Starfield is a game. The best thing you can say about it is that it could’ve been worse.

So, what's wrong with it?
1. They changed the core gameplay loop of a 'Bethesda-like' game; it's less focused on exploration and leans much more into a 'Loot>Stash>Repeat' cycle. I'm not sure if it's 'objectively' worse, but I do feel that I preferred the old formula (and I have around 1500 hours in Bethesda games combined).

2. The game feels directionless, lacking features that should be in the game, such as a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) to support the looting aspect of a Bethesda-like game. Seamless ship controls are missing to immerse the players in uninterrupted space exploration, and there's a need for land vehicles to ease the pain of on-ground segments of the game.
On the other hand, there are features that shouldn't be there, like Radiant quests such as 'Save a miner from a cave' or tasks like 'Bring me 5 pieces of alien meat from who knows where.' Additionally, having resources weight a fuckton in a game about crafting and creating space outposts. Also, it's problematic that you can't follow multiple quests simultaneously in a game with hundreds of quests.

3. There's an overemphasis on fast travel in a game that's supposed to be about “space exploration"

There's, of course, the usual Bethesda-related issues to contend with, such as:
• Poor quest design; the game still feels like a postman simulator, but this time you’re a postman on a universal scale
• Myriads of glitches ranging from T-posing NPCs and doors that softlock you in a corner to a galactic shitshow like spawning you a garden with carrots and celery and stuff ON A MOON WITH NO OXYGEN OR ATMOSHPERE.
• Inconsistent and uninspiring writing and tone throughout the game.
• Occasionally lackluster voice acting.
• Shitty game map.
• bad ai (I wanted to write this in lowercase, but I had to correct the auto-correct; it seems like Word's AI is somewhat better than what Bethesda has implemented, at the very least it reacts to your inputs).
• Frequent loading screens.
• Bad animations and outdated graphics with sys. requirements that put cyberpunk 2077 to shame. Like why am I CPU-bound in an empty open world location? What simulation is the game running? Underground cheese factory?
• The standard gamma settings are problematic; they make my eyes water. The game feels overly saturated with blinding colors (though this might be a personal preference).

This game tries to be EVERYTHING, but ultimately fails to do ANYTHING (perhaps a slight overstatement). It struggles to establish a unique identity. Starfield is a king of mediocrity, thought there are some light glitters in the darkness:
• The combat is decent-ish (Both ground and space)
• The hand-crafted locations are reasonably well-done, although they don't stand out significantly, especially given that Arkane Studios is a part of Bethesda (or ZeniMax, to be precise).
• Starship construction is very fun
• Some quests are good too. (Though I haven’t found many that were)
• I heard the main story was a-little-better-than-serviceable, but I haven’t finished it, and it would likely take me another 40 hours to do so, after which I will update the review.

If you wanted a good RPG\Game\simulator, you might want to consider these games instead:
• Ultimately if you want a good RPG in space – you better look at The Outer Worlds (Or the mass effect series if you’re into “that” kind of rpg experience…)
• But if you want a good RPG shooter with exploration – Cyberpunk’s DLC is like 10 days away. And if you haven’t played the original 2077 story – the treat’s right there, just waiting for you.
• If your interest lies in exploring unique and diverse worlds, No Man's Sky is worth picking up. Hello games shat their pants on release, but right now it’s a very decent game, it might even be amazing if you’re the right audience.
• If you're seeking a space simulator experience, consider trying out games like Eve Online, Elite: Dangerous, or even Star Citizen.

1. Bethesda is good at ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY, and it’s making interconnected, fluidly explorable open worlds. Bethesda is good at making Bethesda games, yeah. It’s like their ace card. Fallout 4 and Skyrim were “good” because their game systems were designed around the exploration-looting cycle.
However, in the case of Starfield, they opted to depart from their traditional pre-built open worlds. Instead, they put players in procedurally generated environments to 'enjoy.' While these environments are not terrible by any means, they are merely serviceable. They evoke the feeling of playing a “No man’s sky-like” rather than the Bethesda-style RPG.
What does it mean?
In previous Bethesda games, there was a distinctive cycle—let's call it the "exploration cycle." You'd embark on a quest and then journey on foot to your destination, organically stumbling upon various dungeons and encounters along the way. However, in Starfield, things take a different turn, in a way.
Basically, the exploration cycle on a surface of a planet goes like:
You land on a planet > Go to the point of interest on foot (You can’t have nice things like vehicles on creation engine, of course) > You loot the place > Repeat.

