Recent reviews by Core

I would heartily recommend this game to any Star Trek fan. I have some criticisms, but they're outweighed by the things I enjoyed about this game.

I very much enjoyed the story. It's not perfect, it's not groundbreaking, and it's got some pretty overused tropes and sections that feel a little less-than incredibly written, but that's okay. It's my honest opinion that compared to a lot of other Star Trek media that's out there today, this is a far cry above. (Looking at you, most new Star Trek TV/streaming series.) The story feels very true to the Star Trek format, and is clearly crafted with care and respect for the source material, even if it has its flaws. I'd put it at least on par with some of the movies: Not as good as the best, not nearly as bad as the worst.

The characters aren't anything to write home about, but I did find myself forming emotional attachments to some of them, and having my own list of favorites. Obviously the two characters you spend your time playing as are less defined, as you make their choices for them, but I still found myself liking both quite a bit. Especially Carter. The call back to some of the canon characters is well done, too. Spock and Riker both seem to be good portrayals of the characters, and another minor TNG character that shows up (I won't spoil it, if you don't already know who) quickly became one of my favorites.

The game is pretty decent in looks, if you couldn't guess from the screenshots. Animations are a little stiff at times, and sometimes it can be a bit immersion breaking, but the overall fidelity of the models and textures at least keeps it looking like Star Trek. Facial expressions aren't hard to read, and even without the tool-tip or menu that shows character's favor, I felt like there was pretty decent visual language to show how other characters feel about your decisions. Moreso, I think they nailed the Star Trek visual motif, at least better than some other games do.

The few complaints I have lie in some of the gameplay mechanics that certain parts of the game have. For example, any of the combat sections. The game is not meant to be a shooter by any means, and it's understandable that their focus was on storytelling, but I found the combat sections to be borderline insufferable. The controls don't lend themselves well to it, and the balancing of these areas is often frustrating and seems not too well thought out. That said, I feel the game would have suffered without the Star Trek-style of action they attempted to include, so if you're anything like me and looking for the story foremost: Fail first, then retry in Story Mode, without consequences. It's better.

There's also a bit of difficulty at times with the variability in mouse sensitivity (I don't know about controllers, if they face the same issues.) Understandably, they vary your mouse sensitivity as you go through certain quicktime events and mini-game-esque segments of the game, but at times it feels wildly too much or too little. There were times where I found myself dragging my mouse off of my mousepad and far across my desk just to do certain quicktime events, which wasn't a dealbreaker, but left some discomfort during longer play sessions.

Edit: One thing that I feel I should add after reading some of the other reviews posted, is that I do have one criticism with the characters: A good number of them don't fit Starfleet very well. I found myself wondering how some of them got to the ranks they're at, or how they even got through the Academy. So many of them have this cruel or petty streak and they don't align with the ideals you see Starfleet to uphold, at least during the classic TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9) and I found that a good number of them threw little baby tantrums if I did anything to slight them. Not all of the characters, but mostly the bridge crew, it seemed.

If I had to give it a rating out of 10, I'd say maybe a high 7 or a low 8, but understand that comes from a place as a fan who has felt pretty let down by a lot of modern Star Trek media, and understand that you're not getting a third-person shooter or anything of the sort. If you've played any of the old TaleTell games, you should have a good idea what this will be like.

I wish I could say that Starfield was a good game, but I can't. I also can't say it's a terrible game. Something I can say without a second thought is that it wasn't worth $70 at the time of launch, and at the time of writing this, it still isn't worth $70. If you want to play, definitely get it on sale, though I would (generously) say it's worth $30 at most.

Full disclosure, I have barely touched the main story, as I wasn't particularly enthralled by its intro or the very fast, haphazard way your character is thrust into it. It feels forced and very rushed, which I immediately contrasted to Skyrim's intro. Yes, Skyrim's intro thrust you into the game, too, but it did it in a very natural and charming way. Starfield's intro just feels sloppily written.

The planets are boring. I'm not going to complain that many of them look identical to one another, because frankly that's what I would expect from a game set in space with exploration as a theme with a realistic visual style. There's a lot of barren rocks out there. What I do think makes them boring is walking everywhere. As somebody who tends to play Skyrim while avoiding the use of fast-travel, walking shouldn't bother me, but on a barren rock where the only points of interest are literal kilometers apart, it does. Not having a surface vehicle at the time of launch is one of the biggest mistakes the game suffers from.

When you finally arrive at one of the few points of interest on a planet, you'll soon get used to seeing the same five buildings over and over and over and over and over again. The content outside of the main story is pathetically cookie-cutter and devoid of nearly any hand-crafted detail, or at least it feels that way. Suppose this is their idea of 'procedural' content? There are essentially no unique or distinctly interesting locations to simply explore and find... in a game marketed as having exploration as a central theme.

