Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
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People like to claim any big ticket game that doesn’t get like 8/10 or higher is being review bombed. Seems as if people have legit criticisms of the game and it’s pretty fairly reviewed.
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This game is just ridiculous. Overhyped advertising, terrible optimalization, 10 years old graphics, so many loadscreens, plain story, no real space exploration, perk wall to do anything, horrible UI and they call it next gen open world space exploration RPG. I stopped playing after 10 hours so I can make a good assumption but it got only worse and worse. I don’t have time to waste it on this. Even if it starts being more enjoyable later it doesn’t excuse all the issues.
From Metacritic
Metacritic user ratings have literally never mattered and never been an indicator for anything. I’m pretty sure every relatively popular game on it gets “review bombed”, because anyone who actually wanted to review it wouldn’t review it there. This is non-news.
Doesn’t metacritic aggregate reviews from other sources on their review scores as well? I havent really considered any of the big name review places a reasonable source for a long time anyway…
Everyone expects the next big game every game. How often can a studio really live up to the hype people create?
Why? It’s a pretty bad game in many ways. Also good in other ways. I can totally see why it’s polarising
I watched some streams of Starfield, and I just can’t understand how they made a game that looks so dull and boring. Skyrim had some soul to it, I remember being wowed by the trailer. The world and music in Skyrim are really beautiful too. Yeah it’s a janky Bethesda game in many ways, but it is also more than that.
I think you can’t see starfield the same way you saw skyrim is because several years past and this level of dullness and jankiness is unacceptable
My thoughts exactly. Whatever issues were in Morrowind, Oblivion, New Vegas, Skyrim etc there was still a uniquely engaging game there.
I’ve been poking around and their lead concept artist died before he got to work on Fo4, and the two main writer producer guys Emil & Pete(?) have basically admitted on game dev talks that they’re no longer trying to tell a coherent story or create a world anymore, just keep a player playing. Maybe this is why?
For all the Bethesda games I’ve played (barring Starfield), I’ve been instantly hooked and wanting to play more. There’s always been something to keep me playing. But in Starfield I feel like there’s just nothing there, I’m not feeling any sense of wanting to explore and find out more. I’m glad I didn’t pay for my copy, would have been a waste of money imo
Man some people just can’t be pleased. I’ve been playing the game all week, and it’s fantastic. It delivered exactly what I thought it was going to be.
Sure there are some bugs, and some complaints about a few minor things, but as a whole this game is spot on.
I’m just not sure what people are expecting. It’s Fallout/Skyrim in space, and it’s exactly what I thought it was going to be.
I agree that it’s a fun game – about what I expected as well (no bugs for me, though) – but my major issue with the game is that the lore is so damn boring. Unlike in past titles like New Vegas and Oblivion, I find myself skipping through the dialogue in this one so that I can go back to enjoying the game. The game doesn’t give me any reason to care about these various factions and their internal drama. Nobody ever has anything interesting or funny to say in Starfield ever. I never once felt the need to dig deeper into the lore like I do with Fallout, reading timelines and listening to developer insight and whatnot. I just skip skip skip.
Also there’s the fact that space travel is done almost entirely through menus. The only time you actually have to fly your ship is during dogfights.
If it weren’t for those two things, this would be a 9/10 game for me. I love the massive cities, how many mods there are already, and gunplay is satisfying once you tweak the damage values to make everyone less of a bullet sponge (Including yourself). Can’t wait to see what the future holds for this game once we start getting DLC and story mods.
I just did a quest where the New Frontier and the UC put aside their differences in war to fight a common enemy. The dialog was all touching and mused on the equality of each soldier in a war.
Meanwhile I’m over here like “Dude, I have no honest idea what dumb reason there is that you two idiots are even at war with each other, and you’re writing the dumbest WW1 Christmas story I’ve heard.”
tbf this is pretty par for the course with Bethesda, the writing just isn’t good. The people that wrote Morrowind and most of Oblivion left half way through Oblivion, from what I remember Todd Howard did not get along with the writers at all.
Everything ever since has been just, well it’s been there. Todd is more interested in spectacle and exploration than writing. And unfortunately that’s been incredibly successful for him
I don’t like it, so many loading screens, the faction bounties are copy/paste, the space combat is awkward, neon was a huge disappointment to me being just one long corridor with neon signs, the main quest railroads you like no other Bethesda game before it and it’s just not fun to me. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s just not for me and moved back over to baldurs gate 3 and recently started another new run in the outer worlds.
I’ll keep plying the low atmo worlds in Elite until the game for me comes out, I guess.
