Tag: Game Reviews

Starfield and the prospects for 2025 and Steam

Starfield and Steam have an uneasy relationship to say the least when one looks at the reviews. When I bought the game, the Space RPG was sitting at Mostly Positive. After people began attacking the game because YouTube’s algorithm was boosting such negative videos, the rating went to Mixed. People often call it a mixed bag and there are many reasons for such a change in the ratings that I have already talked about on here. Generally, the negative reviews are understandable however many of such criticism can be stated about Skyrim or any Ubisoft game. However, the blandness of Starfield which many people talk about is more of a product of Bethesda’s emphasis on realism. However, I strain to see how one can call it bland when one can go to Neon, which has a clear visual style in comparison to New Atlantis. These criticisms stem from a culture of stagnation in video games that are more interested in rehashing visual styles of old games on the NES and SNES then in accepting that nothing everything is going to made in that style.

Steam players are truly passionate in way that most people in Modern Western culture are not. However, they can be quite myopic with how they review games. Reviewing a game on Steam sometimes gets tied up in one’s political ideology. Another is that many people are in a nostalgic mode which I have often tried my best to avoid. I enjoy respecting the past, but video games are inherently not a media that lends itself to a style of art that stagnates.

In 2025, I hope that the developers of Starfield and the Modding community continue to improve the game. They should take what they see on Steam into account, but they have to remember that this is only slice of gamers. There are many players of Starfield who were Xbox gamers and some who also use Xbox Game Pass. Steam gamers are truly passionate about games but they can also be elitist and try to be myopic about game styles

What we see in Starfield’s reception is an industry in stagnation.

When the gaming industry was in the sixth generation with the rise of the Playstation 1, Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. The games were changing quickly in the graphics. The SNES glory days of 1992 and 1993 had been transformed into the 3 dimensions of palaces and creatures in Mario 64. One can see a clear change in graphics in modern games from the early 1990s to the late 1990s. Even the early 3D games of 1992 were charming but crude by the late 1990s.

MechWarrior 2 by Activision was released in July 1995 and was a stunning game but one looks at MechWarrior 3 and MechWarrior 4, it looks as if thousands of years have past in development of gaming graphics. MechWarrior 2 was also more advanced than the original MechWarrior game of the late 1980s. However, the change between 2 and 4 is huge.

When one looks at older RTS games such as Dune 2 and then looks at Science Fiction RTS games such as Starcraft and then the Star Trek Armada games, the difference is striking. While Star Trek Armada II looks uglier than the original, a product of cutting corners to allow players on their 2001 Computers to support having hundreds of ships on the screen, the graphic fidelity is a huge canyon. While Dune 2 was a monumental game in the creation of the RTS genre, rather being more of an experimental game such as the Atari 2600 Game, Utopia, it was still a crude game that isn’t easy to replay in the current age. However, by the creation of Starcraft, RTS games had become more formalized in their designs and now one can see the current way in which RTS games appear to the player. In my view, RTS games have largely looked the same since even the time of Blizzard’s classic Warcraft I, when the company was more interested in breaking boundaries and not just relying on the IP in order to make money and sucking its creativity out of people working at the studio and ruining their own company’s visions.

People are used to what they have been seeing for the past 15 years. When it also comes to the transformative Sixth generation of consoles, many gamers grew up in that time and have fond memories about it. These people have grown up and are now writing the articles in magazines and the sites have a bias towards those games. There were many other games released in the 1990s; many such games were not that great; however some were trailblazers in new genres. Instead we are stuck on the old games and styles that were once innovative but are now preventing the industry from being able to embrace creativity or even revive old franchises that should have been given another look instead of being abandoned by the companies.

Thankfully, Starfield was made and we have the foundation to continue improving it. I hope that 2025 has many successes for Starfield and the modders who are making it more interesting and unique in its styles.

Starfield is too big complaints

Big is necessary for change in the Video Industry, Starfield leads the way in that change.

 It has been a very common complaint amongst Starfield players that the game is too big. This is one of the points against Starfield that I just cannot understand. The game was always meant to be large in scope and I find the complaints to be rather petty and lacking in substance. Starfield is a game that was made in the spirit of space trading games of the 1980s such as Elite Dangerous and Space Control but on much grander scale and with 3d visualizations of the planets. People who have played those games would understand what Starfield was doing in comparison with other games such as Skyrim. Unfortunately, because Skyrim sold so many copies, Starfield is literally in the shadow of that great game. 

