Recent reviews by SolidNinja

Playing this game made me feel like I was hungover. Motion sickness galore. It's such a funny concept, but it's just a broken game.

Absolutely beautiful game on PC, and the insane level of detail in the world are incredible. Although Rockstar's mission design has been showing its age for over a decade now, this is pretty much the pinnacle of the R* formula, at least until GTA VI comes out. It's cliche, but the world feels "lived in," and when you set off to do something, you'll frequently be distracted by things that occur along the way, many of them happening organically, or in ways that at least feel as such.

Grand Theft Horse gets thrown around a lot, and on the surface, it's true. But RDR2 has a distinct atmosphere that sets it apart from the GTA series. Arthur Morgan is far and away the best protagonist in Rockstar history, and ranks highly among video game protagonists in general. He's a flawed anti-hero, and your play style and decision-making determines just how flawed he is.

If the setting appeals to you, and you like the Rockstar design philosophy, you'll like this. And I would venture to say that even if the setting doesn't initially appeal to you, it's still worth trying.

Never thought I'd be into the clicker/idler genre, but here we are. Strangely way more fun than I expected. Unlocking and leveling up progressively stronger heroes and obtaining hero souls/ancients to get further than my last run keeps me coming back. And putting together an idle setup that needs minimal management is satisfying.

There's a lot more to the game than initially seems, especially when you get into transcensions. If you're someone that likes to "optimize" your gameplay, this offers several opportunities for that depending on how you want to play (click-based or idle). Ultimately, it's a free game and worth a look if this kind of thing at all appeals to you.

Still one of my favorite FPS games of all time, and every bit as good as I remember. It's part shooter, part strategy game, and a tactical mistake means death, especially on the highest difficulty. Half the fun is analyzing your objectives and deciding which roles, loadouts, and team assignments to use. It offers a kind of slow, thoughtful gameplay that no other shooter has been able to replicate for me. The expansions are great as well.

Also one of those games that uncannily predicted the future.

If you're looking for a very casual golf game, I think this is a decent one. Newer titles probably have better graphics and more bells and whistles. This is pretty barebones. But it's fun nontheless.

Lives up to its name. It's a relaxing way to work on your typing skills. Utilizing hard mode offers a challenge. Stat tracking for your WPM, accuracy, and your most common errors is both useful and interesting. If you enjoyed learning to type or other typing games like TypeRacer, this is probably for you.

That's beans!

My GOTY by a mile. It is and should be a new standard, despite what ornery devs say. Play this!

TL;DR - Just not really having fun with it. The things I tend to like about Bethesda games aren't really present here or they're poorly implemented. The good things about the game just feel kind of average and adequate. I'll give it another shot in the future.

So much of the game's design leaves scratching my head.

Outside of the occasional instance of ship combat, being in my spaceship feels...pointless most of the time. I get into my ship to take off from a planet, which puts me in orbit after a brief loading screen. I then select my destination on the starmap, chart a course, and after delayed "grav-jump" animation, I'm in the destination planet's orbit. I pull up the starmap again and select a landing location, get a loading screen, and I'm on the surface. Get out of the ship, do my thing, then repeat all that when it's time to leave. On the one hand, it's a sensible way of doing things. The Proxima Centauri system is 4.3 light years away; cruising to it in real time isn't an option. Even planets and moons in the same star system are unfathomably far away. But on the other hand, it makes time spent in your ship feel less than stellar (again with the inadvertent pun), especially for a game where space ship travel is a fundamental thematic and design element. I think I would have preferred being able to "warp" your destination, similar to how No Man's Sky approaches space travel, allowing you to be at the controls and "flying" the ship at FTL speeds. But maybe that wouldn't have worked with Starfield. They are very different games, to the point it's not really sensible to compare them. I don't know. It almost would have been better to just let you fast travel from planet to planet, skipping the ship stuff altogether. Naturally, you can purchase bigger and better ships as well as upgrade them. I'm sure there are a number of reasons to do this, but so far, I don't find myself interested in doing so. Star hopping feels more akin to an interactive loading screen than interstellar travel.

Exploration has felt very unrewarding so far. By the ten hour mark, I felt like I was frequently getting burned by the game's procedural generation. Landing on a given planet or moon typically plays out the same way. I choose a spot to land, get out of my ship, pull up my scanner, and the game presents me with half a dozen or so points of interest that range anywhere from about 400 to 1000 meters away. And then I walk. Aimlessly jumping around a pretty barren wasteland until I get to a procedurally generated outpost I've already seen that doesn't contain anything interesting or worthwhile, outside of a random item or two. It really feels like ground vehicles should have been in the game, in my opinion. A lunar rover style vehicle or something similar would have been nice. Bethesda has stated this was a very intentional design choice, but it feels like a poor one so far. One of the things I've enjoyed about, say, Skyrim for instance, was the ability to just say "to hell with any active quests, I'm just going to walk in x direction" and, more often than not, I'd be rewarded for it. I'd find a new dungeon, kick off a new line of quests, or stumble upon an interesting place to explore and loot. So far, I just haven't experienced that with Starfield.

There's just a bit of dissonance present for me when prior BGS games with settings limited to a single region or city feel as if they have more worthwhile exploration opportunities than a game where the known universe is the setting.

This kind of game isn't for everyone, but if you like short visual novel experiences with an interesting art style and theme, I'd definitely recommend it. It captures the essence of both the pulp fiction and 80s style computer graphics that inspired it. That being said, the story obviously isn't going to blow your mind, but it's a fun, creepy, and sometimes humorous ride. It also contains an interesting take on solitaire that I really enjoyed. So much that I spent time trying to get the related achievements. The most notable negative in my experience was the puzzle/minigame design. At times it can feel a bit too trial and error based, and the menu system you use to make your selections is the same as the dialogue options menu, which means it can feel a bit clunky. Though you could argue that they were going for that as a part of the retro inspired experience.

If you're into the theme, like visual novels, and don't mind the short length, it's definitely worth your time, though you may want to wait for a sale.