Recent reviews by R4bs

Great improvements from the original game. A lot more stable and running without any stuttering, which I remember it was sometimes happening on the original version. A better version with achievements? Sign me in!

Shady action from Take-Two Interactive. I can't recommend anymore.

Be very careful when playing it.

The game itself doesn't start. It keeps in a loading screen saying "Compiling shaders, please wait...". I checked the discussions forum and tried their suggestions to delete the Steam Cache but it didn't work. I kept trying for almost 2 hours. I don't want to keep a game that doesn't work, so I am refunding! Sad because I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.

It's short but the story is great! Really great to drive around the city, but the cops are merciless! Be careful! :D

But after finishing it, I don't fell like coming to it again. Took me around 14 hours to finish and I am not a fast player.

It's a good game, but for me it is not worth the full price.

Amazing game! I had a lot of fun playing it with my wife. Mods make it even better! A lot of fun for the whole family!

It is a shooter but your weapons are not as strong as some of your Pals. So make use of them, evolve and breed them to have the perfect one with the skills that you like.

This game have a huge potential and I hope the Devs keep updating it for a lot of time in the future.

Summary
Comparing to other games like Limbo and Inside, this is a huge step up on graphics. The atmosphere is very creepy and the "enemies" are very interesting.
This is not my preferrable type of game but I was hook to finish it but not willing to replay to get all achievements.
There is not much "assistance" from Devs to show what needs to be done or where to escalate and so on, but it is not hard to figure it out. The key is to explore your surroundings.
Althouth some complains about the controls, I think you get used to it. There are mainly 4 actions. You can hold a button to run, a button to jump, a button to hold things and a button to crawl.
Even though it is a side scroller, you have some room to walk up and down, like a 3D environment. So it gives you some room for strategies.
My score as 6 is basically because of my bad points below. I recommend only on sale and you need to buy all DLCs together.


Goods

• Beaultiful and atmospheric scenarios.
  
• Really creep and desolation feeling.
  
• Good variety of death scenes.
  
• Unexpected events throughout the game.
  
• Recent save points, so you don't have to redo much when you die.

Bads

• I wish there could be a better guidance to the player to try to bring them to the brink of death but not killing it. I think this strategy adds to the tension instead of killing and respawning and trying a different strategy.
  
• If you don't buy all DLCs, you can get 100% of achievements.

Until this day, Dawn of War 1 is the best that Relic released. Plenty of unit options and race options. Total Apocalypse is a must have mod to make it even better and support high end computers of today.
I only wished I have know this game sooner! There is no match for it on it's release date. Even today, it's not easy to find a worthy opponent.

Memory issues can be fixed with a patch and other mods to improve it's performance. By itself, it didn't age well.
I recommend buying if you are playing to add mods to it.

Summary
Although the game is fun I don't recommend buying it. It does have a lot of potential but it was abandoned by the L2 Games developer team.
Their last update was on Feb 15, 2023, where they fixed 6 bugs and added some cometics for Valentine's Day.
It is a unfinished game. Once you get to Level 30, there is nothing more to do because there is no equipment for you to handle high level enemies, so enemies will become harder and harder and you can easy get on hit killed by them when playing on hardest difficult.

Goods

• Beautiful character models.
  
• Easy to setup scenes for screenshots.
  
• Companions that you can equip and unequip. :D

Bads

• Unbalanced once you get past lv 30.
  
• Steam Achievements doesn't work.
  
• Very limited fighting animations. Makes the game boring after a while.

Quick Questions / Quick Answers

• Can you get all achievements on one playthrough? No
  
• Does it have guns? No
  
• Is it open world? No
  
• Is there wild animais in the game? No
  
• Is there a day/night cycle? No

Summary
There is not a simple way to classified Death Stranding.
Without going into the lore, you have to deliver things from point A to B. Sometimes you have to retrieve the items from a dangerous place, sometimes the danger is physical, sometimes it is not.
The places that the music triggers is really awesome and gives you a good feeling that it's very rare on nowadays gaming industry.