I mean, my opinion is anecdotal I suppose. I have friends that like it and some that think it’s just okay. For me, I just wasn’t having fun and that’s the point of games, to have fun. I also don’t really think their whole “NASApunk” style is very good. It doesn’t feel like it has any unique style or identity. It’s honestly baffling to me how it’s gotten some 9’s and 10’s for scores. It’s easily a 7 out of 10 for me, maybe even a 6. It’s definitely not the game Bethesda sold everyone on with marketing IMO.
Skip the loading screens and just jump the walls or off balconies. Duh.
I thought the main quest lines were pretty great.
All the side content is pretty bland though.
The loading screens aren’t bad if you’re properly using fast travel.
The loading screens are atrocious even for a Bethesda game. Walk up a ladder, loading screen, open a door, loading screen, dock with another ship, loading screen, travel to another planet in the same system, loading screen, land on a planet that’s already loaded, loading screen, exit the ship, loading screen. Maybe it’s different on PC, but I’m playing on a series S that has pretty fast read/write speeds and that’s just absurd. Pretty sure if my character could use the toilet there would be a loading screen for the bathroom.
You don’t need to do all that stuff though. Use your missions tab and the map to travel directly where you need to go.
It’s a massive open world game, there are going to be loading screens. But you can limit them by fast traveling directly.
So your suggestion is to not play the open-world part of the open-world game?
It’s still open world in the sense that there are plenty of places you can go to and in any order without being gated through a linear story line.
Even if you were to ignore my advice, it wouldn’t be any more open world because travelling between these areas is always gated by loading screens.
My suggestion is merely to reduce the amount of loading screens between zones.
Instead of leaving constellation, loading Jameisom, getting on the train, loading the shipyard, entering your ship, loading the ship interior, taking off, loading space, going to your map, selecting warp to sol, loading sol, selecting a landing site on Cydonia, loading your ship interior on cydonia, leaving your ship, and loading cydonia.
I’m suggesting you fast travel straight from the lodge to cydonia. Cutting 7 loading screens down to 1.
Of course, I also recommend that you take time to explore the areas you’re in.
You’re right that the loading screens can be minimized with fast travel, but also, some of the best parts of a game like this is the immersion, which doesn’t really work well with loading directly from point to point on your to-do list. I think Starfield is fine, tbh, but I do agree that the amount of loading screens is excessive. Games like NMS and Elite Dangerous have been doing seamless space travel for a long time now. There’s really no excuse.
I get what you’re saying, but eliminating loading screens in a game like this just isn’t feasible.
NMS or Elite Dangerous style space travel might be, but then it would have a similarly cartoonist reduced scale. I wouldn’t mind that personally, but I get why they didn’t do it.
My primary complaint is that the cities themselves are split up into multiple zones. If Skyrim can be entirely open, so to should Jameison.
I’m not saying they need to eliminate them entirely, just agreeing that there are way too many, and “fast travel to the plot” isn’t a reasonable solution in a game like this. I do think (mostly) seamless space travel would go a very long way to helping the overall experience.
Starfield has fantastic art direction and ambience. The gunplay is really good, perhaps the best gunplay of any RPG, and a surprise coming from Bethesda. Story hits some good beats, and exploration is rewarding, though repetitive about 50% of the time in the typical Bethesda fashion (remember Draugr crypts?).
That being said, the game has some shortfalls, primarily in the roleplay aspect. The ship building and crew management is good, but it doesn’t feel great, and is sometimes just frustrating, so you never feel truly immersed in your own ship. Lack of low earth orbital and terrestrial flight is immersion breaking (even if players might opt to skip it if it were present) along with the fact that the ship is relegated to being a flying mule and most transportation is basically instant teleportation via menus, which IMO hurts the isolation and exploration RP and challenge. Ship combat is straight up mediocre for a space game in 2023. Gun selection and modding is decent, but far from top tier. I would describe the apparel as a bit on the bland side, few of the clothes and armor pickups made me go: I want to put this on, I’ll look badass (Cyberpunk 2077 syndrome).
In fact I think starfield shares a lot with Cyberpunk 2077: massive budget, AAA art direction with gameplay spread across so many systems and features that a lot of them leave you wanting more.
I was so prepared to love this game today. Woke up early and fired it up almost two hours ago. It’s crashed 5 times and I’ve only made about twenty minutes worth of progress into the intro.
I’m playing on a Series X. There’s no reason for this type of bullshit.
Sure, it’s a first world problem, but this has really set a bad tone for the day and this game in general.
I might try again later, but I’m probably already over it.
I’ve been running it on my series S for hours without a single crash - sounds like that might be something to do with your console
Where did it crash? I’ve been playing for 5 hours on a SX and it’s been rock solid (of course usual Bethesda visual glitches slightly happen).
It sounds like your xbox is overheating or needs to be cleaned
But the Xbox OS isn’t crashing. I just suddenly go back to the home screen, but trying to go back into Starfield relaunches the game. My kid said it was happening to him when he played earlier this week, but I thought he was just exaggerating because he’s like that.
