Recent reviews by Dr. Dro ඞ

Now that I've completed my first playthrough of hopefully very many over the years, I'm going to give it to you straight: Starfield is easily amongst the best games I have ever played. I can spend sessions of 10 hours that feel like minutes, and I've even done a 17-hour all-nighter like I haven't in many years.

It's taken the side of NieR:Automata and NieR Replicant ver. 1.22 in my all-time hall of fame. This, folks, is art. It's not just a mindless video game you play to let off some steam (or idk rage harder) like Apex Legends, the only word that classifies Starfield, to me, is art. I've had fun with Fallout 4, and I've greatly enjoyed Fallout 76 (especially after the updates), but not even in the moments I had been most in love with Fallout or Elder Scrolls I have enjoyed myself as much as I have in my time in the Starfield. I had relatively low expectations for this game (new IP and all) and I must confess I'd have been the first to tell you they should just have made Fallout 5 instead, but it has blown me away, it is so much more than just Skyrim in space.

The homages to previous Bethesda games, such as the addition of the Adoring Fan, were amazing, and I hope that this is not the last we see of this IP. It has burrowed itself deep within my heart, and I await the expansions with great anticipation.

In fact, if I had to choose a song to be this game's hymn, it would not come from its excellent soundtrack, but from NieR Replicant's: Fleeting Words, "Outsider".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PfPnAXQ_oU

It starts simple enough, perhaps even going a little too fast; the classic formula that makes you go from a relative nobody to someone who is apparently crucial to the world's future (and in this case, the Settled Systems' future); but it developed in an astounding way, to the point that by the end, it gave me the feels in the same way that NieR:Automata did.

And I must say, Sarah Morgan is simply a gift to players that roleplay lawful good characters in these RPGs - especially if you tend to self-insert. Bethesda games have always rewarded players for taking a moral approach during gameplay, but this one was just... fantastic.

Most planets are semi-procedural, with an exploration range boundary of of around 6x6 km, which places them roughly at about the same size of Skyrim's map several times over, which is really enjoyable to see. Exploration is amazing, despite the claims of "loading screen simulator" and "pseudo open world", it does this quite well, the only missing opportunity was making marine planets explorable: but even that could be done in the future. Subnautica, in this game! Imagine that!

There are many things this game does not do right, but I've found that for everything that it does not do right, it does at least another 3 things right. Chiefly, my complaints are:

First is the the performance. It is abysmal even in high end PCs. System requirements are extremely high and the game performs exceptionaly poorly, Todd Howard's statements that the game was optimized for PC were just another of his sweet little lies...

The mod that replaces AMD's garbage FSR "tech" with DLSS works wonders and you should install that, particularly if you have a DLSS Frame Generation compatible 40 series GPU. It's let me play at a stable 144 fps with DLAA + Frame Generation at almost no perceptible loss to image quality, it really helps here. Starfield Frame Generation by LukeFZ, opt for the SFSE ASI loader method of installation:

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/761

However, the game is exceptionally stable, and I have encountered no crashes in the almost 120 hours I have played the game since the pre-launch for Premium Edition owners 12 days ago, including during the aforementioned extremely prolonged sessions. For a Bethesda game, this is unheard of, so there's the silver lining to it.

Second complaint would be, inventory management makes the mess that the Pip-Boy in Fallout 4 used to be feel tidy, but this can and will be resolved with mods in due time. The community is as dedicated as ever, and I'm hopeful that we'll end up seeing all sorts of mods, perhaps even new planets to explore in the Starfield.

Third complaint is, well, it's a Creation engine game. This is both good and bad. You know the jank from Skyrim and Fallout 4... the same jank is here. Lots less script bugs I must say, I only had one very minor issue even in this launch build compared to... entire bugged settlements and the quarry in the final release of Fallout 4, but that jank is still here.

