Some people have made “Bethesda” their trigger word and reflexively bite everyone saying it out. Right before they claim everyone else is at fault for that.

Normal discussions are now nigh impossible.

Neither is Starfield.

135 to 140 hours approximately. I didn’t put a lot of effort into outposts, so it could’ve been more.

How does a loading screen “prolong” playtime when the alternative is going or flying everywhere in real time?

Game is short. People complain. Game is long. People complain. Game makes you stare at five hour space travel. People complain. Game gives you fast travel. People complain. Game takes you by the hand. People complain. Game forces exploration. People complain.

I’m tired.

Some side quests in Starfield are longer than the main quests of other games.

For example, it took me the same amount of time to play through SF once as it took to play through The Witcher twice, including the DLCs.

“Little to no content” is an outright lie.

Also not true. Complexity alone doesn’t make a good game / movie / book / piece of art. And lack thereof doesn’t make anything worse.

Why is it that when many people like a thing because that thing appeals to masses, it’s automatically categorised as lower quality?

Nobody seriously claimed Starfield to be the game of all games. It’s good. It’s fine. It’s not perfect. So what?

That’s not the definition of mediocrity. Trying to appeal to a bigger audience doesn’t make a game mediocre in the same way not every niche game has the potential of being a masterpiece just by not being that much likeable.

Some games are popular and good.

If Bethesda games are so mediocre, why are they so popular among players who love to put hundreds of hours into them? I can’t imagine them all playing total conversion mods.

It’s become such a custom to poop on Bethesda for making “shallow”, “uninteresting” games that still everybody talks about. As if there weren’t enough real flaws in their games to give them heat for.

No I don’t. I had 100 hours in The Witcher including all three expansions and I think that’s not what could be called “rushed”.

In Starfield I’m currently at 90 hours and just built my first outpost and a decent ship. I don’t know where I’m in the main quest but I’ve aquired only three powers and artifacts so far.

Starfield is a bad game because people want it to be a bad game. I read a negative Steam review that complained about the estimated 150 hours of the story were too short. One hundred and fifty hours. In the same amount of time you probably can complete Cyberpunk and The Witcher back to back.

Of course Starfield is far from being a perfect game. But some players’ expectations can’t be distinguished from entitlement anymore. To quote a movie title, they want “everything, everywhere, all at once”. And yes, then Starfield must be bad.

I on the other hand really do enjoy it.

The headline says it’s the lowest-rated game in the series, not that Mirage is a bad game. The article bases itself on a single data point, which leaves a lot of room for interpreting. Which the author does a little.

But it’s nowhere mentioned or claimed that Mirage is a badly-reviewed game or doesn’t sell well. It’s just the lowest entry so far. And that’s what everybody should take away from that headline, followed by ignoring the hollow clickbaity article altogether.

Valhalla is a nice action game but it’s no AC game. Especially the stealth part and name-sake Assassination gameplay take up too little space. And the skill tree they copied from PoE is just ridiculously overloaded - symptomatic for Ubisoft‘s approach to the whole game: it’s so convoluted.

I really enjoyed Valhalla but as an AC entry it disappoints.

Agree. I’m playing Far Cry 6 and somehow got the feeling it’s even slightly worse (more stupid) than the 5th entry.

The map is filled to the brim with NPCs and animals, yet I’ve rarely witnessed such a dead world. Not a single NPC has a purpose or life. Cars outside the render distance disappear from the game too: turn around and that vehicle is gone like in those 1980’s video games. Turn around again: new NPC.

Finished a checkpoint / road block: your car is gone Baddies reappear in enemy areas although I just cleared it out. Such a lack of persistence is almost an offense.

Not one car that doesn’t sound their horn at me because they think I’m trying to ram them off the road. Arcade games from decades ago were less dumb.

I finished Assassin’s Creed Valhalla recently and it drove me up the wall all the time. I mean well over 100 h playtime.

And the game would sit there after every start and wait for me to “press any key”. And only after a keypress it would start checking for Add-ons which took ages. Why couldn’t it have done that already?

Plus the intro videos I had to replace with empty files because no-skip.

Annoying!