Recent reviews by Safe Muffins

This DLC is essentially just another rehash of previous Bethesda games. It's a big faction quest, composed on what amount to fetch quests. It's actually lazy and pathetic, even for this Bethesda fan.

Shattered Space so far is just recycled content from Fallout 3 and 4. You don't have wait long to get your first example either. Let's discuss the first real quest for this DLC. You land on the planet for House Varuun, and then...you don't get any actual choices. To continue, you HAVE to join the faction. This involved a short little quest.

The quest is one you've played before, if you're into Bethesda games.

Walking with Spirits (Fallout 3, Point Lookout)
Visions in the Fog (Fallout 4, Far Harbor)
The Promised, Broken. (Starfield, Shattered Space)

All three of these quests are basically the same: In all of these quests you go down a path, have a vision of sorts, complete a ridiculous religious ritual, and poof. Done. Everyone trusts you now.

It's just reskinned and repackaged. Emil Pagliarulo has like, 3 story ideas; and as we can see in this latest installment he has no intention of deviating or you know, trying something, anything new. He has no intention of adding complexity, or nuance. Or any real user choice.

Do NOT buy this DLC at full price. Wait for it to get a deep discount. Sure, you might have to wait a year or so...but trust me, you're not missing much, if anything. If you want a good faction quest from Bethesda, play Fallout 3's Point Lookout.

Why this DLC took a year to complete, I know not. But if this is all they have to show after a year of work...I have to say it does not bode well for the future.

It's a good fun casual pick up/put down Pac Man game. Great for blowing 10 or 15 minutes, especially on a Steam Deck.

Okay. I've been waiting for this for awhile. It looked like a lot of fun in the trailers and previews.

Sadly, I have to agree with others...the game's a bit of a letdown.

* Controls are very loose and sloppy, and your squirrel can be hard to control. Now, I get it, it's part platformer, and thus needs some muscle memory. But this goes beyond that. The controls are just bad, they are so imprecise and when you add how the camera works makes things really frustrating at times. There were times where the camera really works against you to the point where it kind of 'punches the player'. This makes me wonder how much, if any independent play testing the developer did.

* The target reticle is so faint...at first I didn't realize it had one. Again, this makes me wonder if this game was really play tested.

* The on-boarding/tutorial is pretty awful. I didn't even realize you could charge a throw and see the throwing arc till I found a video to see what I was doing wrong on the first level.

* The save system is pretty terrible. The checkpoints seem arbitrary, and if you quit, prepare to lose progress.

There's a serious lack of options when it comes to controls. For instance, you cannot remap keys, etc.

In summation, I think this could wind up being a really good game at some point. But right now, it's not there. My advice is: wait a year, and see how things come along. Right now, even at 10% off, it's not worth the frustration.

I've had accounts on Puzzle Pirates from nearly the beginning of the game. Thought i'd check in, see how the game is.

I tried to login, only to find that at some point the current management mass locked accounts, you need to do a support ticket to unlock your account, and the rate of response is in weeks. Honestly wish the game would just die, as it seems to be poorly supported by the 'staff'....Danny James must look at what this has become and just...sigh.

Saddens me to see how far the ringers have fallen. Uninstalled the game, probably won't ever return.

Once upon a time, D2 was a pretty cool game.

Then, Bungie decided to bore the heck out of me with a new seasonal currency every season. Recycling what was the same grind every season, with shallow story, that really wasn't worth the grind to see. I got off that treadmill. Now, I log in every so often, maybe once every six to 12 months.

I do not expect it to get any better under Sony. It's sad to see Bungie fall into such disrepair.

Review Addendum. 10/3/2024.

The new vehicle? Great. The fixes? Wonderful. I actually started enjoying playing the game, especially as now you can mod away most of the pain points that still remained. I'll probably continue playing it for a bit, however...they released Shattered Space. You'd think after a whole year...it would be something amazing, special, and awesome. But then, I remembered...we're dealing with Bethesda.

