Recent reviews by Lady Cheerybelle

Starfield is really quite good in my opinion, and anyone who is interested should give it a go (if your PC meets the required specs (including the SSD)).
If you already haven't liked previous Bethesda Game Studios Maryland games, it probably won't change your mind, but... It's honestly solid. It's just sort of mid-tier in terms of BGS Maryland's games. I personally prefer it over Fallout 3 but prefer tES3-5 and Fallout 4 over it.
Just go into it with pretty blank expectations. (I, for one, didn't look at any marketing for the game.)

It's not like a No Man's Sky or any other such space game. It's like Fallout in space.
Talk to as many named NPCs as possible (even merchants and clerks); definitely do the UC Vanguard missions at a minimum (you're directed to the questline very early on); don't bother with a lot of exploring, harvesting, and scanning in the wilderness on planets or setting up outposts unless those are things you *really* enjoy doing; never rush new game plus, et cetera.

...Whether it's worth the money compared to other games is really your call, though. I don't regret my purchase, but you might want to wait for a sale. I've certainly gotten far less gameplay time out of it than something like Fallout 4 or Skyrim, so take that as you will.
It's nothing super innovative, but it's solid.

As for any bugginess, I personally didn't encounter any significant gameplay bugs in my entire first playthrough (some later, though), and they're steadily releasing fixes and requested features. I think most-if-not-all bugs breaking questlines that some have encountered have been fixed by now.

...Oh, and the choices available in quests often meet the level of such found in Fallout: New Vegas... which is to say that there are usually a decent number of paths/outcomes in different quests, but, once in a while, you'll wish there were even more options. Still great, though.

It's pretty meh, but it's difficult to pin down why I feel that way.
I have trouble being really compelled by the story, lore, and characters, despite reading item descriptions and exhausting each NPCs dialogue.
Many areas are oversized and/or under-developed, and most don't feel terribly original, so it's overall hard to grow attached to anywhere.
...but... Are all of those things really so bland compared to other games...?
I don't know. For some reason, the game just isn't clicking with me.
I've played other games that were particularly challenging or even similarly unforgiving of failure but still engaged me.
Maybe it's lack of variety in the combat?
I've played other games with relatively simple combat where that didn't bother me.
Maybe it's just all of the above combined that makes it feel so bland.
Uncompelling world, vapid environments, and uninteresting gameplay...
Overall, there just isn't much to keep me interested.

I hesitate to give it a negative review because I don't actively dislike it overall.
If you feel like a long and meaty challenge to sink your teeth into can carry an otherwise largely bland game, give it a shot. Maybe you'll find more appreciation in it than me.

In my case, though, as someone who tends to be mostly ambivalent toward challenge, little in this game really grabbed me... besides a couple of enemies which literally did grab me. Oh, and the massive-****-off crow; that one grabbed me a few times... and those lesser batwing demons after the... --Come to think of it, there was actually a decent 'handful' of things that grabbed me.

(At time of writing, I have beaten the main campaign and the advanced chambers, but I haven't done the challenges or completed every achievement.)
From a technical aspect, it performed fine after updating my GeForce driver and setting everything to the settings recommended for my 3060 Ti.
However, I got two crashes to desktop. One was during one of the chambers (Chamber 12, I think), and the other was during the cake cutscene when the camera is flying through the maintenance shafts. I had been quicksaving often, including during that last cutscene, so it wasn't a big issue, but perhaps it would behoove them to optimize those areas a bit better-- especially the cake cutscene sequence, as I hear crashing is common there.
Speaking of the ending cutscenes, the ASCII art during the credits was cropped strangely, cutting off parts of it quite noticeably. It's like the credits were cropped to a square shape aligned to the left side of the screen-- It's hard to explain; it's very weird.
I also experienced some issues with closed captions-- subtitles being wrong or, at one point, displaying a corrupted caption --but I imagine those were probably in vanilla Portal, so I won't hold it against Lightspeed.

