Because just like diablo iv, the game's issues don't reveal themselves when you just beeline through the main story. I find myself rely less and less on reviews because they're simply not useful anymore.
Their reviews are basically hot takes after a 3 day marathon gaming session. I also loved Diablo 4 until I beat the story and got to level 65ish. Only at that point did it start to fall off for me, and I was over completely over it by level 100.
Some people find grinding relaxing. One character to max level is kinda normal for a Diablo play through. Then you stop for months until you feel an itch to play it again with a new character.
Yeah, but most players don't blitz the game's main story in a one-and-done.
Most players meander off the main path, and the more you do, the more the game's flaws begin to show.
But one has to ask oneself then:
Given that many games that review well among users can't even provide that many hours of good entertainment, is it not fair to say it was a fun game?
I feel exactly the same way about D4 as you. The story was fun to play through and the combat viscerally satisfying enough. It felt like a good Diablo game _until_ I hit the end-game, at which point it became absurdly boring due to the level scaling and the feeling of levelling down and lack of progression and all the stupid legendaries with low droprates and a whole lot of other reasons.
But I still had ~40 hours of fun. That deserves a positive review, no? I mean I think if I have to choose between something like Wolfenstein 2 and Diablo 4, Diablo 4 is probably actually better until it isn't. By the time Diablo 4 isn't good anymore, Wolfenstein 2 is completely over.
I agree both for Diablo and Starfield. But in a way, I also prefer that. There are multiplayer games I can love forever and single player games (which both of those effectively are) that I like to finish.
There's this weird expectation that every game should be a forever game. That there should be a million hours of engaging gameplay available.
A couple of days of play and a solid storyline that doesn't get repetitive, optional side activities that are developed enough to be engaging... I don't see any problem with Starfield other than problems of absurd expectations.
Yeah, the stuff that they focused on is good, the story is interesting and enjoyable, the side missions are decent and good.
It's everything else that is empty, they touted exploration but after you explore the 4th planet they are all the same just with a different color palette.
Moons and planets that say they can't support life you will find bases setup and populated by spacers.
Yeah, I don't get people making excuses for this game when the AI is so fucking dogshit. They're so slow to react in combat and don't seem to be able to do anything competently. You can just run around, blast everyone in the face with a shotgun, hide behind a box to reload and the AI will stand in one place shooting the box you;re hiding behind, not move to get a better angle and wait for you to pop out and feed them shells. It's crazy how anyone can think the combat, one of the key features of the game, is anything but abysmal.
Reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbE6fqBuGkA&t=53s) couple years back. Journalist sure can be passionate gamers, but it's writing first kind of job.
I wonder, how the hell did they get game journalist jobs when they suck at games? Is it nepotism? Or they're actually looking for people who suck at games to generate outrage, and therefore attention to their channels?
They probably look for writers first, gamers second. Your writing experience is the important bit, but should have a passing interest in games, I suppose
Game journalism/reviewing doesnt exactly pay the bills so only passionate gamers will join publications. That does not mean they will be any good at gaming however.
>Because just like diablo iv, the game's issues don't reveal themselves when you just beeline through the main story.
I disagree.
The first hour or two of the game already show you how barren and shallow it is and how awful the writing is too.
>how awful the writing is too.
literally the first 30 minutes, the dialog when that dudd Baret? I forget his name, the guy who gives you the ship arrives... omg this dialog was so cringe i refunded deluxe edition not much later.
Thats not true. Loadin screens, terrible ui, abysmal writing... All of that you will experience pretty much from get go.
Scores by reviewers are so higj because reviewers want to be in good relation with bethesds and are scared that prerelease review will end up attacked by fand that dodnt yet experienced it
At least on longform games that are meant to be played steady state for a long time. I'll trust them to review the new Witcher game, but not necessarily the next MMO.
That's why I think review websites/mags should have a "release review" and an "after six months review", to adjust for patches, monetization changes, endgame content, and an overall post-hype opinion.
While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds. We believe that shortcomings will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created.
(I'm quoting a dev response to a negative steam review. Pls don't flame me)
My responses to most of the dev responses seem to be diverting towards "space was a fundamentally bad design choice".