The following are feedback in the unlikely event developers ever come across my little review:

Despite the extremely welcome and massively enjoyable advances in romancing mechanics (it really feels like a mini dating-sim embedded in the game now, for once it feels like it received attention and was a meaningful mechanic), I was found left wanting for more. It was just amazing, the writing is really good. Please add more of this when the DLC expansions come... and improve a little bit on the existing characters' avenues as well. I need more Sarah Morgan in my life.

The LUTs that they've chosen to implement are also quite questionable. I understand the vibe they were going for, but this came at the cost of ruining the amazing atmospherics this game could have had by default. They make the game feel heavily color-filtered at times, but the fine folks at the Nexus have already developed many mods that alter the feel of the atmosphere in the game. My choice and strong recommendation is for downloading the NaturaLUTs Enhanced version mod by TheDragonWithinMe:

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/1119

And pretty please... consider the marine planets mechanic? ;)

Played on:
Intel Core i9-13900KS Special Edition
MSI MEG Z690 ACE
32 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6800 CL30, hand-optimized
480 GB WD Green SN350 NVMe SSD dedicated to the game
ASUS ROG STRIX White OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
LG UltraGear 27GN65-R @ 1080p, 144 Hz
EVGA Nu Audio + Sony MDR-V7 monitors
Windows 11 Enterprise version 22H2

The good: It's classic ROTT, in HD! Every level of the original including all levels from expansions and site license CD are included. All the comforts of modern gaming with all the charm of DOS, into one neat package. Sound can be toggled between 1994 original in both OPL and MIDI (sounds like Roland Sound Canvas emulation), or Andrew Hulshult's excellent 2013 reboot soundtrack. Runs extremely smooth, supports high frame rates, etc. the cheat codes from the 1994 original like dipstick, chojin, goto etc. all work on this one as well, so you won't have to relearn anything to get that go at the vomitorium again. Also, Lorelei

The bad: I'm still a scrub at this game, I guess?

The unforgivable: They've removed the Will of Iron, Knees of Jell-O quote in the difficulty screen and replaced it with Knees of Gelatin. You screwed up!

9.5/10 and you don't get a perfect 10 for removing my Jell-O. Not cool. I bet El Oscuro paid you good money for this sabotage. Bahahahaha

I'm turning 30 years old in two days from the time I'm writing this review. I grew up with this game. I was a newborn and my mom had been playing this game on her Mega Drive while she held baby me in her arms. She's 60 now, and still mentions this game from time to time. Because I always come back for more, in fact, I have a setup with a CRT monitor to play the games I grew up with, this one included.

Having played the MD version of Twin Cobra for as long as I can call myself a person, through all ups and downs of life, with almost 3 decades experience, and being quite acquainted with the arcade version, the one thing I can tell you about this game is that it is so damn HARD! You'll be proud if you can make through the past first level on one credit, and I don't think I have ever gone through a full loop spending just one. It requires an insane amount of skill and precision to beat this game in one credit, and it gets progressively harder with each loop (enemy bullets become faster and faster).

There's an incredible amount of attention to detail, a frame with useful statistics for those on widescreen monitors, supports screen rotation, controller remapping, rewinding function (believe me, I think it's unplayable without it), has a sound test mode, looks great on a CRT... and even features a super smooth 60fps mode! The complaints that I heard about sound emulation must be in the past because it sounds pretty faithful and awesome to the arcade version. The only issue I found is that by using practice mode the music will always be the one from the first level (Break a Leg!), but if I recall correctly using the level select cheat (Up, Down, Right, Left, Start after the heli lands on the title screen on the MD version) also has this effect, at least until you die the first time.

200% recommended! but beware, this game is not for the faint of heart, it's extremely difficult even on "very easy"... the best 2.5 MB you will ever spend on your SSD.

If you like shmups, or an old school challenge... In fact, you know what, just buy it. It's an amazing game and a piece of arcade history.

Will of Iron, Knees of Jell-O™

This review doesn't account for the (relatively poor) technical state of the PC version of the game. It focuses solely on the content itself.

