General Gaming thread

TeleMaster

This is a pretty hilarious review of Starfield. He says 50% good 50% shit.

stickyfiddle

I really enjoyed that

Grumpyrocker

It's not remotely a disaster. I'm about 30 hours in and it's one of the best things I've played for years. 

RaymondLin

Has anyone seen this?



It seems the game's engine has tracking of all the stars, planets and their orbits always running.  It took her 7hrs to fly into the planet.  It sounds unrealistic but I guess if one imagine going from the earth's orbit to the moon, that takes longer than 7hrs?  so perhaps not too unrealistic, except that you travel in a constant speed going to the moon and not with a rocket blasting and can speed up.

TeleMaster

RaymondLin said:

Has anyone seen this?



It seems the game's engine has tracking of all the stars, planets and their orbits always running.  It took her 7hrs to fly into the planet.  It sounds unrealistic but I guess if one imagine going from the earth's orbit to the moon, that takes longer than 7hrs?  so perhaps not too unrealistic, except that you travel in a constant speed going to the moon and not with a rocket blasting and can speed up.

Yea I read the Kotaku article. I guess you can sim it if you want to but good luck playing any of the game lol. 

TeleMaster

Grumpyrocker said:

It's not remotely a disaster. I'm about 30 hours in and it's one of the best things I've played for years. 

Well, it's a matter of opinion I guess. I am looking forward to playing it but if some of the issues raised in that video are glaring then I may end up agreeing with it. It doesn't look like a disaster but it does appear to be a marmite game because of peoples expectations of what they either assumed it was going to be, or what it was presented as. It's probably somewhere in between really.

I'm going into it with an open mind and I'm looking forward to sinking some hours into it tomorrow.

Sporky

Surely it can't be worse than The Outer Worlds... 

monquixote

Sporky said:

Surely it can't be worse than The Outer Worlds... 

Yeah, I found that to be a big disappointment.

I gave up after a few hours as it was really boring.

monquixote

TeleMaster said:

Grumpyrocker said:

It's not remotely a disaster. I'm about 30 hours in and it's one of the best things I've played for years. 

Well, it's a matter of opinion I guess. I am looking forward to playing it but if some of the issues raised in that video are glaring then I may end up agreeing with it. It doesn't look like a disaster but it does appear to be a marmite game because of peoples expectations of what they either assumed it was going to be, or what it was presented as. It's probably somewhere in between really.

I'm going into it with an open mind and I'm looking forward to sinking some hours into it tomorrow.

I wonder how much correlation there is between fans of No Man's Sky and people disappointed with Starfield.

Sporky

monquixote said:

Sporky said:

Surely it can't be worse than The Outer Worlds... 

Yeah, I found that to be a big disappointment.

I gave up after a few hours as it was really boring.

I finished it. I'm not sure why. 

stickyfiddle

monquixote said:

TeleMaster said:

Grumpyrocker said:

It's not remotely a disaster. I'm about 30 hours in and it's one of the best things I've played for years. 

Well, it's a matter of opinion I guess. I am looking forward to playing it but if some of the issues raised in that video are glaring then I may end up agreeing with it. It doesn't look like a disaster but it does appear to be a marmite game because of peoples expectations of what they either assumed it was going to be, or what it was presented as. It's probably somewhere in between really.

I'm going into it with an open mind and I'm looking forward to sinking some hours into it tomorrow.

I wonder how much correlation there is between fans of No Man's Sky and people disappointed with Starfield.

Haven't bought Starfield but I was there on day 1 for NMS which went swimmingly lol...

From everything I've read over the last few days it feels like there are two camps:

1. those who fast travel everywhere and just want to do stuff, and 
2. those who want to explore and get distracted and generally go "squirrel!" at regular intervals and the exploring is half the point of it. 

All of both sets of people had a high likelihood of loving both Fallout 3 and Skyrim. The latter will have loved Zelda BOTW and TOTK while the former didn't see their appeal. Mass Effect was probably more appealing to the former group but good enough in general (and without precedent) to make group 2 happy enough bearing in mind it came out 12 years ago. No Man's Sky had buttloads of 2 and very little 1, and they have increased the appeal for group 1 with every patch in the 7(?) years since 

Starfield looks to be nailed on for the first group, but utterly devoid of anything attractive to the second. Sadly I'm pretty sure I'm  centrally in the second group. 

