Playtime: 75 Hours.

A bit of a let down for me honestly. There wasn't a single game coming out this year that had me more hyped then this one. My first RPG was Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion which is what got me into the genre, and I have loved Bethesda's games ever since then. Plus there my favorite dev team ever aside from Obsidian so I was keen to see what they would do with a new IP. I will prefice this by saying, that this is by no means is a bad game but it just fell short of my expectations, and because I love Bethesda Game Studios so much, I'm going to be giving them a lot of tough love in this review. I have a lot to say and this will be long one so strap in spacers!

Firstly lets talk performance as I know thats a big talking point about this game. I was worried going in to Starfield that my PC wouldn't be able to run it with a lack of Nvidia support (at release) and that I have a low to mid range PC. I have a Nvidia 1660 Super GPU, 32GB of Ram and 2TB SSD storage (I'm not very well versed in pc specs talk). I played it on gamepass and it ran pretty well for me. I constantly switched between medium and high settings and the framerate was solid. On high, my framerate was fine except when I was in cities like New Atlantis or Neon it would dip a little. I ended up just settling on medium since I'd take better performance over graphics any day. Load times were super fast too and I was impressed with the QOL improvments to reduce load times like being able to fast travel to a location straight from the quest log as an example.

The first major improvement is the leveling system in Starfield. On the service, it is basically the perks system from Fallout 4 but its much improved in that you have to complete challenges in each skill before you can advance to the next rank. The other big thing is your build is SO IMPORTANT in this game and you can't be a jack of all trades unless you dump hundreds of hours into this game which is a first in a while for Bethesda since Morrowind and Oblivion. They tend to love the power fantasy approach but in this game every skill point you invest matters and being locked out of things like jetpacks unless you have the skill was chefs kiss for me. You really have to have a build in mind going in and focus on specifc things. As an example I mostly focused on ballistic weapons in combat as trying to do that and energy weapons would have spread my skill points way too thin so I had to pick one style and stick with it. Another thing is, once you go past Lvl 30, things do slow down pretty significantly in terms of you level up so its important you get the basic necessity skills before then.

Roleplaying is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I do love that they went back to the dialogue system of Oblivion and Fallout 3, where the camera zooms in on an NPC and you have your list of dialogue options. I'm also grateful they didn't go with a voice protagonist (even though they apparently tried) as it makes your choices in dialogue so much deeper where as it was very limited in Fallout 4. You do get skill checks but this is an area I was really disappointed by. 99% of the time for me, picking skill check options doesn't do anything to change a quest or what an NPC thinks of you. It really just felt like an extra dialogue option for you to select and nothing beyond that. Only a few times did it actually effect a coversation in a meaningful way. You do get some choice and consequence but only a few had me really stop and think before choosing. In some ways its an improvement over past games and in others it feels very under developed.

Combat is good for the most part. The shooting is slightly improved from Fallout 4 but I never had an issue with it since I care more about the RPG experience. You do have a lot more verticality with the jet packs in combat which I liked. My only issue is some of the enemies can be real damage sponges and they just soak up bullets no matter what difficulty you play on. Stealth gameplay is absolutely atrocious as it seemed like no matter how many points I put into the skill, enemy placement just had them always spot or hear me and I was forced into combat. The most you can do is pick off a few enemies from afar with a sniper rifle but thats about it. A big step down from Fallout and Elder Scrolls for sure. Ship combat was the most interesting for me. In the beginning it sucks because you don't have any good skills, but as you get better ships and crew members who can boost your ships weapons and shields, its a lot of fun! You get a targeting system thats basically like VATS where you can target specific parts of enemy ships. Being able to take out a ships engines and then boarding it to then steal said ship was always satisfying for me!

Oh and theres also powers which basically act as this games version of shouts from Skyrim. There okay, but the process of getting them is super boring. In Skyrim you would be exploring a dungeon, fighting your way through draugurs and traps before finally getting to the shout as epic chanting played. But wait, you need a dragon soul, so go have an epic battle with one to absorb its soul and learn the words of the shout! In Starfield, you land on a planet, follow your scanner finding a bunch of boring anomalies, until you finally get to a temple. Awesome dungeon ahead? Nah, just go into a low gravity room and fly through some floating light bulbs so a ring in the center can spin fast enough for you to get a power. You do this exact same process EVERY. SINGLE. TIME!

Next exploration, which is the one key ingredient to any Bethesda game as they do open world so well and give you so many cool things to find. How is it in Starfield? It reminded me of two games, in that it's a worse version of both of them being Mass Effect 1 and Oblivion. Its ME1 in the sense that your exploring baren, uninteresting planets with a couple of locations to find. The difference is ME1 had vehicles to make it less tedious which this game SORELY needs. And its Oblivion in the sense that a lot of the dungeons are copy and pasted. The difference there is that: Oblivion came out in 2006, Bethesda was a lot smaller at the time and they had only one dev to make all the dungeons, and even then they felt more interesting to explore then this. They really needed to narrow the scope of this game way down. If they maybe did 200 planets instead of a 1000, I think it would have been better. Yes, there would still be procedural generation, but it would feel way less repetitive. The best way to explore is to simply follow the quests as they will lead you to the interesting locations. The cities like New Atlantis, Neon and Akila are cool to explore, but It doesn't make up for the rest of the lackluster exploration IMO.