Mechanically, it is a decent, if not great game - with the extreme downside of being heavily censored and watered down to PG, with consideration for modern, woke audiences. For this reason, I don't recommend you buy this game at full price, especially if you have not watched the anime or read the manga before. Consider that you are not taking the entire experience home with you, due to the abject censorship this game is subject to.

Provided that you can purchase it on a heavy discount and on the condition that you already know the Dragon Ball story like the back of your hand, play it, though the censorship is prevalent and everywhere. I'm not kidding, I can't stress this enough: practically every scene which depicted anything that could be even moderately objectionable has been censored or removed entirely.

To be fair, this is a problem that Western dubs that were based on the American script had already accumulated over time due to oversensitive burger audiences, but it's tripled down in this game. If you are from a region which the anime was dubbed from the original Japanese edition or experienced it in the original Japanese, it's going to feel like the story has been robbed of its soul.

Obviously, contains spoilers, but here's a quick list of what's been cut in the main game:

https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_censorship_in_the_Dragon_Ball_series#Censorship_in_Kakarot

4/10 and 3 of those points are because it's Dragon Ball Z

Quite the amazing fan game. It's a competent fighter in its own right, the control scheme reminds me of old arcade fighters like SNES-era Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Easy to pick up, hard to master - won't judge the currently "broken" characters, it's a free game in its earliest stages.

Long shot as it may sound I think Cover Corp. should definitely sponsor the devs, officially license the characters and all, turn this into a proper game franchise. Huge potential.

Recommended to all fans of hololive and vtubers in general as well as anyone who fancies a competent fighting game.

ps. eagerly awaiting Ina and Sakamata

What if there was a place with all the zip of Nuka-Cola?
Wouldn't that be the cheer-cheer-cheeriest place in all the world!
Where the river's made of Quantum, and the mountaintops are fizz
With fun and games and rides for all the moms and pops and kids

Well it turns out there's a place with all the zip of Nuka-Cola!
Come on down to Nuka-World and see it for yourself!
Kiddie Kingdom's lots of fun for tots like you and me!
And Safari Adventure's full of animals to see!
Blast off to Galactic Zone for otherworldly thrills!
Down in Dry Rock Gulch there's cola up in them thar hills!
The World of Refreshment is the most wonderful place!
The friendly streets of Nuka-Town put a smile on your face!

Now you know there's a place that's just as great as Nuka-Cola!
Come on down to Nuka-World and see it for yourself!
A vacation that refreshes, a trip you won't forget!
A park with every minimum acceptable safety standard met!
Quench your thirst for adventure at Nuka-World!

nnngh get this out of my head

I preordered this game on Bethesda.net way back. You could not believe my hype the day Todd Howard went in front of everyone at E3 and announced this game, alongside a snippet of - to this day unreleased - Elder Scrolls 6. Naturally, fanatical as I was about it, I went all-in and bought the Tricentennial Edition, which included some (back then, exclusive) thematic weapon and power armor skins - which are still my favorite to this day.

But when it first launched... it was an unholy, desolate mess. Really, it was horrible. The servers used to lag something unreal (not that they're perfect nowadays, but you needed to see how bad it was to believe it), and the world was... dead. Empty. Lore reasons? Sure. But perhaps a gross overestimation of how social Fallout players are by the dev team, thinking that they could replace NPCs entirely by human interaction alone. That, of course, did not work. Still, I played through the initial story, hungry as ever for more Fallout, shortly after I had finished Fallout 4 for the first time - a game that really, really resonated with me, despite having its detractors. Then I dropped it and pretended the game didn't exist.

Fast forward a few years, and many debacles (such as Fallout 1st - it's premium membership that I don't mind paying for, but back when it released, the game was just not ready for something like it and it felt like a massive cash grab at the time), they released the Wastelanders update. That update was insane, it made a game out of a husk, and a good one at that. But it didn't stop there, no. Developers kept adding more and more content, and introduced the scoreboards, which are really something like season passes, which gives you some subquests to complete each day in exchange for a few points, but feel generally organic to the gameplay anyway.