EDIT: There is actually another problem.
Due to a specific value being set to 1 by default in the gamestate file within the portal_rtx folder, the Lab Rat achievement won't register on your Steam account unless you reset that value in the file manually and get the upgraded portal gun again.
I hope that Lightspeed fixes this at the very least for fresh installs.

As for the graphical changes... No strong opinions either way.
The orange glow opposite energy ball receptacles were left in check, which is good (I was worried that those wouldn't still be there).
The lighting made it a bit harder to suss out the way forward at points during the escape sequence, but it never got me totally stuck, and I wouldn't say it was a big enough issue to hamper my experience.

The biggest change from the original game would be the secret cube skins.
By finding hidden QR codes, you can get codes to unlock eight storage cube skins and four companion cube skins... or you could just get the list off Reddit or whatever.
It's a neat addition and certainly welcomed. Aesthetics are a matter of taste, so your mileage will vary. I personally quite liked the pillow companion cube; very nice.
To enter a code, Alt+X to open the Remix Menu, click on the Developer Settings Menu button, click on the About tab in the top right, scroll down to Secrets and click on it, and there should be a "Codeword" field to enter the code(s). Then, tick the box next to the unlocked skin you want.
The Secrets menu resets every time you restart the game, so keep the codes written down somewhere.
Oh, and there are a few 4090s around the place and some minute changes around the Rattmann dens.

Ultimately, Portal RTX (I refuse to call it Portal with RTX) is a tech demo mod and an advertisement.
Given how many issues other people have had with it, I don't know if I would call it a success in that front, but I didn't have that many issues, so... Do with that as you will.
I wouldn't call it "the definitive way to play Portal 1" or anything, but I don't regret my time with it, and I may actually play it again in the future. Or I might not. No strong opinions.

It functions, more or less, and it's still Portal 1 under the graphical changes, so... I guess it gets a rather tepid thumbs up rating.
If you think it looks neat, and you think you might have the specs for it, go for it; I guess.

It's very rare that I go out of my way to specifically purchase a video game soundtrack not as part of a bundle (It has happened maybe twice now in recent memory), but this is certainly a special case.
This is an outstanding soundtrack. I love it. I don't actively dislike a single one of the songs, and I sometimes find myself listening to the whole soundtrack on loop.
This is, verily, something special.

Awful heist simulator, great expansion pack.


...Oh, and P.S.: You can unlock a heli-backpack to fly around with, which is awesome.

1. The API devs are okay with removing hooks and breaking compatibility with their updates.
2. Mods are allowed to be closed source.

A modding API like that is not worth using.

Fairly priced and quite good.
It took a few days for me to get it somewhat working with my mods setup, but I like it.

I've never really had any conceptual issues with Creation Club content before, though, so I may be in the minority opinion.
A lot of people have soured to Bethesda over the years, so I can see that people wouldn't give this a chance.

I think quite a few people were assuming that this would be something that it just isn't, looking at other reviews.
This is a DLC pack, and AE on PC is like the difference between Oblivion GotY Deluxe and Oblivion GotY standard.
In buying this, you are paying for a bunch of new equipment items, some new dungeons, some new player homes, quite a number of, for the most part, rather simple quests, and some new mechanics.
If you were expecting something very fleshed out and super complex, that's not what this is.

I'm fairly-- but not completely --certain that any issues people are having with this are related to using script extender mods that haven't updated yet or from having too many unused plugins in their Data folder.
It's not even an issue with the DLC pack; it's a base-game thing. Script extender -reliant mods tend to break between updates.

Regardless, while it's a little rough around the edges and nothing too insane, I like it, and I personally don't feel ripped off.

What? Me? An apologist? No, never. *cough*
I just tend to be more lenient than most with things I really like.
...Okay, maybe a little bit of an apologist.
I stand by the statement that this is well-priced, though. There's a lot of pretty good content, here, and I've been quite enjoying it.
Maybe that's just my experience, though.