Let me be blunt: Shattered Space is a joke and an unfunny one at that. It's just a glorified faction quest we've already played in Fallout 3 and 4. There's nothing special or revealing. Andreja is barely worth taking. She's just a mannequin most of the time. The opening quest when you get to House Varuun's planet is just recycled from Fallout. To wit:

Walking with Spirits (Fallout 3, Point Lookout)
Visions in the Fog (Fallout 4, Far Harbor)
The Promised, Broken. (Starfield, Shattered Space)

All three of these are pretty much the same quest. In all of these quests you go down a path, have a vision of sorts, complete a ridiculous religious ritual, and poof. Done. Everyone trusts you now.

There's a word for this: Lazy.
There's another word for it: Pathetic.

This DLC is insulting to people who actually have loved Bethesda games. I count myself among them, and I have to say...do not pay for this DLC. Wait for it to be steeply discounted. It's garbage. I got it with my game purchase. This DLC is not worth $30.

Emil Pagliarulo is seriously a one trick pony, who only has 3 story ideas and he keeps reusing them over and over. He has nothing original... he needs to go. His writing, and the writing for this game in general is terrible. There's no real choice, no real nuance. It's all on rails, when you get down to it. Sanitized rails. Squeaky Clean. It's boring and trite. There's no ethical or moral quandaries to make you think. It's all washed out trash.

----Original Review Follows----

It's a Bethesda game. They make these for people who enjoy playing Bethesda games. If you don't like Bethesda games, then Starfield is not for you, and you should move along. Oh, and if you have trouble with pronouns...then understand that there are more people laughing at you, than laughing with you.

That said: 200+ Hours in and I am no longer playing it. Why you ask? Well, simple.

Let's lay out the basic premise:


After playing this game for many hours, I can assure you...this game is....more empty than it should be, or has a right to be. I've been spending my time in Cyberpunk 2077 since Mod Organizer 2 now fully supports it. Starfield has been "on my shelf" and collecting dust ever since. I won't be returning to Starfield until the release of the Creation Kit.

Criticisms:

Let's hit the high water marks.

Inventory. In the last 15 years, Bethesda has not seen fit to do any work on their inventory system. In fact, Starfield's inventory takes several steps backward. It's honestly worse than Skyrim's Inventory system. You still need to carry everything on you if you want to craft in this game....and crafting benches don't pull from all of your containers. The lodge has all the work benches in the basement, but it won't pull from your storage in your room. They can and absolutely should be blasted on this continually. They've had something like 15 years to improve this. Maybe take some time from venerating Todd Howard, and tell him point blank: his direction of inventory control sucks, and he needs to get a clue.

TL;DR: prepare to use player.setav carryweight if you're like me and most folks who won't stand for Bethesda's failure to bring the inventory and carry system into the 21st century.

Other than that, the UI is a bit annoying, but there's already mods to fix it. Not entirely Bethesda's fault here, they have design a UI that works on PC and XBox. At least we can fix our issues. Yay mods.

Loading screens. Yeah, many of them are COMPLETELY optional. Learn how to land, take off, etc. Also, you'll find when you DO get a loading screen...if you've met the min spec and have an SSD, loading screens are short af. Running a WD Black M.2 SSD, when loading screens do happen, they're gone in a second or two.

Amount of content. It feels like there is a HUGE amount of content in this game. Now 200+ hours in, and ... I have to agree with others...this game, once you get past the MQ and some of the side stuff is wide as an ocean, and as deep as a puddle. I've been roaming and doing things, but the heart of the matter is...most of the 'universe' in Starfield is barren. This wouldn't be so bad, if we had vehicles to explore things with.

It's not that the game is completely empty, but you can tell there is a lot of untapped potential. The game could have been so much more than it is, and that makes the game a disappointment.

Sadly, Bethesda has been taking the constructive criticism of the game quite personally as of late. The collective Bethesda response has been "you're not playing the game right", which is hilarious when you consider how supportive they are of the modding community.

From Bethesda developer responses, to Todd getting irritated by people simply asking for vehicles to drive around...I am a little worried about Bethesda going forward. They always like to say they read everyone's feedback, and listen to the fans.

But as of late, they're not listening...they're being dismissive. It's sad to see.

Writing.