I played through Wastelanders and left to play some other games, but in the meantime, it looks like I missed on some of the best updates this game ever got. I'm more or less catching up now, but in one month I have played more than I had played in all those years before.

Is it still buggy? Yes. Is it still clunky? Wouldn't be a Bethesda game if it wasn't. But the game has soul, and an amazing community. I wholeheartedly recommend playing through this nowadays, even if you will have quite a different experience from the initial one, especially now that there are NPCs everywhere. Still, it's good fun. You don't need Fallout 1st to complete it and play through the endgame, but its benefits will become crucial if you venture past the endgame and you find yourself a collector of weapons.

Inventory management is a reality, due to the 1200 unit limit at the stash. If you play this on and off, pay for a month, play through it and then cancel the subscription until you decide to return.

Not recommended. In essence: this demo was purpose built to run extremely poorly on RTX 30 series GPUs even at at 1080p, and DLSS 3.0 with frame generation is intentionally gated behind the 40 series in an attempt to upsell cards. The game runs so poorly that it is enough for me to consider the performance level completely inadequate on RTX 3090 hardware.

This is not hyperbole, they are asking an RTX 3080 with DLSS to target a 1080p 60 Hz display[i.imgur.com] and... the 3080 isn't actually fast enough to maintain 60 fps, because my GPU is not.

In my admittedly hot take, it is the perfect showcase of why NVIDIA is a trash company with the aspiration to become the next Apple and why we need competition in the GPU space. No one asked for the 30 series to be as fast as the 40 series, but we do ask to be treated with the respect that we deserve. We aren't morons, we know that both the 20 and 30 series have optical flow acceleration capabilities as well. Do not support these practices, vote with your wallet, I know I will. The 7900 XTX may not beat the 4090, but at least it's a reasonable product. Really, AMD may have its flaws, but actively sabotaging its previous generation products to upsell the newer ones is not one of them. And amongst said flaws, this is in my humble opinion, the least forgivable of them.

This isn't shilling AMD, it's just pointing out the obvious: this is mockery towards the company's existing customers. Gating features and making their big tech demo's run as horribly as possible on existing products is nothing but self-sabotage.

I actually have NVIDIA fans angry at me in the comments because I have the audacity to ask that my barely 2 year old, $1600 graphics card actually performs to a minimum standard targeting a resolution that the PS3 supported 17 years ago - 1080p 60 Hz - without resorting to aggressive DLSS. Next up they're going to blame my AMD 5950X processor... or that I have like too much RAM or something. Wow.


Work with me here, the more you buy, the more you save. That's right, the more GPUs you buy, the more money you will save. This is not a complicated talk! There are only two messages I want to deliver today; one of them is... the more you buy, the more you save, okay? There will be a quiz at the end. The more you buy the more you save, this front row's got it! Enable people to buy more GPUs and save more money...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDpDesU_0zo

"When your whole life flashes before your eyes, how much of it do you want to not have ray tracing?" - Avram Piltch, Editor-in-chief, Tom's Hardware[www.tomshardware.com]

RTX 4080 12GB RTX 4070 Ti for $900 haha, what a joke.

Bought a $1500+ GPU not two years ago? Upgrade already, your obsolete trash doesn't deserve continued feature support! No DLSS 3 for you! What are you, poor?

All-caps disclaimer: THIS CONTENT IS TO BE CONSIDERED IN EARLY ACCESS AND IS STILL UNDER HEAVY DEVELOPMENT AS PER RECENT DEVELOPER BLOG POSTS - DO NOT BUY IF YOU WANT A FINISHED PRODUCT! Read the Steam news blogs for this game to see what, when and why you are getting this.

Buy Far Territory now if you want the lowest price, can wait for the development (Hinterland takes time but they always deliver, you can take my word for it - I have been a TLD player since 2014 with over 2,300 hours on Steam) and want to support the studio's efforts. Otherwise, purchasing this DLC is currently not necessary to have a fully fleshed out experience in The Long Dark.