Here’s where it crashed: #1: Saying goodbye to Lin. #2: Space pirates land (no combat yet) (I decided to quicksave after talking to Barrett) #3: Conversation after the pirate fight #4: Spaceship combat tutorial (2 ships)
And that’s as far as I got in 2 hours.
I get the same crashes in the same places. On a windows 10 pc with less than current parts. I thought it was my aging machine.i have 82 minutes in game and may just refund.
I wouldn’t even say anything if I was on PC, I’d just assume I wasn’t up to spec (I’ve never had a high end machine, I’m used to it) but theres not much I can do to improve my series x.
Somehow they made a shittier NoMansSky.
I have tried to play NMS four separate times now. I just cannot get past a certain point where it feels like repitition towards some kind of story line that is always one stept away of “something interesting”. The mechanics of the gameloop are maybe a bit too obvious, which takes away form the immersion. I end up shelfing it because something else catches my goldfish like attention. Then a year later a major update comes out, and I think “maybe it’s good now”?
Am I doing it wrong?
No, it’s just an overhyped game that doesn’t deliver.
It’s janky as hell, but the game I’ve played the most this year. Take that for what you will.
I mean… Have you played many others?
They played some minesweeper for 10 minutes.
It’s crack for my brain
Most of the negative commenters I’ve heard from have been reactionary. Most who play it say anywhere from pretty good to amazing.
For the record, I’m a Playstation fanboy who thinks Bethesda’s best work is Morrowind and Fallout 3.
I really dislike most of the games Bethesda makes . Skyrim I found glitchy and the sword play felt really bad . Fallout 3 the gameplay seemed like walk backwards and shoot. I did like death loop thou
I did like death loop thou
That would make sense if you don’t like the games Bethesda makes since that one was Arkane.
I felt the same until I modded the shite out of Skyrim this year and now my mod list hit critical mass and I‘m having an absolute blast with it. Starfield runs worse and looks worse for me so that game needs some time in the patch and mod oven before I dive into it… I‘m patient.
You should try Prey if you enjoyed Deathloop, it’s DLC “Moon crash” was made a few years prior to Deathloop and incorporates similar mechanics except the map is randomized on each playthrough so it’s always a little different.
Same company, but it feels like Moon crash was a more interesting version of what DL did. Plus Prey occasionally just goes on like 90% off sales (one time I snagged it and the DLC free on Epic Games.)
Im pretty sure I have it on epic games too will have to check it out
Morrowind and Fallout NV are incredible.
Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Skyrim are great.
Fallout 4 is bland as hell.
Fallout 76 and ESO are hot garbage.
I’d put Starfield in the great tier.
ESO is great, though? It just has a shitty combat system with attack weaving. Even 76 isn’t that bad anymore. Honestly just seems like you get your opinion out of gaming journalism.
I have literally never watched or read a review of ESO or Fallout 76.
I played both.
ESO fails at being a solid Elder Scrolls game because it’s tailored more toward an MMO experience. The writing is awful, and the quests are boring. The combat sucks, and the social features are abysmal given you can’t even share quests. Literally the only reason I could imagine anyone playing this game is because they want to grind out an MMO every day that’s set in the Elder Scrolls universe.
Fallout 76, I don’t even know where to start. Again, the MMO mechanics tear out everything good about Fallout games to deliver a bland, grindy MMO with bad combat.
What did you like about Fallout 3 that makes you put it in their higher tier of quality?
Liam Neeson was my daddy.
Can’t argue with that. 11/10.
Early Bethesda games in general focused on giving you more freedom and the tools to do what you want. Where later games tried to give you more cool things to do. I think the quality decline is obvious from the change.
I played it and thought it was mid. Didn’t hold my interest at all. I’ve haven’t played a Bethesda game since oblivion though.
I can see why the reviews are between ‘Best game ever’ and ‘worst game Bethesda made’ and it’s so strange. I personally love Starfield and it’s universe while my friend hates it because it’s boring for him.
I am really enjoying it. The emergent story-lines that have cropped up just from me doing stuff is great. Having to really focus my skill points into perks forces me to stick with a play style and the gunplay and upgrades are fantastic. I love just fucking off to some random corner of the galaxy and finding a whole entire storyline to explore. Yes, the lack of low orbit flying is glaring since I played a lot of NMS but the story telling here is top tier and I just keep wanting to go back and play. Even now, I am just writing this one comment and then I am off to betray the Crimson Fleet >:)
It would seem so to me. When there’s a big disparity across the ratings - positive and negative are similar on metacritic with little in between - it raises a lot of red flags to me.
Nah. There are good reasons to love and hate the game.
Not sure if it’s evidence of organized review bombing. but yeah, it seems like most people are just being as extreme as possible because they know it’s a scale of averages.
