TheMightyEthan

I did the Peralez questline this time!

I need to watch Edgerunners.

Starfield Goddamn, this game is good. It's not perfect, but it's really good. I know there's a lot of complaints out there about the procedural generations, and that making exploration less rewarding, etc, but honestly I like it. I'm tired of games that tell you you're in this massive world but you can see how tiny it is. Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher, The Outer Worlds, hell even Red Dead Redemption 2, they all have a problem with scale, where everything just feels small. Not so Starfield. You actually feel that you're out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, lightyears from proper civilization, and it's great. Sure most of the planets are just lifeless, desolate wastelands, but let me tell you something, that's how real life is too. If the game tells me I'm out on the frontier I want to feel like it, and this is the first game that really accomplishes that imo. Now, I said it's not perfect, and it's not. My biggest gripe is that you don't have a lot of room to define your character's personality. It's the most egregious when it comes to the main quest, where your options range from extremely enthusiastic to mildly enthusiastic, when I really wanted a "who are you to say I have to join you people?" option. I understand why they don't really want to let you actually turn down the main quest, but there's no reason they couldn't have let you say you don't want to do it, and then just be forced to anyway for some reason. "Oh, you don't want to, well too bad, you have to because X." I had decided on a backstory and personality to roleplay, and right off the bat the game wasn't letting me act the way my character would, which was annoying. It's better in the sidequests, because the game actually can let you turn those down, but even there you usually only have "yes", "yes (but snarky)", and "no". There's just really not much nuance to the way they let you act, and I wish there was. Aside from that, even the scale that I praised so much has some limitations. Most major cities are the only thing of note on their entire planet, and there's a hard line where the city stops and wilderness begins. It kind of makes sense in Akila, which has murderous beasties outside the city walls, but not so much in New Atlantis, which I feel like should have a little bit of urban sprawl. It doesn't make sense to have a collection of skyscrapers surrounded by absolutely nothing else. Those are fairly minor complaints in the grand scheme of things though. The major sidequests are mostly great, I really liked the main story (even though I know others aren't so hot on it), the NG+ conceit is pretty freakin awesome (enough that I was on NG+10 and 149 hours played when I finally considered myself done with the game). Sure, it's "just" a Bethesda RPG, but it's one that really takes that style to the next level. Grade: A Telltale's The Expanse This game is also great! I had been playing the episodes as they came out and really enjoying them, but I fell behind because of Starfield. I just caught up on the last two last night and tonight, and they definitely stuck the landing. It has excellent writing, and a compelling though smaller-scale story (compared to the books/show). I don't know how much your actions actually affect the way events play out, but it feels like things are reacting to your choices and to me that's the important part. Sure, you could probably start to see the matrix pretty quick if you went back and made different decisions, but if you approach it as roleplaying as Drummer and just go through once it's very convincing. It also benefits I think from the main character being an established character from the universe, with an established personality, because unlike Starfield it makes sense that your choices of approach would be more limited, you can only do things that Drummer might do. It does suffer a little from the prequel problem of making the world feel smaller (in terms of characters) by bringing characters into things when previously there hadn't been a connection (think "Anakin Skywalker made C-3PO" type stuff), but all of that is pretty tangential to the main stuff happening so it doesn't stand out too bad. I'd definitely recommend this to any fan of The Expanse, or any fan of Telltale games. It's also really really pretty (at least on PC). Grade: A

I really want to try that game but there's just too much to play right now.

Same.

Still going strong in Starfield. 50/50 shot whether I get it wrapped up before Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty comes out next week.

Went on sale for the lowest price it's hit yet, so I picked it up. Hopefully I can sneak it in between Starfield and Cyberpunk.

Beat Saber I'm listing this as beat now because I've finished the campaign, but obviously with a rhythm game you can keep playing as much as you want. I've been playing this for exercise, and it's great. Normally whenever I start an exercise routine I have a hard time maintaining it because I never want to actually do it, but this game is intrinsically fun, so I haven't had that problem yet. It may not be what I want to do at any given time, but I'm at least not averse to doing it like I normally get with exercise. And once I'm in it's easy to keep going because it's fun. The campaign was pretty good too, and while there were a few songs with special objectives that I didn't like (such as get at least 10 but no more than 15 misses), overall it was a lot of fun. It's very satisfying to try a new song, and go from "This doesn't seem physically possible!" to being able to do it fairly easily over the course of a couple days. Grade: A+

Yeah, that was my thought, I'm gonna do a real playthrough where I do all the side stuff, but I knew if I did that first I wouldn't want to do NG+, so I'm just doing it in NG+. I know I'm in the minority, but it really takes me out of a game when something is supposed to be really far and it's actually like 200 feet. I want it to feel like a real place, not a theme park. To be clear, I'm not advocating for fewer things to do overall (though I do think certain games, coughAssassin'sCreedcough, are too jam-packed), just I want to feel the scale that the world purports to have.

Starfield Based on some recommendations I saw online that the NG+ in this game is something special I bee-lined through the main quest (in 40 hours) to get to NG+ and I think I made the right choice. This is bananas. I would recommend others do the same. Beyond that, what I've experienced so far is great, I love how big and empty the universe feels, just like a space frontier actually should. None (or very little) of the open world nonsense of the game telling you you're on the raggedy edge of nothin but in reality there's a settlement every 50 feet. It's great. I'm not going to give it a rating yet because in some ways I feel like the game really only starts at your first NG+.