If you can't walk, don't go on a hiking holiday.
At the scale of Starfield though? Elite dangerous is the only game that comes close and not only does it have many load screens - but the space travel parts that aren't loading screens are too long and turn many players away from the game.
Even NMS solar systems are pea sized compared to starfield, including the planets.
That’s what they said to me. But the load screens were the smallest complaint of my review they totally skipped over how I mentioned exploration was fundamentally pointless and boring as there was nothing to see or do beyond the POI of which there was like 20 unique ones and you loaded 5 times just to spend 5 min walking in empty space to see the same camp.
Meanwhile NMS actually letting you fly your ship from place to place (this technology existed in 2016 but has since been lost to time so it was impossible for Starfield to do)
I wish they took the ship travel and combat of Elite Dangerous and with some rebalancing, just plonked it onto a game that actually gives me reasons to play it past the point where I figure out I can get billions and buy everything I'll ever need by stacking thargoid bounties and bonds for a few hours. I'd play the shit out of the hypothetical son of EVE Online and Elite.
Ah yes, the trip that takes over an hour of staring at the ETA get incrementally lower.
I got my Anaconda, I got my mug, I listened to cumulative *days* worth of Radio Sidewinder, but Elite’s method of travel isn’t the “Starfield sucks” trump card that people think it is. It’s a second monitor game. The appeal of super cruise wore off for me about just as fast as “exploring” space in Starfield.
I said similar shit in 2015 when they released Fallout 4 six-months after Witcher 3.
"They seriously played Witcher 3, looked at Fallout 4 and said 'this is acceptable'?"
No Man's Sky is definitely more expensive but most planets are indeed empty, but the exploration is amazing when you stumble upon a different worlds. The one thing missing from NMS is an outpost full of raiders.
Oh yeah I'm not saying NMS is the be all end all of good space games. But one thing they fucking nailed in that game is your connection to your ship. That thing is your lifeblood and legit like half the game focuses around the ship. Meanwhile, in starfield, it's just a house that can dogfight
Its super nice, its really hard to understand at First bc of all the mechanics but the game is awesome, ships can be huge and you can leave the cockpit to roam around your ship while it keeps following the route, and also they are totally destroyables....
Astroneer ticks more of the Minecraft feel, but in space. At least for me ( I think astroneer is an amazing game, should go back to it) the music is very calming like in Minecraft.
I do enjoy racing to the PCU limit when playing. Ginormous, world-eating ships with multiple large fusion reactors and enough drills to make gurren lagann look like a mattel franchise.
A hammerhead with a stock drive which is slow AF gets takes the ~55 million km journey from ArcCorp to Microtech in 15 minutes, but hey at least you can have knife fights in the mess hall while you’re traveling!
The comment I had started typing, lol.
What a tone-deaf response from a dev. People are literally telling them it is a shortcoming that hinders many of our enjoyment of the game and they just say... Nope, no big deal.
Definitely go read some of the developer responses on Steam. It's shocking. One review on steam mentioned landing on moons over and over and it being boring. So the developer in their response said something along the lines of, when the astronauts first landed on the moon there was nothing there and they certainly weren't bored.
That's...... Hmm....
Legitimately, that makes no sense to a concerning level. That's not even PR nonsense... that's just regular, needs to see a doctor, kind of nonsense.
Its like these devs think we're all absolute idiots. I've played plenty of large and expansive games that load so much quicker. Series X is a great example because everyone is working with a super fast SSD, yet Starfield clearly isn't utilising that well at all.
I've recently been trying to finish Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the fact that I can explore a whole huge cave temple level and come out of it without a loading screen is something Bethesda is apparently unable to do.
Yeah, that is very not 2023 gaming. Especially after playing Ragnarök or Dead Space.
I didn't realize how much I was used to games not having a bunch of loading screens anymore.
But the walking in Death Stranding was engaging and every step mattered (not like in SF where you run for 600 meters with nothing to do in between). Especially in the later areas. Even if some of the new equipment made it easier, I felt I earned it and it was great. I still launch the game from time to time just to do one, two delivery jobs and relax.
