiot companion to hold position so he doesn't trigger combat. 11. I start stealthing my way down. I get close to an enemy and trigger them being on alert. The way the AI works is that each enemy has a field of perception. Once you enter it, they will go on to alert and look around. If they see you, combat is triggered and any enemy in the area can now also see you regardless of where they are. I have a mid-level stealth skill, which nerfs down that area of perception. I also have a concealment skill so if I am crouched behind something, if the enemy is on alert, they have a slightly lower chance of seeing me. Rumor has it, even maxed out, you can still be seen and attacked by people even outside line of sight. That said, I manage to get pretty close. I alert a guard, but he doesn't see me. You get a little active progress bar that shows them cooling down back to being unaware. So I sit in hiding, watching it go down... and then idiot companion respawns next to me and starts shooting. 12. I take down the first guy and he has ammo I can use, so we clear out most of the enemies. I sneak up to objective building, and even though we just had a giant firefight with explosions and screams, the guys just inside have not been triggered because they have things to say about the bank mission I am supposed to hear... but I get a little too close, they go into combat mode... and they are fighting and saying combat dialog and the same time as the story dialog. I paid $80 for this shit so I want to get some play out of it-- the moment I have motivation to break bad I will do it.

People who love Starfield will give the blanket defense of WELP IT'S A BATHESDA GAME! Like their goal is to give you a massive open world with a ton of different factions, a loose story to get you going to learn mechanics, but otherwise, you have to figure out not only how to really game it, but also find your own way of playing it. In theory that is great. I will admit that Fallout 4 was my first Bethesda game, and my first play I missed a lot because I didn't explore, I didn't get deep into the rug mechanics, and I stuck to the main storyline. After I got a better idea of things, my second play through was fun. But most of all, Fallout 4 had such an amazing style and vibe to it. But also, there is very much a psychology to game design when it comes to an open world. I can't find the video now, but I watched this clip on youTube that talked about it, but the idea is, if you are roaming an open world you don't actually go more than a minute without seeing something new. Fallout 4's map is huge,. and even in the most remote places, there's things to find, strange tableaus that tell a story, something to loot, or a location you haven't discovered. Starfield's planets have 1-5 key locations. Your ship can only usually land in one place. You have to WALK to the other locales and there is nothing but procedurally generated landscape between them. It's also insanely easy to become over-encumbered for a game that relies on looting and nabbing resources. The locations tend to recycle the same modular parts so it just comes off as the juice not being worth the squeeze. The hub worlds are packed and well art directed-- but they don't give you maps. AN OPEN WORLD GAME WITH NO MAPS. They say they want you to explore to know the world, but again, everything is miles apart. The dialog is very basic, and your player character isn't voiced. There are no performances what so ever, just animated faces (of which Bethesda has only a handful) saying flat line readings to you. There's also a lot of what people call "Bethesda jank." Glitchy faces, weird bugs, graphics that doesn't always load. The other night I lifted off from a spaceport and a member of the ground crew got connected to my ship and was still walking around under my ship mid-air doing his ground crew thing. Graphics clipping is everywhere, and the action is extremely stiff and not-dynamic. There's no cover system, you can't dodge, you can barely jump. The UI is one of the worst I've ever seen. I could go on. Basically, Bethesda wants to make RPG computer games from the 90s, but feel inclined to do the bare minimum possible to stay relevant as a AAA studio. And again, their fans will tell you this is exactly their goal and you should know it if you play their games. I guess I just call BS on that and have a hard time thinking this mediocrity was done on purpose as opposed to just being a failure of some sort and them regressing to what they know works to make a ship date. Mostly I'm just mad because it feels like a backwards step from Fallout 4, which I loved.

The Steam sale is pretty decent, I picked up the recent Hitman Trilogy (with all DLCs) for under $30. Also nabbed an old school Lucasarts style point and click graphic adventure I've had my eyes on for awhile, Jedi Survivor, and Last of Us Part 1 (since I only have it on my Ps4). In the meanwhile, Starfield continues to be average as fuuuuuuuuuuu

Really HATED the toxic bro side of Star Wars fandom that instantly called for Kennedy's head and never stopped. It's the same ones complaint about how she "forced" female leads and woks and all that other crap. That said... To have had to fire and replace this many directors, to reshoot more than half of multiple features, to announce shows and not put them into production for years, to prioritize things like BOBF instead of giving more money to Obi-Wan... all of these things fall on her.

You can stealth/snipe your way through most of it, and hacking the turrets helps too. Unless you mean the boss fight at the end of it, in which case yeah— that took me forever tries too.