It does not disable achievements, none of the ones I listed do. I've been playing for hours with all of them and have still been getting achievements*, without the special achievement re-enabler mod. As far as I'm aware the only ones that disable achievements are console commands. *I've been playing the MS Store/Game Pass version, so I can't swear it works the same on Steam, but I'd be very surprised if they were stricter.

I've got a bunch of mods to recommend for PC players: DLSS & XeSS Bridge: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/196 This one replaces FSR with DLSS or XeSS for if you have an RTX or Intel card. It gave me a 5% performance boost right off the bat, without changing any settings, just because DLSS can run in hardware while FSR was having to run in software. Neutral LUTs: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323 This one gets rid of the weird color grading a lot of the environments tend to have, massively improves the look of the game imo. As a side benefit, it makes the black of space actually look black, instead of navy blue. Though I do recommend using his suggested modification to increase star brightness back to vanilla levels (or higher, I cranked mine way up to 500, vanilla is 110, I would have gone higher but above 500 you start to get weird flashing artifacts). Smooth UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/270 This one replaces the UI elements that normally run at 30 fps (the ship reticle, some of the menus, etc) with versions that run at up to 120 fps instead. Really makes the experience feel smoother. QoL ini tweaks: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/381 Just a few nice Quality of Life tweaks you can make to the ini, pick and choose which ones you want. Quick & Clean Main Menu: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/418 This one skips all the intro stuff so you launch straight into the main menu, and also gets rid of some of the main menu clutter, like the Message of the Day. Just nice. Value to Weight Ratio Sort: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/476 Makes one of your inventory sort options the item's value-to-weight ratio, so you can figure out what's best to hang onto and what's best to dump when you get over encumbered. And finally, last but definitely not least, I recommend using SpecialK for anyone with an HDR display. The game uses Windows Auto-HDR rather than native HDR, and it's fine, but SpecialK can inject HDR and does a better job. Basic instructions for setting it up and download link: https://wiki.special-k.info/SpecialK/Global Instructions for getting HDR working: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/HDR/Retrofit The main stable version doesn't work with Starfield right now, you need to update it to the nightly one from the Discord. There are instructions on doing that in the first link. Enjoy!

Starfield! It's pretty good.

I actually refunded it cause I hit a wall with the first boss and hadn't really been having a ton of fun (it was fine) up to that point, so I didn't feel invested enough to keep beating my head against the wall to get through it.

My wife loved Moonlighter, but it wasn't for me either. For what it's worth, I think Valhalla is widely regarded as the worst of the nu-style Assassin's Creed games.

You can get a month of game pass and then get the $30 upgrade to the premium edition for early access...

Red Matter This is a VR walking sim/mystery game that starts off pretty promising, but I don't think really lives up to its potential, and then the end is kind of a cop-out. The space base you're exploring is really cool though, with a faux-soviet aesthetic, and a really strong sense of place. I definitely felt like I was there, so that was cool. But overall, I felt like the beginning is a lot stronger than the end, and ultimately I felt let down by it. I'd recommend checking it out if you find a sale for a few dollars, but not otherwise. Grade: C

Same.

It's way better, the screen is much sharper and the tracking is flawless, none of the drift I would sometimes get with PSVR. Also, the lack of cable (when I want) is super nice.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission I actually beat this on PSVR last week before I got my Quest. It's super good. Easily the best 3D platformer I've played that didn't have Mario in the title, and pretty high up there even once you include those. The whole thing is just so charming, the controls feel great, the levels, while linear, are very dynamic. It's just a really nice game. Grade: A+ Batman: Arkham VR This one I did play on Quest. It's really cool, as far as it goes, but it's extremely short. You get a grappling hook, a taser, and batarangs, and I don't think I even used the taser once. There's only two scenes that even involved enemies at all, one was entirely scripted and the other I threw a single batarang to end it. Don't get me wrong, what's there is quite good, but there's almost nothing there. I'm glad I only paid $4 for it. Grade: C The Last Clockwinder This is a fun little VR indie puzzle game. You're fixing this giant machine, and you can record your own actions for a few seconds and it sets a robot guy on a loop repeating what you did. So for instance, you might need to cut a fruit off a stalk, combine it with another fruit, and then put it in a press. So you record yourself cutting the fruit off one plant, and tossing it toward another plant. Then you go over to the other plant, record yourself catching the fruit, sticking it to another one, and tossing it toward the press, etc. Your little robot clones repeat your actions on an infinite loop, it can get pretty complex and be immensely satisfying to watch. It's kind of got a Zachtronics vibe, where you can solve a given puzzle in 10 minutes, and then spend another hour and half optimizing that solution, or just call it good enough an move on. It's also fun to be able to see the little quirks of your own movements in your recordings. I have a couple minor complaints, like the gravity isn't Newtonian, so different objects will take different arcs when thrown at the same speed and direction, which can make aiming throws frustrating, but nothing that really detracts much from the overall experience. Grade: A-

I can see that. I was just appreciating that it's not beating me over the head with how metaphorical its premise is like every other indie puzzle game I've played recently.

3 VR games, surprising no one I imagine.

How do you jailbreak it?!

Meta Quest 2 I've been playing Astro Bot Rescue Mission on PSVR (which is a damn good game) and it's been making me think about how cool VR really is, but I've become increasingly aware of the limitations of PSVR. I considered getting a PSVR2, but ultimately decided to go with this because it's substantially cheaper, has nearly as good a screen, and will work with my PC so there's a lot bigger library to draw from.