Revisiting the problem of walking everywhere and not having any sort of surface vehicle, the fact that you can not fly your ship over the surface, or decide on your landing spot, contribute to the problem. It seems like a very weird choice to not allow that sort of thing, but I think the explanation for this lies in a different issue:

The umpteenth iteration of the Creation Engine (or whatever it was called back in the day when used for Morrowind.) Don't get me wrong, the engine has a lot of charm, and worked very well for Morrowind, and Oblivion, and even Skyrim. It was alright-enough for Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. It's been showing it's age for a while, though, and no matter how much they polish and upgrade it, it seems like the wrong choice for a game like this. BGS needs to learn when to not try to shoe-horn a game into an engine that isn't designed for that type of game.

The Creation Engine feels unsuited for a game that aims to provide open-world exploration in space. Loading screens between every planet doesn't sound too terrible, but between each time you board/disembark your ship while landed on a planet, between each time you fly between planets in a star system, between each star system, between every, single, building on every planet, starts to destroy the immersion and make you very, very aware that you are playing a game built on a propped-up, refurbished version of the engine that Morrowind ran on.

I seem to remember Bethesda talking a lot about the "procedural" generation in this game, or the new tech that gets brought to world generation with this game, but it honestly feels like buzzwords for the sake of buzzwords. The few examples that I can see/detect in the game that are "procedural" are the bare-minimum examples of it. Choosing where on this barren rock to place a given crater or any one of the same five buildings is about as "procedural" as it gets. It feels like RNG that they repackaged as "procedural" and it really, really feels like they leaned on this "tech" to minimize work put into the game, and maximize size that they could charge for.

It's a space exploration RPG that has very little to explore, very little to discover beyond the same rinse-and-repeat, and a nearly pathetic attempt at making an expansive "space" environment. The only thing they did right about making it feel like space is making so many planets empty, and forcing you to endure the emptiness for hours on end between a few gunfights on the same five backdrops.

There's more I can go on about that I think Starfield fails at, but I feel I need to address some of the things that I do actually like about the game...

I absolutely love the character creation. Not the skill trees or leveling, but the cosmetic character creation. I feel like there's plenty of options, things that can be tweaked, freedom in designing your character's look... And all of this in a system that, to me, feels far less clunky and irritating than Fallout 4's character creation.

I do rather enjoy the gunplay. As samey as some guns feel, as ammo starved as you may be at time, as little sense from a technical standpoint as some of the guns make, I enjoy blastin' bad guys in space. It's simple, and to me feels a bit better than the combat in Fallout 4. It feels more tailored to an actual FPS and a bit more polished than the past BGS Fallout games.

The ship customization is pretty interesting, and gives you some cool ways to personalize your ship. It does have a few frustrating limitations, but it's far more than I'd expect from a lot of these sorts of games, and a welcome addition.

The ultimate take-away that this game left me with wasn't just that it wasn't a very well-designed game. It feels like Bethesda put the absolute bare minimum into this game, and slapped a $70 price tag on it. It feels like they took short-cuts everywhere they could, and after so many years in development, feels akin to finally getting your pizza order, but there's no cheese on the pizza, and 6 of the 8 slices are missing.

The absolute worst part of the entire thing, though, and the most dire thing for me personally, is how much this game makes me worry about The Elder Scrolls 6 when it finally sees the light of day. The trends of BGS game development, and the results of so many years put into this supposed new tech and their first new franchise in years does very much to convince me that TES 6 is going to be more of the same, which is soul crushing to me.

Should you play Starfield? Hard for me to say, but I can't honestly recommend it. That said, I know a few people who have enjoyed it far more than I, so you do you, boo-boo.

Should you pay $70 for it? Absolutely, positively not.

One of the best science fiction thrillers out there, and it's as old as can be. Don't let the dated engine scare you, this is one of the most influential and best sci-fi multi-genre games out there. In-depth RPG character progression, deep, involving storyline and thrills and chills galore. Get System Shock 2 today! There'd probably have been no Bioshock series, if not for this game. DO IT! DO IT NAHW!

The game that, in my opinion, is the best in the Elder Scrolls series for story. If you don't have patience for an older first person RPG system, you should play this and learn the patience! This is the game that single-handedly defined what sort of gamer I am. For the most classic, best open-world RPG... or if you're just new to the Elder Scrolls franchise, look no further than Morrowind. Sheesh, I love this game! DAT STORY!

Ever played any of the old Civ games? If you did and you liked them, get this one! It's the best one I've played since the classic Civ II. By far one of my most worthwhile purchases.

If you like first person RPGs, or RPGs in general, get this. If you like the other Elder Scrolls games, get this. Even if you didn't, get this. I guess what I'm saying is get this game. Now. Do it.