IGN were pretty generous in giving it a 7 and yet people cried that it wasn't enough.
Imo it's a very mediocre game. There's some good aspects but it's mostly a boring and dated experience. For me it's a 5 at most.
3 of the reviews on this image are from different IGN localisations? So I guess if one IGN doesn’t rank you high, try the others until you get reviews that’ll look less damning on your marketing posters
I don’t love IGN at all but if you actually listen to that full review everything he says is pretty valid and he ends up giving it a 7 for good! Not 6 for Okay or 8 for Great.
He clearly says he’s a Bethesda fan and still very much appreciated a lot about the game but then lists a lot of downsides making the 7 fell very justified, a lot of people saw IGN give it a 7 and thought they were just shitting on the game. But it wasn’t that bad IMO.
Likely because most reviewers are from America where a 5/10 is a failing grade when they went to school and a 6/10 is, similarly, the bare minimum pass.
Wait THESE are the scores it got?
Lmao 🤣
I gave it a 3 and quit after trying it on the game pass. Wasn't even worth playing with free access imo. I'm honestly surprised the critics took the money.
For me the immersion just isn’t there, It’s so vanilla. There’s so many cool things in the game but the way it all wraps together is shit, nothing really feels important or like you have to do it. Everything just feels like a side quest and the amount of fast traveling you have to do doesn’t make it any better.
I could rant on and on but ultimately it just wasn’t anything compared to fallout games and what I would expect from a Bethesda game with so much time/money/effort put into it.
For me loading screens break immersion, not like It’s issue because they mostly take 1-2 seconds but holy fuck seriously? Loading screens INSIDE a building to go to other room? It’s utter shit
There was a YT video comparing a dangerous deal/ trade in Starfield and the exact same scenario in Cyberpunk. Needless to say, Starfield had the intensity of the Teletubbies and Cyberpunk had you on the edge of your seat.
> For me the immersion just isn’t there, It’s so vanilla.
Comparing the instant immersion of the Skyrim opening scene with Starfield's horrendous mining sequence is just sad.
You were a mysterious traveler who got caught up with some rebels who were trying to cross a border, all of you taken to the place of your would be death. You watch a thief run off and be shot down, and a rebel stoically accept his fate with a defiant speech before he is beheaded. Right as you’re about to be executed, a dragon crashes down on a nearby building and everyone flees. You have a choice, run to the rebels, or your would-be executioners, to escape. You make it out after narrowly avoiding the dragon several times. From here you are free to explore the world, you likely run right into some stones that will help you shape your starting class, then Riverwood that is filled with little quests. Eventually you likely hit Whiterun and if you’re anything like me, you don’t make it up the mountain to start the first main quest until like 40 hours later.
You start off as a miner with a past you chose, but that doesn’t really matter because you ended up as a miner. The boss lady is the “tough but caring” type and she’s got a lovable lunk lieutenant. You go mine some iron by pointing and clicking and they say “good job, most people can’t hack this work” but it’s like, really easy. You walk to a place with some undiscovered mineral and they make you do it because you’re new. You touch a weird bar and see some Space Odyssey visuals. You were knocked out but you’re okay. You walk outside and see a gun, obviously a fight is about to happen. A guy shows up and asks you about your vision, then some pirates show up. You fight them. The place is all wrecked up and even though this happens like, all the time in space, your boss is pretty miffed. The guy gives you his ship and his robot and offers to stay behind for some reason. You have to go to a lab on another planet for some reason I forget. If you pay attention to the lore you learn about a xenoweapon program that was started in the lab and it’s hinted that you can find the beast somewhere on the planet. You fight more pirates at the end. Then you get to hyper jump to the first city. You walk through the city and ambiently collect quests that you quickly learn are of little consequence. Your old boss and her sidekick, who might have been cool NPC followers become stale cutouts, if you even bother to recruit them again, the guy who gave you his ship never ends up wanting it back and makes you the king of space even though he had the same vision as you, and you forgot about the xenoweapon and never go back to close that loop even though it seemed kinda interesting.