While that might actually sound like what Skyrim or Fallout does, it’s not. The emphasis on exploration is much duller now.
How so?
The are very few worthwhile quests that require you to explore planets (And I’m guessing that there are “very few”, since I haven’t seen any that were worthwhile, but I doubt there are none). Most decent quests allow you to land conveniently close to the required landmark, negating the need for true exploration.
There’s nothing to “explore” on a planet. Since the map is procedurally generated there are very few places of interest and they’re EXTREMLY repeatable (I’ve started getting samey POIs in the span of 5-10 hours of gameplay)
What's more, these locations are isolated by vast, empty stretches, forcing you to traverse marker-to-marker on your minimap, and the only thing you can do while walking is mine resources or scan enemies on the way there making the process tedious and unengaging.
POIs are boring in terms of combat encounters, and the quests that aren’t given upon the entrance to the system are bad and 99% of time are also procedurally generated. There’s no point in exploring planets. You won’t find anything there, unless you’re like me trying to feed your kleptomaniac tendencies with shitty loot.

2. The game features too many “Essential worker” style quests. It often feels like half to a third of the quests I’ve done were mail delivery. It’s not inherently bad and games do not require good quests to work. Sometimes games don’t need quests at all. If they’re not RPGs with quest-driven exploration that is…

So, how does a player feel when a game feeds them uncontrollable number of shitty quests that start just like the quests that are actually decent and sometimes good?
I dunno how everyone would feel but I feel disgusted!
Honestly, it's challenging to discern which quest is worth pursuing and which isn't, I just have to guess from what the Quest giver is telling me:

*• Is a quest like "I need you to collect 5 rare books; here's the location of the first volume" worth my time? Do I genuinely want to endure the hassle of starting the quest and then completing it, all while navigating through countless loading screens without the option to enable multiple quest markers simultaneously?
• Is “My courier has gone missing, help me find him” interesting?
• Or perhaps a quest titled "Go to the secret outpost" is merely another in a long line of radiant "retrieve a randomly generated rare item" quests instead of being genuinely captivating and unique?*

Mixing bad quests with the good ones is bad for your game. Period. If you want to add some radiant shit into your game – create a different tab for it. This way, players like me can engage in content that your writers put genuine effort into crafting, rather than being forced to make hasty decisions about quest worthiness based on the first few sentences. I'm not keen on spending my time slogging through an entire galaxy of repetitive radiant quests.
Besides that, very few quests actually reward players for completing them. Most times you’ll get a 100 xp and a few thousand credits on top.
This hints at the possibility that the game's designers may have prioritized the concept that "completion is not the goal; it's the loot you gather along the way." While this design philosophy might indeed be at play (although I can't say for certain), I personally find it exceptionally unengaging. It often feels like a monotonous cycle of moving from point A to point B, dispatching enemies, and enduring lackluster monologues. Starfield, unfortunately, doesn't incentivize non-combat activities sufficiently.

However, when the game does reward players, it can be excessively generous. Like you get a decent starship and 3 parts of legendary equipment for free at the end of a SINGLE mantis quest, or when you complete a faction, they give you one of the best starship money can buy + some benefits on top. That just makes your achievements pale in comparison.
These rewards can overshadow the sense of achievement gained from working hard to purchase a ship like the Shieldbreaker for 250,000 credits, rendering such accomplishments less satisfying in comparison.

