Played 8 hours last night so this is a very early impression. I love clutter looters and didn’t expect much else from Bethesda’s Fallout/Scrolls main studio. The Bethesda crafted areas are excellent if you are looking for what I call a Fallout / Elder Scrolls clutter looter. Lots of stuff to loot, the FPS combat is much better than Fallout 4 or 76. Don’t expect a space sim like SC or NMS this is a Bethesda Fallout/Scrolls style game with a bunch of additional systems on top of it.
First person combat
I’ve played both SC and NMS. While exploring a station in Starfield I thought to myself… this is what SC should have been for their foot exploration. The derelict stations in NMS are rather static environments and never cared for them much. What surprised me about the Starfield AI is they will “flee” or “flank” by running past you at times. I’ve lost track of enemies at times because of this and have had to go hunting for them.
Ship travel
There is fast travel. If you are looking for a space flight sim this is not for you. I don’t have an issue with fast travel as I get no thrills from traveling in space 1:1. There is simulation and there is stupid… SC leans a bit too heavy into the latter. Don’t expect 1:1 space travel in Starfield, it isn’t made for that.
Ship combat
Again this is not a space flight sim. Most recently coming off Everspace 2 I do miss the strafing controls and pedal usage, but that game is star fighter like combat. Starfield does have a ship editor and seems to be more about load out than fighter style combat. Think a bit more like Expanse style combat. I don’t have much time in this area of the game so I can’t say a whole lot more about it.
Initial impression
I love Bethesda clutter looters and this one is in space. Going to eat up the Bethesda crafted clutter looter areas. The 1,000 worlds will likely function as a massive canvas for future mods.
It took me about 14 hours in to reveal a major game mechanic that Bethesda didn’t even mention. it’s wild how big this game is I did some goofing around and side stuff but not that much.
There are strafing controls, but I think you have to have at least one rank in Piloting the game calls it thrusters. Hold space to enable strafing controls (on controller it’s hold RB and then use the left stick to strafe up, down, left and right. I don’t know exactly how it works on M+KB.)
You should try Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. I think it's up to 4 players, but essentially you both walk around a 2D side perspective ship and can control the different weapons and power systems.
You both have to run from station to station to navigate a large area and fight and defend from enemies and accomplish tasks. It starts easy and gets actually quite hard despite the art style. Cooperation is vital.
I'd also recommend Cook Serve Delicious, either the second or third, both are great games for one or two players. You essentially run a kitchen on a day by day basis. You have a menu of items you must cook for customers that come in throughout the day. Cooking requires pressing combinations of buttons to add ingredients depending on the customer's special order for the item.
In between customer orders you have to handle cleaning tasks and there are rush hours throughout the day where tons of customers arrive. When it's going full tilt you're rapidly taking orders, putting food together, and sending out food, it's extremely fun and as challenging as you want it to be since you can choose what you want to have on the menu if you'd like.
I like that you're purely focused on making the food and accomplishing tasks unlike Overcooked where the challenge is more about getting the ingredients from place to place and having only two players makes it ultra difficult. CSD scales much better to the amount of players.
Isn’t combat just so boring? While none of the games you mentioned are familiar to me, story focused games are my main interest. My personal favorite is definitely The Wink and Kiss Part 2 for Neverwinter Nights. Its an adult romance damsel in distress bard’s tale in which there’s almost always a social solution. Whenever combat is apparently unavoidable even the nicest and most harmless character can prevail with the help of her friends! Still though, it is all based on the 3rd edition of DND, so don’t expect things to be easy!
If an old DND game doesn’t interest you, then perhaps consider The Sims 1. Its one of the best selling role-playing games of all time. The Sims is just so awesome it doesn’t even need combat to be creepy, scary, and hard! Right now that’s the game capturing all of my spare time.
There is also a really good visual-novel with enough different paths to cross over into similar territory: Cinders! Its a contemplative retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale which focuses on the player character’s own agency and freedom in an oppressive world. Perhaps its best described as being a game about the true meaning of freedom and independence.
Since you’ve already received many excellent suggestions in this thread by now you hopefully won’t mind these more unusual options. Have fun with which ever game you choose and good luck!
oh, great, so it’ll be even harder? fuck you, fire beads!
seriously, though, i’d buy it right now if i could. this game was one of my all-time favorites, and probably my favorite Myst game (i’ve played them all multiple times). But, holy shit, was it hard! possibly the most difficult of them all.
I didn’t understand it the first time I played it (I was quite young). But I loved the music, the environment, the aesthetics, the architecture.
If you like Myst, but found Firmament missed the mark (I feel like it was “follow the wire” and “look for hard to see thing” instead of myst puzzles of “information way before you need it”, or “puzzles way before you have information”), check out Quern: Undying Thought.
It nails the Myst experience, imo.
It’s like when Disney bought Star Wars. They homogenized it to make it more palatable and ended up making it dull and unappetizing. Neither franchise has a soul anymore. Just a formulaic plot with a set of waypoints in a dull 3 act format. Sprinkle in some in-humor, pedestrian jokes, and a special effects budget that would make the Pentagon blush and you have a recipe for dull tripe.
Okay, I’m really enjoying Deathloop now. At first I wasn’t super feeling it, but as it went on, it seems to have become kind of like “Dishonored, but if it didn’t take itself seriously at all”.
Part immersive sim, part detective/puzzle game, part rogue-lite.
Has a lot in common with the Sexy Brutale as well, which is interesting, but plays very differently.
Weapons are fun and I love the '60s spy-fi vibe, so I’m enjoying it.
I was initially expecting to see Wolverine released end of next year / early 2025, was not expecting it to be around end of 2026. I assume it’s easier to create Venom’s game based on the existing Spidey’s engine.
I wonder what exclusive game would Sony announce for next year’s holiday? Maybe Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima 2?
Probably unpopular opinion, but have you seen actual gameplays of GoT? I somehow got my expectations way too high regarding story and visuals, it seems, and then found it incredible meh. I ended up quitting it.
Interesting that you call out story and visuals, I’d say those are the two elements that actually do rise above standard fare. Not necessarily the graphical fidelity (it’s great, but not ground breaking), but the art and production design, use of colors, they’re all magnificently cohesive and create some really stunning environments. Story’s more subjective but the performances were commendable, the theme of honor and victory was consistent and tragic, pacing was nicely balanced.
It’s the actual gameplay that I’d say was…fine. Combat is tight and varied, but eventually repetitive, and the open world loop is exhaustingly uninventive.
Not too unpopular, actually. I’ve seen the usual complaints against it. I’ve avoided it enough to not have any spoilers but seen enough to know to know to not get my hopes too high. I’m just looking to scratch the itch that Sekiro left behind and it was very much the shinobi stuff that got me through that game rather than the souls-like elements so GoT seems to be the right fit.
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