Recent reviews by Curo Salus

Helldivers 2 is not only great, but is now a permanent fixture of the power of the gaming community over exploitation from corporations.

For Liberty and Freedom!

Starfield brings nothing new to the table in terms of RPG gameplay. It copies many other games and does their implementations noticeably worse. It's an extremely blatant copy of other game mechanics bundled together in an unappealing blob.

Want the planetary exploration? Carbon copy of release No Man's Sky except NMS was better.
Want space flight and ship combat? Carbon copy of Elite: Dangerous, but worse.
Want gunplay, crafting, and bases? Go play Fallout 4. It does them all better and more consistently.
Want story? Play literally any other RPG.

(Very mild story spoiler- issue with theme, but doesn't explain what in any kind of detail)
Starfield has the same problem for me that No Man's Sky did- the main story's conclusion makes the gameplay canonically meaningless. A low-effort attempt to be lightheartedly existential and interesting, and it fails to be either, instead being directly nihilistic hidden under the guise of a power-trip/rpg-style-god-complex for the player.

This game is the ultimate example of "Wasted Potential"- there could have been interesting aliens, space flight, cities, civilization, weapons, war and combat mechanics... but there's none of those. All of the cities are the same size as the cities in Skyrim, but the set pieces are bigger and there's less to do. The gun system and crafting systems are mechanically pointless or frustrating- reverting changes uses even more parts instead of letting the player keep modified components like in FO4. Since weapons are level locked and can't be improved by crafting to the next tier, you'll constantly have to throw out your custom weapons to get a "stronger" copy of the exact same gun and redo your modifications. requiring more grinding of resources.

If it were possible to refund a game after 90 hours purely on the principle that the 90 hours were spent looking for ways to redeem it but failing... I would. Every corner of the game is met with a disappointing "This would have been far more interesting with five more minutes of thought put into it."

Visual: 6/10 - it's nothing unique and a few areas really suffer. The AA methods make the game look smudgey. The game excels in terms of textures and design, however.
Gameplay: 4/10 - barren and empty planets in 40 km^2 chunks of procedurally generated rocks and copy-pasted buildings- Explore two landing sites and you've seen all the game's procedural content. There is no space travel- it's only loading screens and cutscenes- spaceflight is literally just in an open skybox where everything is functionally just a texture at a fixed distance away. Some of the mechanics are just underdeveloped or boring. Also, leveling up is ultimately frustrating and annoying and SO MANY BASIC MECHANICS ARE JUST ARBITRARILY LOCKED BEHIND SKILLS. WHY.
Sound: 5/10 - Lots of reused sounds from previous games- leads to mental dissonance. A game like this really really needs to have excellent audio design and quality, but it's only okay. Turn the music off- like FO4, it's just horns and drums and it's just as tiring to listen to as FO4.
Story: 2/10 - Next time, Bethesda should try literally anything creative instead of copying off of recent Marvel movies (major spoiler: OooOOooOOoo a multiverse! Sure hope it makes sense and doesn't nullify meaning and player action! Literally undoes everything you do.), and make the player actions actually count for something. The game was advertised as being about exploration and space travel- but what's the point of exploring already occupied worlds and fighting the exact same monsters? Explaining like a galaxy-wide genetic origin for repeating monster phenotypes or convergent evolution is far more interesting- and this is just me making an excuse for repeated alien wildlife. The game asks and answers the question: "What if all that is out there is just humanity?" What a boring premise. I will say, however, that of all the Bethesda games out there, this one has the most interesting and human-like characters-- Bethesda's finally getting close to being like other RPGs. That's where the 2 points come from. Maybe consider that I don't want to be the Dragonborn-but-in-space.
Overall: 4/10 - This game could have been something, but instead Bethesda chose it to be nothing.

Ultimately: the game does everything in its power to turn every single action into a time-wasting/grindfest slog. You will ask "Did I do anything meaningful?" at the end of the story, and the answer is "No, you didn't, and you just wasted many hours thinking you did."