They're still employing Emil Pagliorulo. This should tell you everything necessary about why the writing is again fairly subpar. He's not very good, he only knows a couple of plot types and he cribs things pretty badly without spending the required creative time to make them his own. Wow, we destroyed earth developing jump drives. How very Cowboy Bebop of you Emil.

Character Customization. In the marketing video run ups, they made a big to do about how much more advanced character creation is.

It's really not. Honestly, Fallout 4 had a better system. The UI/UX for it is abysmal.

I originally gave this a thumbs up. I have since changed my view. It will now be a thumbs down. It may change again, time will tell. All this said, I do think the game has a future. But once again, it will require those of us in the modding community to fix this game, and, hopefully add a lot more content to it. Time will tell. It's clear the wind direction at Bethesda seems to be changing as of late. Not sure how this will help the game going forward. But we can hope.

For now, I recommend people pass on this game. Wait till Creation Kit drops, and Nexus starts getting better mod content.

This is excellent. Onboarding a new device has never ever been more fun.

Aperture Desk (Deck) Job is hilarious, a fun 15 minutes to play...and most of all, you get to revisit good old Cave Johnson.

Civ is a great diet program.

The more you play, the more you forget to eat.

So. Many. Hackers.

GTA Online is an example of poor pacing for solos learning the game, and poor moderation in the game. It's pretty clear that they spend next to no time moderating the online portion. The fact that the game is literally rife with random hackers, and griefers shows that Rockstar just wants the money. They don't care about the experience. Pretty sad. I'm pretty sure a 10 year old with an Amazon Fire Kids tablet could wreck an instance with one arm tied behind his back. Seriously. It's really bad.

But there are fun parts like racing, sticking up stores...even some of the jobs are nifty. I'll be happy to stick with them. I just wish Passive mode could be toggled on/off with a key....because it's also clear Rockstar spent little to no time on UX.

The fact you can't do anything that counts in a solo or invite only instance is another glaring design flaw.

The base GTA V is a standard variety GTA Game. Not much to tell. Rockstar needs to up their game. At least Lamar is less annoying in the base game than he is in Online.

Updated Review.

Some caveats: I'm going to simply add remarks to my original when appropriate.

I came back to this game after 2.01. It's still not the game they sold people on. But it is now, at least...fun to play as long as you have mods.

NPC's still aren't that interesting. Exploring is still kind of a pointless endeavor. Most doors you encounter are locked, NPC's do nothing, appear to have no real AI..some are scripted. That's it.

The story missions are good, but they're on rails. The promise of "actions change/dependent upon" is, IMO...a barely kept promise. This is still true of 2.01. In fact, in replaying some of the missions...I've noticed they've been reworked...and even nerfed in some ways....and not for the better.

The open world is a bit better, but still pretty soulless.

This game on release bears some similarity to No Man's Sky in terms of features it was sold on, and what was there on launch day. That is still somewhat the case here in 2023. While 2077 is now fun to play, it has not...I repeat...had NOT attained a "No Man's Sky" style redemption here. If anything, it feels like they did just enough, and maybe a slight bit more.

You have deep character customization...for a game where Third Person Perspective was cut. Fortunately, you can add some halfway okay 3rd person with a mod. But the quality is not great. The inventory system is still trash. The reworked perks/level system is pretty good though.

At least Fallout 4, even with it's flaws...was far more interesting on launch day than 2077 is. At least on those older Bethesda titles...you knew better content was coming with mods. While there is a decent mod community for 2077, it's been hampered by a half hearted effort by CDPR to support them in a truly meaningfull way. Despite that, there's a lot of good and even some great mods out there. Some of which fix some of the biggest problems in the game still in 2.01...like driving.

Is the game worth $60? No. Not by a long shot. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME AT RETAIL PRICE. Wait for a sale. Despite the fixes, and the fact it's better by some measures...it is still not worth $60. Even if they included the DLC...it still wouldn't be worth $60. Buy this game on sale.

In the end though, CDPR has joined the big time: they lied out of one side of their mouth, and market speak out of the other. Just like EA, Blizzard, Ubi, and the rest of them. Yay congrats.

While they've done just enough to make customers whole here, we shouldn't forget that they pitched one game, then delivered a nearly entirely different one. In 2023, the product is better, but they still screwed everyone.