It took me around 200hours to get all achievements while having fun doing it. I do recommend the game and also I agree that it's love or hate game, but anyway, I recommend at least playing through the second area of the game because a LOT changes after you get a ton of equipment to traverse land.


Goods

• After you end the game, you will automatically reload a couple of hours before the "ending events", so you can finish all your achievements (trophies) in one playthrough.
  
• When you reload after the ending events, you get some extra options, so I recommend leaving to get all achievements after the ending events. After episode 15:D
  
• Epic boss battles.
  
• Option to replay Boss battles and compete with other players for a best score on them.
  
• Dynamic Weather system, where you can check for "rainfall" prediction in a place and avoid it if you need.
  
• Game physics are great.

Bads

• Changing difficult doesn't make the game too much challenging when you get used to handling your enemies. Boss fights on the other hand will be a lot harder. So eventually, even on Very Hard, the game feels too easy.
  
• I like the Day/Night cycle in games and I miss it on Death Stranding

Quick Questions / Quick Answers

• Can you get all achievements on one playthrough? Yes
  
• Does it have guns? YES
  
• Is it open world? YES
  
• Is there wild animais in the game? No
  
• Is there a day/night cycle? No

Summary
As Vanilla, Starfield could be fun but isn't worth it full price. It is still full of Engine Bugs that I don't have hopes to see those fixed as we are talking about Bethesda.
Very likely Mods will make this game a lot better, but I don't recommend buying it right now.

How exploration works?
You fast travel to a system, open the map, click on a planet to scan, click on the POI and Land on them (cutscene).
Fun right? It's a Fast Travel/Cutscene game. Your exploration is done by finding POIs in a map and fast travelling to them.
You will then literally WALK in the planet in the direction of "Unkownw POIs" (between 3 to 5 per landing site) so you can label and fast travel to them within the same area that your ship landed.
If you want to travel to another area of the same planet, you Fast Travel to your ship, click in the other part of the map and fast travel there.

Issues:

• Same flashlight issue from Fallout 4: Flashlight is aimed at the ground instead of where you are aiming too. Only happens on third person and when guns are not holstered.
  
• Bug when mining. If the scanned objects changes on your hud, you can't mine it.
  
• Same dummy enemy AI from Fallout 4. Where agroo is lost if you stay crouched for a few seconds. If you are standing, agroo is kept.
  
• Ambient lightning bugs.
  
• Bug where your companion starts to shooting at you non stop until you are dead. I used to see this rarely happening on heavily modded Fallout 4. Usually it happens after a gun fight. Your companion for some reason, after the enemy dies (by your last shot) starts to shoot at you. If you fast travel while he is shooting at you it fix the issue.

Missing Features

• No Shoulder Switch option.
  
• Cannot land ship by yourself. Landing ship is a cutscene.
  
• Cannot launch ship by yourself. Launching ship is a cutscene.
  
• Docking to another ship? It is a cutscene.
  
• Flying to another System? Cutscene.
  
• Inventory is as bad as Fallout 4. There is no Icon to identify item subtypes like pistol or machineguns. So it is very confusing and time demanding to clear out unwanted items. (Similar issue that Fallout 4 had which modders fixed by adding icons to the inventory)

Minor Issues:
Other characters talking to you while a main NPC is having a conversation with you.

Review at 7 Hours

I am disappointed.

I am a fan of all Fallouts, even Brotherhood Tactics and 4 with it's fake choice mechanism. I have more than 2k hours on Fallout 4.
I am also a fan of space games like Freelancer where you can fly around the space and visit planets and other systems, where the focus on Freelancer is on the space itself and there was no way to walk on planets.

Now about Starfield Space exploration.
You can't get your ship and fly to the next planet or next system by yourself. Everything is done by Fast Travel(Jumps).
You are not really flying your ship, you are just moving from points to points using the menu. There is no exploration on Space, only if you mean seeing a point on the map and clicking on it as a exploration. Imagine if on Fallout 4 you couldn't walk between the Points Of Interests on the map and every "travel" would be done by clicking in the map and selecting where you want to go. It's awful!

So far I have less than 10 hours of gameplay and this is my early review. Can't recommend this game so far.