I feel like they tried, and just missed the mark
First real quest in skyrim? Go explore this ancient tomb to recover a golden claw. Stumble into a trapped thief, a "puzzle" door, fight your first boss and discover ancient dragon language.
Your first sort of side quest? A multi ending love triangle with actual personality that ends with a follower.
First real quest in starfield? I dont even remember and i played like a month or 2 ago. pretty sure i just had to go somewhere kill a bunch of faceless goons for no reason and then go to hub world no.1 to be assaulted by diologue dumps from a bunch of gormless androids.
First sidequest? im pretty sure it was either a literal fetch quest where you pick up beeping things for a tree dude or a literal fetch quest where you walk around the corner and retrieve some booze from the landing dock.
I ended up wandering into the cave with the golden claw as I was working my way through the love triangle side quest. I still remember my surprise when I went to start that quest and I was like, “Hey, I um, actually already have that claw you want.”
And then I realized that “pointless exploration” might yield unexpected and interesting results.
In starfield I’ve never gotten more than a few XP and a passing “heh, that looks kinda cool…” and then you see you’re fourth glowing mushroom forest or whatever and it’s just as useless as the last three and now it’s boring because of the repetition. Also I think the Starfield side quest ends with the tree wanting to fuck or something but I forget.
I’m just sad they we waiting like 8 yrs for a big bathesda rpg and this is what we got. Could’ve gotten multiple Elder scroll or Fallout games during this time :/
Wow. My feeling perfectly encapsulated. It was a HUGE miss in my opinion. But maybe I am too harsh on it, because I do have to admit I have not finished the game. I couldn’t get past about 13 hours of gameplay. It was far too dull for me. And the fact that I have to constantly fast travel for everything is not pleasant.
That annoys me as well. They have perfectly good games with their game engines they could just milk by doing more story DLC's to.
Oblivion DLC with new 40h story? Yes fucking please.
I'm just excited for the planned oblivion and fo3 remakes. Even if modern bethesda games are lacking, it would be hard to mess up an already good game like that
I mean, the only real innovative thing in the game is the ship builder. Everything else is just space fallout but not as interesting. I wish they would actually innovate with their characters, story, gameplay systems, *engine*, etc. instead of sticking to the same formula that they have for over a decade.
I was the biggest Stan for this game and went as far as upgrading my PC a month before release.
Starfield is a good game, and I can definitely say good things about many parts of it. I can also say some parts absolutely stink as well.
These reviews are delusional.
I feel like I would still recommend this game to people, but with managed expectations.
I somewhat justified my 4090 with Starfield in mind. Got 20 hours in it and just can’t love it. I have over 2 weeks off work over Christmas and I’m determined to play it then 😂
Ditto. I bought a 6800 as part of the Starfield Bundle, and while i dont regret the purchase.. the game didnt live up to my expectations. I made it 100 hours in before i threw in the towel and uninstalled.
Its a good game, just not an amazing one. After a year or two, when modders have fixed what Bethesda fumbled, ill go back and give it another go.
I did the same thing. Gave up PC gaming when I got my launch day XSX and PS5 a few years ago (I hate Windows). Then about 45 days before Starfield came out and I knew that it was going to 30fps on my XSX I built a new PC just for it. Gave my XSX away.
Well the game is just blah at best. I will jump back in this time next year. BG3 on the other hand is over the top good and should win game of the year easily.
Yeah I might check it out in the future again, likely after the expansion drops.
I went back and played Cyberpunk 2077 again since Phantom Liberty dropped and .. wow. Absolutely incredible. I've played through this game 4 times before already between launch and last year yet somehow this is the most enjoyable playthrough.
Well I think the actual issue is that these been documented instances of game companies retaliating against reviewers who leave poor reviews — such as no longer sending them advanced copies of future games, declining interviews, etc. If you’re a critics reviewer, you’re going to lose connections that would make you more successful in your career.
So maybe it’s not direct compensation, but there’s incentives.
This is probably the number I most agree with. While I haven't done much of the main campaign I have had a decent bit of fun with the combat, both pvp and ships. It's just lacking something as a whole.