Lastly, and perhaps the most important: This game has had developers and people from PR (I assume) defending against criticism. So, two things:

1) There are people who understand development of video games. There are people like myself, who work in codebases far larger than that of game engines and games themselves combined, who know there is no excuse like the ones that have been offered up. And if Bethesda really wants this to be the way they handle criticism, then fine, Bethesda has a major skill issue, both in terms of leadership and in terms of writing software and they want to crybaby and say "It's haaaard" as an excuse for putting in no effort. Grow the hell up, Bethesda.
2) This is unacceptable behavior for any organization or business. You put out a bad product and people don't like it. You should say "Hey- we're sorry you didn't like it. Tell us where we went wrong, and we'll spend the next year fixing it with patches, or maybe doing some redesigns on the game systems with careful consideration towards ease of access and fun." It really is that simple. Build bridges, don't burn them.

Edits: fixing typos or bad formatting.

Performance is broken and no fix- no performance patch yet, and it's been over two years.

Don't waste your money on a 20-30 FPS limitation regardless of your rig.

TL;DR: 60/100 (75 = recommend) If you enjoy sniper games, read it all.

Note (2/2/18): I've experienced less bugs than before and have progressed quite far into the game since I've managed to fix my initial game-breaking bug. I've attached an Addition to the bottom of the review describing my updated stance.

Note (1/19/18): I am reinstalling and deleting my previous save to see if this fixes anything. I'll be recording bugs as I play and I'll be reporting to CI Games (as they kindly asked for in the comments). As I stated at the end of the review, CI Games put in a lot of work. I would really like this to succeed. This doesn't change my recommendation until I can see a visible change in buggyness, but do acknowledge for me that CI Games is taking responsibility like a good developer ought to, and I hugely appreciate this. CI Games has just earned a lot of respect from me.

Original Review:
Seven months after release, this game has serious issues that need ironing out. Most of it is polishing (smoother animations, more optimization), but the rest... the rest is a bit messy, including the game-breaking bug I am experiencing.

Currently, I am stuck in the campaign, falling through the map, eternally. I can't fast travel because I'm in the air. I can't do anything but fall. Forever. Reloading from the menu lets me restart my fall from the top. I don't even die. Just... fall... forever.

There are further issues with the game.

For example, there is an enemy base which I've been scouting out from about 700 meters away. I would LOVE to shoot into it, but it is simply not possible. I can't get enemies to spawn in unless I'm around 400 meters or closer. My longest shot is 428m., and that was exploiting a bug:

When you scout a location with the drone, enemies spawn in. When you tag them and then recall the drone, the enemies remain spawned for three or so seconds, thus allowing me to get that 428m headshot in before the body despawned and the rest of the base with it- except the thirty or so civilian workers that I can see just fine. This doesn't appear to be related to draw distance settings as everything except Chromatic Abberation and Motion Blur are on and maxed out. Some areas have a different spawn radius than others.

It makes no sense to have civilians (civilians don't help anything and don't even provide a penalty if killed) rendered at 700 meters but not the enemy until half that. Why is this a sniping game if almost all of my engagements happen within 100 meters?

All your suppressors need repairing after being used enough times. This equates to about 20 rounds with any weapon (to my experience so far). This is not a feature. It's a bit annoying. Maybe if it needed to be fixed, say, once a session? That wouldn't be so bad, but I end up fixing suppressors about 3-4 times if I raid a big location.

I was having a frustrating time going through this game, but the eternal-falling glitch sealed it for me. I don't want to have to restart in order to progress in the game (update: this got fixed).

I feel as if this game is lacking any kind of serious support. There are plenty of bugs- clipping through the ground or walls, enemies that can sometimes see and shoot through rocks and buildings that I can't, sights being off from where the weapon actually shoots (having to aim the AKA iron sights at the shoulder level to get a headshot).

The upside to the game is that the gunplay- assault rifles, handguns- all feel very nice. When you can see enemies it's a LOT of fun to line up a headshot, timed just right, to hit a Separatist right in the noggin' as he's sprinting for cover.

I will change my recommendation if they fix draw distance on enemies and patch the multitude of bugs. I can't play the game- literally. I would have liked to have seen this game succeed. It just needs to be fixed and polished. There is obviously a lot of time put into this game as it is. It's not a bad game when it works. In fact, when things work, I actually /really/ enjoy it.