This shadow on Starfield is to its deteriment. There are too many people who just seperate Skyrim from Starfield and instead conflate the concepts of such games together. 

Those two games were particularly very popular in the 1980s and 1990s but have since been submerged by titles such as the GTA series and the later Elder Scrolls games. Because of their obscurity, people do not really seem to understand what Starfield is really about. They just think that is a continuation of Skyrim even though that is not entirely the case.

Starfield harkens back to the Space Race

Starfield has an appearance that looks similar to Skyrim but it is really harkening back to those older space trading games. The second generation of video games often had many space games, generally made by the Japanese, such as Space Invaders and many others. Space in video games would be an incredibly important topic because video games grew up in the glow of the Apollo Moon landings and the construction of space stations by America and the Soviet Union. Many of those in the nascent industry were big fans of space even if they did not spend any time working in the actual machine that made the moon landings actually happen. Starfield is really more of a game for Gen X’s than the millennials. It harkens back to the afterglow of the years after Apollo missions. 

Starfield isn’t a game that wallows in cynicism.

Starfield has often been compared to Mass Effect and how they differ in the content. I think that people’s reaction to Mass Effect being better than Starfield have to remember that Mass Effect was never particularly a very consistent story. Many players who are criticizing Starfield for being outdated and being too big should understand that Starfield was meant to be an ambitious game. It was not meant to be reliant on old ways of showing space exploration.

Starfield is about compromise and innovation in games

There are not many games that do what Starfield does. While players can complain about Starfield and say that its realism is what messed up the game, I think that it adds to the game’s character. It makes it different from other games. While it may not be the most innovative game ever made, it is getting difficult to truly make an innovative game these days anyway. Bethesda’s structure with its game is reaching an apex with Starfield. However, I believe that Bethesda still has much that it can improve upon this model that it has. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games have been in state of change since Bethesda has been making them. Starfield is essentially an attempt to combine Elder Scrolls and Fallout together into one package.

The size of Starfield is to be expected from a developer such as Bethesda. They have been making such huge games for many years and they won’t be stopping making those games. The planets in the game are all varied and have a variety of biomes. They could have easily made the game into what we saw with Star Wars, where most of the planets have only one biome. However, the game provides a variety of environments that will help to help to keep the game fresh and interesting.

The main issue with Starfield at the moment is that the planets are either too big or do not have enough content. I think that because this game is so big that players often lose a sense of perspective with such games. I think that Bethesda was aware that this would be case but I think that they understand that criticism is going to happen with these games. They made Arena and Daggerfall so many years ago and Starfield is simply a new version of such a game.

Daggerfall in particular is a very similar game to Starfield in many ways. While the graphics in Starfield are immensely more complex in Starfield, there is a significant connection between these two games. It is the scale. I believe that the scale in Daggerfall was pushing the limits of computer technology in 1996. Starfield is doing the same thing as Daggerfall was in 1996 and I think that over time that the game will gain more respect as time goes on. 

I am confident that Bethesda will continue to improve the game and keep the haters at bay and give us something incredible and interesting to play on our computers. I hope that the developers are able to achieve this.

Starfield Shattered Space Releases and getting back into the game.

Screenshot of the capital of the United Colonies, New Atlantis, on the planet Jemison.
A screenshot of New Atlantis, taken on the outskirts of the city.

The expansion for Starfield has just been put out into the gaming wilds and it is great to see Bethesda is still on trying to make this game great. While Starfield has suffered issues of reception among gamers, there is a base of gamers who still support the game and enjoy it. While many point to Baldur’s Gate 3 as a masterpiece and that Starfield was essentially a sign of Bethesda’s inability to innovate, these two games are not the same. Baldur’s Gate 3 was the sequel for a game that game came out 23 years before. Starfield on the other hand was a new IP and was creating its own style, Nasapunk and wasn’t trying to ride on the branding of another game. This isn’t to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been an inspirational game, but it is game that is really emphasizing its earlier aspects rather than creating something new. Starfield is attempting to be a foundation in the next Elder Scrolls game and I think it has many great ideas within.

Starfield: Shattered Space will greatly enhance the game and I believe that the story within Starfield still has much more to offer to players. I have started playing the game again and it looks like visiting House Varun’s planet is going to be a treat.