It's funny-- a few years ago everyone was saying Filoni should run creative and let Kennedy stick to what she knows- running production. Now that it has finally happen, I'm very MEH about it. Turns out Filoni in live action ends up leaving me feeling like EU fan films are now canon.

This happens WAY less than it used to with the new 2.0 build.

Gotta say, a few hours in, Starfield is astonishingly boring, poorly-written, has last gen graphics, and some of the absolute WORST UI design I have ever seen in a game. And oh yeah, NO MAPS, cause they want you to "explore the world" and yet, locations can be 3-4 minutes apart with nothing to discover between them and your ship can only land in a single place.

It’s a fully integrated story mission, you still play your V. It’s just like any other threaded story mission in the game, They made the option to skip to it for people who finished the game already and didn’t want to replay the whole thing. It’s not a separate game, it’s part of the main game in the form of a mega side quest. Looking back, Cyberpunk seems to confuse you, lol. Just start a new game and you’ll get the hang of it: if you hate it though, Phantom Liberty isn’t going to change your mind.

I've basically been in a loop of playing the same few games, and replaying my PS4 favorites with mods now that I am on PC, since covid lockdown. Not sure why, but there just wasn't a lot for me out there. I'm a picky gamer. I like narrative driven sci-fi or horror action RPG 3rd person games. Don't care much for fantasy. This has left me playing these games over and over the last four years: Fallout 4, Mass Effect (all 4), Control, State of Decay 2, Ghosts of Tsushima, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Last of Us 1&2, and the occasional one off. But I'm downloading Starfield right now...

You can’t really play post-base game, as the OG endings are all pretty finite. The DLC doesn’t become available until after act one of the base game, and like everything else, will get dropped and locked out if you got past the point of no return. It’s meant to be played during act 2. So it is integrated naturally. If you’ve finished the base game and want to play it, they give you two options: 1. Start a new game, after you get to act two you’ll get a message that will lead you to the DLC. Once you play the first act of ITS story, it will then let you progress at your own pace and you can go back to playing base game missions at the same time. 2. Start a new game, but jump directly to the Phantom Liberty story. This will skip the required missions of act one of the base game and gives you the XP/perks those missions would have earned you. Keep in mind too that a month before the DLC came out the game had a huge upgrade. If you were playing before September you’ll have to respec all your skill points. My honest opinion is unless you’re super into the game and lore, it’s best to just start a new game. While it is it’s own story, the DLC really plays on top of the existing story and a lot of nuance may be lost if you’re unfamiliar with the story at large.

I always think of the Elijah Wood scene in Back to the Future 2, “You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a kid’s game!”

Forgot to say— my one other disappointment… the romances in this game leave a lot to be desired. Panam and Judy are both great, but they are gender specific and really only have one path. River is lame, and there are only TWO joy toys you can hire. I was expecting Phantom Liberty to give more options, there are at least 3 new characters I’d have tried to bang for sure! But alas, they are not romance-able.

I’m def not a keyboard/mouse person. I watch my son do it and it hurts my brain. I use a game controller for everything.

I follow a bunch!

People are excited for AI to get better and I’m over here loving the multi-fingered, melty faced nightmare fuel all the V1s out out.

I couldn't even tell you my specs hahaha. Where in stupid ass windows do I go to view them? I let my son spec it out a few years ago when I got it. Back to the game itself... finished the base game now. I took a different route than before, still had a lot of fun. I found a lot of different things this time, not sure if they were added for 2.0 or Phantom Liberty, or if I just missed them before. I know the Edgerunners released added stuff too. Overall, it's now a game worthy of being a AAA title. Of course, you all know how I feel about no 3rd person, but beyond that, I really only have a few minor complaints about the game overall. Mainly-- - The journal/map is still awful. After every completed task it auto-defaults you back to the main storyline with markers and prompts, which for an open world game is so annoying. There's literally hundreds of things to do, and to not be able to queue and manage tasks efficiently is annoying. Not game-breaking, but definitely annoying. - There's still random moments of tank. Sometimes Johnny Silverhand looks amazing, other times, he's out of a PS1 game. - They added a glitch effect to the overall visuals to all action scenes, which I find really distracting, It used to be saved for when you were getting hacked, but now it's there the second you enter combat. - Every car save for the top tier ones are nerfed to be twitchy AF-- I'd forgive this if there were more driving related skills to counter-act it, but there are not. Overall these are pretty minor complaints though, and I'm sure that one 2.0 starts getting more modded there will be fixes.

Yeah I can only play for about 2-3 hours before my PC sounds like a 747 taking off and gameplay stutters.