List of bugs:
- Enemies seeing through buildings, rocks, bushes.
-- Being shot by those enemies.
- Weapon sights that don't align with the direction of fire.
- Falling through terrain and getting stuck in areas that required a reload to the menu.
- Vehicle spawning at a different fast-travel point. (Only happened once.)
- Enemies disappearing at a distance or point-blank.
- Enemies detecting and shooting me when they're facing the wrong direction.
- Headshots that don't register as headshots with the handgun. (Don't know if it's a specific handgun or not.)
- Bad states on interrogations. (Grabbed an enemy to interrogate but he teleported a few m. away, thus requiring that I kill him instead because he was technically still there but I couldn't do anything BUT kill him. The prompt to take down was there still yet no interrogate option and I couldn't move. That messed up the mission state as I was supposed to interrogate that character.)
- Headshots with bows don't always behave like a headshot.
- Getting spotted by soldiers on a road who were invisible. No attacking, just spotting. Lead to confusion.

Things that need polishing:
- Inventory size. It's small, but some guns have way more on-person ammo capacity than others.
- Animations. They can be really jerky.
- Suppressors. Either buff or remove the repair system.
- Crafting. It's complicated- not necessarily a bad thing, just a bit confusing.
- Optimization. I have good performance, it is just a little bit inconsistent.
- Unlocks. Some content is gated behind mission progression, thus requiring that I backtrack to complete certain Points of Interest once I have specific technology unlocks (like Drone hacking).

Addition:
I've encountered fewer severe bugs than before and I've been to all the major areas of the game. This review needs an update. When the game works fine, it works great and I absolutely love it. The gunplay is still exciting and satisfying.

I have increased my longest shot to about 530m by doing a bit of research. There's a dam in one of the areas and when you're near this dam, enemies at a nearby facility do not despawn until you start to approach 600m. This is the only place in the game where I've managed to get a shot over 450m without having to exploit the drone bug. The downside is that there is so much fog in the air that it was nearly impossible to see them.

I have to say, I honestly enjoy the open world and think it works nicely. But the reduced draw distance of enemies and prevalence of fog make it feels much tighter than it needs to be.

There is a climbing mechanic that works well, despite first person. This was unexpected, but good.

There's a brief note I must make about gore. If you've seen the promotional material, then you know that people's craniums can explode in a very graphic fashion. However, these head-explosion scenes only trigger when weapon damage is strong enough (think .50 cal rifles) and the bullet cam is enabled. This is counter intuitive to me. After a while, headshots don't seem as impactful because I never use bullet cam. It seems a bit broken to have it only in bullet cam, and the reason why is in the next point.

When aiming down your scope and holding your breath, the game will do a little bit of gentle handholding by displaying a circle where the bullet will impact given the zero distance, elevation, and wind speed. If bullet cam is enabled, you don't have to lead the bullet at all. If someone is sprinting and they're 500m away, you don't have to lead. Line up the circle and the bullet cam will teleport the bullet to that person and kill them. Since I don't use bullet cam, I get to line up and time manually. It's fresher to have that difficulty present. However, the Sniper Circle(tm) is not accurate when at large distances or at different elevations, making it useless in some cases.

My favorite bug is invisble smoking soldiers who talk to each other.
- Curo

Creation Club is a mistake.

This game is stunningly beautiful. Amazing optimized graphics with a score written by Austin Wintory peformed by real musicians.

If you're concerned about this being a giant water level, suspend your disbelief. It is worth it.

Two-hour long game unless you want to 100% it.

Makes very little visual change but is quite large. Look up comparisons and save yourself the bandwidth and VRAM. The textures are higher resolution, yes, but the quality of image still remains the same. In other words, the texture pack does not noticeably improve visuals, yet costs more performance and disk space. The only way to notice the difference is to compare them directly, side by side.

The free Skyrim HD mod, even the lite version, will look much better.

Says (on the tin): "...a more open world experience... ...will not be guided and the only way to find their way through the new location is by using the map."

This couldn't be further from the truth. A wide hallway is still a hallway. The mission is still A to B, shoot these dudes, escort this guy, etc.

This game has an amazing story, with intelligent, creative, and oft humourous writing. Its music complements the story and scenes extremely well, and the mechanics of the game play out to produce a challenge, despite the two chasmically different paths.

The game itself is so unique I cannot compare it to any others. The game is self-aware.

Definitely worth at least TWO playthroughs.