Sporky

I admire your restraint. It'd be really easy to over-analyse something like this, but you stayed frosty. 

ThePrettyDamned

stickyfiddle said:

I'm definitely up for SH2. I never played the original and it's regarded as an all-time classic so I want to see what the fuss is about. But I will be doing so in the middle of the day with the lights on thankyouverymuch

I'm assuming it won't arrive this month as they'll want more fanfare around it, not to mention not to get lost in the immense rush of stuff releasing in October, but hopefully they'll do a good job 

Sh2 could have led the series into something a bit cooler - a series of stories linked only by the mysterious town. It's definitely the best game of the series, but I love 1 and 3 as well - it's just that sh didn't really need the story finishing... Sh2 as a concept was more interesting - unrelated stories around this mysterious town, rather than a cohesive story about the town. 

Very excited, but also, it's a game that doesn't need a remake - just preserving across different generations. 

Edit: I'll change my mind on this. I always flit between sh2 being my favourite and 1 and 3 being my fave. 

musteatbrain

I’m very much enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 since Saturday.

Have been playing 2 player Co-op. I was concerned how it would work on controller, but I have to say they have implemented it brilliantly. There’s a really diverse way you can approach each situation. 

Was slightly worried about going back to a turn based combat system after many years away, but it’s really good fun. Can’t fault anything so far and strongly recommend it. 

Sporky

I started Starfield.

It's much prettier than I expected. Thus far it's vastly better than The Outer Worlds. 

BigBearKris

I've played for few hrs today too - I'm liking it very much. Plenty to discover in terms of mechanics, proper melee and how intuitive I'll find travelling from one place to another in long run but it's very promising. 
After all the hrs spent with skyrim and fallout I do feel more or less at home.

TeleMaster

musteatbrain said:

I’m very much enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 since Saturday.

Have been playing 2 player Co-op. I was concerned how it would work on controller, but I have to say they have implemented it brilliantly. There’s a really diverse way you can approach each situation. 

Was slightly worried about going back to a turn based combat system after many years away, but it’s really good fun. Can’t fault anything so far and strongly recommend it. 

Yea I like it a lot too. I have a save with my mate and I have my own save. I'm only worried that I'll be a bit like, I've played this already, when I go to re do it on whatever save I'm behind the other on. 

TeleMaster

Sporky said:

I started Starfield.

It's much prettier than I expected. Thus far it's vastly better than The Outer Worlds. 

It is pretty. I do think it's a bit mad that you can shoot someone dead in a staff room and they don't blink an eye. 

RedRabbit

I'm about 4 hours into Starfield - split evenly between PC and Steam Deck.

The main thing...I'm enjoying it.  I wanted something similar to Fallout 4 and that's what I've got but with a move involved levelling system and better dialogue options.  The writing so far has been good.  Even the side mission NPCs have been well-written and voice-acted so far.

Performance on Steam Deck is okay but definitely needs some tweaking to get the best out of it.  Default settings have everything at low and uses the game's FSR.  The latter makes things a fuzzy mess and needs changing to the CAS upscaling and then using the Steam Decks FSR to get decent image quality.  You'll lose a couple of frames per second (i.e. 28fps vs 30fps) but it means it doesn't look like the screen has been smeared in grease.  You'll also want to be plugged into a decent power supply if you want to play for more than an hour.  I love my Steam Deck but I think this may be about its limit for AAA releases.

Loading screens are a complete non-issue for me on the PC (Ryzen 7, 3060ti, 16GB ram and game installed on m.2 drive) and only slightly annoying on Steam Deck (installed on microSD).  They are certainly more bearable than Fallout 4's loading screens which would often last minutes.

My only real complaint is that I don't seem to be able to leave Vasco at the ship yet!  I don't want a companion!  It's one thing The Outer Worlds got right - let me walk through companions, It may not be realistic but it's a lot less frustrating than being trapped in a room due to my companion stubbornly standing in the doorway.  Even Dogmeat got sent back to Sanctuary after he blocked one too many doorways.

TeleMaster

The first takeoff was disappointing, I'm not gonna lie.