Some more miscelanious stuff to talk about before companions and story. The music by Inon Zur is fantastic as he captures the wander in exploring the stars but also have some emotional tunes as well. Digipicking is a cool mini game and I like the concept but the issue is that the RNG can really screws you over, as there are times where they simply don't give you enough correct combinations to fit into the required slots. Also you can pick a master lock in this game and get nothing but random junk with no cool weapon or piece of armor guranteed to be inside. YAY! The persuasion mini game is okay, but it also seems very chance based and I honestly prefered the one in Oblivion as it was easier to get the hang of. I didn't do any outpost or ship building, since I hated doing it in Fallout 4, so I just ignored it. I do appreciate that Bethesda didn't force it on you like in Fallout 4 and that you can just play the game like a traditional RPG. Though whenever you buy a house (as opposed to building an outpost) theres no furniture inside and your forced to build and place everything inside yourself. I hated this and would have just prefered a simple buy furniture option like in older games.

Second last, lets talk companions. I was disappointed when I heard that you only have 4 full fledged companions in this game as that is just way too low for an RPG. I think 6 companions would have been the sweet spot and added a little more variety that this game really lacks in. The companions aren't bad but there not great either for me. Sarah Morgan is by far the most interesting with her back story and romance. Only issue is she's a bit of a girl scout with a very black and white view on the world. So if your doing a morally grey quest or making choices with more nuiance to them, SARAH DISLIKED THAT! Barret was by far the most charismatic as he's basically the Han Solo of your crew. I smiled and laughed the whole way through a lot of his quests. Andreja is basically the outsider of the group with a questionable past. I don't think she's a bad companion she's just not really that memorable for me. And Sam is just there. The only real interesting part about him was his daughter, Cora, who accompanies you whenever Sam's on your ship. There banter back and forth was very cute, though get ready to hear the same "buy me a book dad!" lines over and over again. "Over 200k lines of dialogue" my ass.

Finally the main story just fell completely flat for me. It had one really emotional moment for me half way through that presents a hard decision for you to make, which I was honestly shocked Bethesda went that far with it and I appreciate that they did. But beyond that its just really dull as you just collect artifact after artifact. And once the reveal came about the mystery around the artifacts I honestly just rolled my eyes and was like "Really? Were doing this now?!". Just really generic stuff man. The overall writing for the game I wouldn't say is bad, but its not great either. There were certain faction questlines that presented hard choices but I don't feel they went far enough with them. There's has just been so many great RPGs that have come out since Fallout 4 (I'm not counting Fallout 76) that have way better writing and this surface level storytelling Bethesda typically goes for just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Starfield doesn't have the worst Bethesda main story, as I thought it was better then Skyrim's, but its definitely far from the best.

I guess my final verdict is to try this on gamepass, see what you think and then decide whether or not you want buy it. I probably would have preordered it if I had the money to do so, but in hindsight I'm glad I went with the cheaper gamepass option instead though I will eventually get the game on Steam once its heavily discounted. On a postive note, leading up to Starfield's release I had grown pretty sour on Fallout 4 and its many problems, but after playing Starfield I downloaded Fallout 4 to replay it and I had a blast. It definitely made me appreciate Fallout 4 a lot more so there's that.

All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Bethesda Game Studios Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/bethesda-game-studios-ranked/

Fun little Demake of the original game! I remember seeing a video on YouTube (thats still up today) of a RE1 style Dead Space demake with fixed camera angles and the RE1 gameplay style and I just thought it looked so cool. This one is a little different though. Its basically part of the first chapter, in a retro graphical style. You still have the over the shoulder gameplay and it can be fun to see the Ishimura in PS1 era graphics. Beyond that though, theres not much else here. But its free so its fun to play if you have 30 minutes to kill.

Playtime: 11 Hours
Score: 8/10

A fantastic return to form for the series! I started this series pretty late last year with The Dark Descent, and I ending up really loving that game! It made me appreciate Frictional Games as a developer as they made a hide and seek horror game (which I normally hate) fun for me! The series has been in limbo for a while, as A Machine for Pigs had a good story but got reduced to a walking sim in terms of its gameplay. Rebirth tried to go back to Dark Descent's gameplay, but it failed at it imo with a bland story and setting. However, The Bunker not only brings the series back but also evolves it in many ways. So what did I think?

The first immediate change is the fact that you get guns and can actually defend yourself against the monster. Ammo is pretty limited, but it felt empowering to be able to fend off the monster if I ever got into a tight spot. The game plays a lot more like a mix of the classic Resident Evil games and Alien: Isolation, as you can explore this old WW1 bunker and you have limited inventory space which you can upgrade. They also include an item box but it has limited space so I only stored away key items if I didn't immediately need them. What I like most about the gameplay is just how many tools the game gives you to solve puzzles or access certain areas and there are multiple ways to approach situations. It just invites you to experiment and see what works which was cool.

A mechanic that reminded me of Darkwood, is where you need to fuel a generator in order to keep the lights on in the bunker. At first I hated this mechanic but I grew to appreciate it as it really made the atmosphere tense as the creature won't appear as frequently when the lights are on, but once they go off, all bets are off. The creature reacts to sound, and almost everything you do makes a hell of a racket thanks to the games excellent sound design, so it made exploring feel rewarding but also scary. Things like having to blow open a door to find a map and some supplies can feel good but at the same time daunting because you know the creature will be right on its way to eat you. The creature does lose its luster after a while and becomes a bit of a nuisance but when your in its lair and hiding in a cupboard and its right outside searching for you, it can be terrifying (speaking from experience).

Only thing I wasn't too hot on was the games story. While Frictional have made some great stories with games like Soma and tried with Rebirth (never going to like that game), here it goes back to the storytelling of Dark Descent, where a lot of it is told through notes. The notes are interesting to read and they fill in the blanks of what happened in this bunker before you arrived, but theres not much to the main plot. Its basically just your stuck in this bunker with a monster and your trying to get out. And even with the other games in the series, you had both compelling lore and an interesting main plot. This game fails a little in that department.

Overall though, I loved this game and it's a high recommend to anyone who loves Survival Horror games, especially the classic ones!

All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Frictional Games Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/frictional-games-ranked-/