Recent reviews by Stavius

(Ignore hours played amount: I played most of it in offline mode and did fully beat the game and all faction quests one time. Probably put around something like 70-100 hours into the game in total.)

Starfield is fun. It clearly has had a lot of work put into it by some of the most skilled people in the game industry. The gunplay is very tight, and the environment art is top-tier. But, the game does not want you to have fun.

There are hard stops separating you from the fun at all times. Loading screens and fast travel barriers separate you from your next goal at all times. For a game that touts itself to be about exploration, there really is no sense of exploration at all: all the planets are mapped out, everything has already been discovered. Just not by you. You don't really stumble across new things the way you might have in any other Bethesda game; the sense of discovery that makes those games so fun is gone. Also, you'll spend a lot of time just trying to remember the name of that one planet you're trying to get back to - no easy way to bookmark or keep track of planets. The sheer size of the universe and the number of planets is cool, in a sense... but after going to all the main planets and a few of the side planets, you start to feel like there's no point to visiting all those other planets. They're not special anymore. They're just background noise.

The game gets repetitive real fast. There's only a handful of prefabbed dungeons, which randomly appear on new areas on planets, and you'll have memorized the location of every enemy and loot pickup by the third one. The handcrafted interiors are very immersive, but that immersion is shattered when you see the same location, with all the same "lore" documents, names, and loot, on a completely different planet, brand new as if you'd never seen it before. It is insulting and disrespectful to the player, treating them like some sort of animal who falls for the same trick multiple times. Plus, the new game+ mechanic is probably the most insulting - and boring - implementation of Bethesda's attempts for making a perpetual game. If you hated Skyrim and Fallout 4's "radiant quests" at all, this game will teach you a new way to be pissed off.

There are a lot of mechanics in the game, but the tutorials for how to use them are minimal, and a lot of the basic game mechanics are locked behind perks. I did not really feel like I had a handle on the goal of the game or how to play it until about level 40. In those first 40 hours, I kept feeling like the few fun parts were stringing me along through monotony and annoyance.

I think what bothered me most of all is that the game is deeply cynical. I don't mean how the characters are written; the characters are written pretty well, and the quest trees are some of Bethesda's best. But the idea of far future humanity being so deeply saturated in violence, where killing is not just pervasive but mandatory, is really very dull to me. There's never any incentive not to make your character a ruthless murder machine at all times. For a game that prides itself on how much it claims to love science, the design of the game has none of the love for life or the natural universe. Don't they know what science is about? It's about appreciation and study of nature. Not the destruction, exploitation, or colonization of it. The devs seem confused about what's really important to them, and are stuck between being fans of science fiction and being fans of feeling like a big cool hero killing bad guys.

It's a shame, really, because this game has so many good aspects to it. But the downsides between those good parts will trip you up and sour your fun. My spouse, sitting next to me as I played, could have sworn that I was spending more time in menus, managing inventory or crafting or trying to navigate, than I spent actually having fun in the game.

I really wish that Bethesda would redirect some of their efforts and resources into games that are fun to play, into stories that are challenging and compelling, and try to remove all the barriers between the player and playing the game. Right now they seem set on trying to make video games that feel like an epic feel-good power fantasy movie experience some of the time, but feel like organizing an excel spreadsheet for the rest of the time. For the price of this game, you should just buy Outer Wilds and watch Interstellar. You'll get all the good parts of Starfield without any of the tedium.

I think this game is worth it, especially if you get it on sale. Be sure to get a season pass. I think the season pass is overpriced now, but it wasn't when I bought it (they raised the price a few months after releasing the game).

It's fun to play. It's got its issues (Bethesda's writing has become rather weak as of late) but I still think it's very fun, it looks beautiful, and it's worth playing. Bethesda's art team and environment artists are probably the best in the business.

As you read this review, please keep in mind that I have not played other games in this genre (DayZ, H1N1, etc).

When I first got this game about 6 months ago, I first noticed that it was very beautiful (CryEngine) but there wasn't a lot to do yet. The game was just looting and trying not to die. There wasn't a reason to build a base yet, so I never did.

But then the developers started to update it more and more, and the time between updates got shorter. Now there's a variety of vehicles, and with storage added, reasons to build bases as well. The increase in features lead to an increase in players, too, which raised the tension and the stakes, and the fun. There's mutants and animals which add a lot of life to the world. During the day, I'm on edge. But at night, I'm terrified.

I think it goes without saying that when you play a game like this, you should be much more scared of human players than of any creature or monster. This game delivers on that concept. I've never felt more tension or stress in either a singleplayer or multiplayer game before Miscreated.

The vehicles are pretty good but you're likely to encounter a glitch when using them. For example, cars suddenly becoming silent, bicycles getting stuck in a curb or staircase, four-wheeler having a physics glitch (sending it into centripetal hell and killing you in the process). But these issues are rare and don't affect gameplay too often.

Right now, it's pretty easy to get your base broken into; I'm not saying that's an unintended aspect of gameplay, but I wish there was a way to secure my belongings without making a ridiculous floating platform (which the devs are trying to eliminate, anyway). But maybe I'm just too dumb to hide my stuff well.

This is a great game to play with friends; if you play it by yourself, it's still fun, but you'll become extremely paranoid, and it's downright terrifying to hear a stranger's footsteps outside when you're looting a house.

In addition to the game's merits and ever-growing features, the devs are highly communicative on Twitter and Reddit, which is really nice, and a refreshing change compared to many Alpha games. I don't think I've had a better experience with an alpha title than I have with Miscreated. This game just keeps getting better all the time.

I'm a plant!

10/10.

Dragons are evil and need to be punished! The Elder Scrolls prophesied that you would be that punisher.