3. Starfield focuses too heavily on fast travel, it can undermine the sense of exploration and adventure, especially in a space exploration game. However, in Starfield, it feels like there's barely a journey at all.
Reliance on fast travel makes players miss out on unique encounters, discoveries, and events that can occur during the journey between locations. And even beyond that – map feels small, despite there being 200 systems to explore YOU are always a few loadings away from any place on the map

4. Identity and direction
Game often feels like it’s in conflict with itself, game design decisions that seemingly contradict each other pop up left and right. While many of these contradictions might seem inconsequential due to their poor execution, the ones that do matter genuinely contribute to making the game less enjoyable than the sum of its individual components.

It could’ve been fallout 5: space edition if Bethesda stuck to their formula and made fewer, but hand-crafted planets for a decent “Bethesda RPG” experience.
It could've been better if they at least tried to improve the UI UX-wise.
It could've been better if they asked for help from affiliated studios (Arkane or ID software) to help in making combat, levels and stories for starfield.
It could've been better to dump creation engine if there are not enough competent people to make it just work(tm), like CDPR did with their proprietary engine. Anyone can see that creation engine is struggling in its current form, the game uses cube map reflections FFS
It should've been better, but I guess we cant have nice things...
It’s not a bad game, truly. It’s just not worth anyone’s time.

This game has probably the most impressive physics in video game history, but they couldn’t make a simple animation to pet the dog?

I had to put my 13 year old dog down (seriously) during my playthrough of this game, and all I wanted to do was pet the dog.

Please Nintendo. It would take some intern like an hour to program the animation. Please let me pet the dog.

In Memory of Tori
April 7th, 2010 - May 24th, 2023

Великолепный слешер шикарной серии. Очень комплексная, но невероятно веселая боевая система. Играть интересно за всех персонажей. Возможно чуть меньше за V, ибо он довольно неудобный в управлении. Нэро веселый в плане геймплея, но у него чуть меньше механик. Данте просто бомба! Такой веселой боевки больше нет ни у кого из троицы. Ну и как забыть Вергилия, чей мувсет адская имба! Может крошить орды демонов за секунды. Самый веселый в плане геймплея персонаж игры. С его добавлением в игру вдохнули вторую жизнь лично для меня. До этого играл в версию на PS4, но Special Edition выглядит и играется в разы приятнее. И добавление Вергилия делает эту версию априори лучше в разы! Очень советую к прохождению. Уверен что я еще не раз в нее вернусь, хотя бы ради удовольствия сыграть за Вергилия)

This really isn't a bad game. Not at all. In fact, I'd argue it's pretty fun. But there's a reason I don't often go for games like this and this was a stark reminder. Crash Team Rumble was fun for a few hours once I realized that it's all that the game is, I lost interest to keep playing. And that's probably just a 'me' problem. It's very rare that a multiplayer loop has keep me engaged for a long time (Halo being a notable exception). Even with the different playable characters and maps, it just kind of felt like I had seen most of what this game has to offer and I don't really think I'll go back to it.

But it's really not bad! If this is your thing I'm sure you'll have a great time. I just think other Crash games are much more re-playable and this one probably needs that the most.

I finally got around to this after the announcement that is leaving Playstation Plus shortly.

I think Stray is a good game that sticks out because of two elements; the purr-tagonist and the design of the world. It's genuinely fun to explore because the setting is so interesting. I think without this element then the catch of playing as a cute cat would get old really quick. I also think the game is at a very appropriate length for what it is.

I don't think it is completely engaging on a gameplay level but provides you with enough to stay invested from beginning to end and it is absolutely worth a play, especially if you have PS Plus.

Platinum trophy # 133
Platinum #9 of 2023

I'm not going to go on and on about why Final Fantasy IV is one of my favorite games of all time (2nd to be exact, see my note on my Top 100 Favorites Games List). This game means so much to me, and pixel remaster is a wonderful way for you to jump in. My recommendations for you, fix the font to classic (this should be done for all the titles) and set the soundtrack to original instead of arrangement (I'd recommend arrangement for 1-3 but please please experience this GOAT soundtrack in its original form). From there, just get lost in the story and the characters and the world and everything that comes with it. This game lived endlessly in my imagination when I was a kid. This showed me what video games can be.

Platinum trophy #132
Platinum #8 of 2023