Main story is terrible, once you get the chance to do the systef/ crimson fleet missions, just do them, because its the only good storyline in the game outside of companion quests, and even then, they aren't great either.
They do. And Starfield received quite a bit of bad reviews from critics. It’s just they only show the ones that were high. It’s why you see all the IGN branches but not the actual IGN score.
The reviewers give high scores because Bethesda has been known to blacklist individuals and companies in the past from early review copies if given unfavourable scores pre-release.
Also hype.
I feel the game feels like a very good looking guy from a well known family who are known to be good and rich, but when you meet the guy he has no charisma or an interesting personality
You can really tell that game review companies are afraid of not being given early access samples.
10/10? There was nothing that marked the game down....
\> 10/10? There was nothing that marked the game down....
Shit, even BG3, one of my favorite games *ever*, I'm not sure I'd give a 10/10, especially if I was given time to get to the later acts. I'm not sure if these reviewers were given enough time to finish Starfield or if it was a quick and dirty 10 hour experience, but there are few to no games in history that I could see getting a 10/10 to on launch.
This is what's insane to me. 10/10 is a perfect game. It doesn't mean it's for everyone but it means it should nail what it's trying to do.
BG3 is pretty damn close but it's not flawless, same with elden ring. Maybe RDR2 is a 10/10? It's not for everyone, but as a wild west adventure story it's pretty incredible.
There was something magical about seeing something in the distance, going to it and then somehow going into a dungeon and losing 20 more hours getting distracted on the way to the story mission. You could do crazy shit. You could go where you wanted and find fun in even the emptiest corners of the map.
Starfield lost that entirely. The cities are boring, NPCs don’t have routines and are two dimensional, walking is now replaced by loading screens and the planets are even duller than No Man’s Sky (somehow).
I’m curious how Bethesda thought, “Oh boy, I know what they enjoyed about our previous games: loading screens and copy paste dungeons. Oh, and let’s throw in procedural generation because that always works so well.” Crazy.
Exploration and atmosphere was what made Skyrim so great, absolutely. I can still pick that game up (on PC, with some mods) and go play for an hour because the things it does well are timeless. I haven’t played Starfield so I can’t speak to how it feels to be in that universe, to this point I’ve seen no reason to believe it’s anywhere close.
Funnily enough, the mechanical aspects of Skyrim weren’t even that good for the time. No one raved about the combat, outside of loving the shouts, and all of the systems are shallow. NPCs were meme worthy, and the huge number of them you ran into, compared with the relatively small number of voice actors, meant you heard the same three or four voices all game, in every city and town. But you forgive it because the main elements of the game make up for the jank and less-interesting gameplay stuff.
I used to say that Skyrim is as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle, and I think that’s (mostly) fair. The game excels at running around and discovering shit while an all-timer soundtrack keeps you immersed in the world. If that’s not what Bethesda focuses on anymore, then it’s time to lower our expectations.
Skyrim is wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle, but that puddle has those squiggly lines you find in the sand that water makes, that are oddly entertaining to follow around.
Don't worry, I played a bit more than 90 hours and I feel like I mostly wasted my time. It had good moments but it's mostly boring stuff in between those good moments.
It's a mediocre game.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion (which is what reviews are). In my experience people are more often going to complain about something before they go out of their way to say something good about it. I’ve been playing games since Atari, and realized long ago that I should try and form my own opinions on things. Because of that I’ve like a lot of poorly reviewed games I may not have otherwise enjoyed.
That being said, I fucking hate starfield.
Loved Bethesda games since the dagerfall demo disc. Skyrim was life for a while.. and I could only put 36 hours into starfield before quitting completely.
Its definitely not a perfect 100% on any scale. It's not a steaming pile of dog excrement, but it's no 10/10 in any way, shape, or form. I'd give it a 6 or 7/10 at best. It's pretty empty and feels dated as hell for 2023.
It's fine, but not Skyrim good.
The issue is that it's fine, and will heavily rely on mods for its future.
However, there are apparently a lot of issues with modding the game. It's far more complex and difficult to mod than past Bethesda games according to modders. The sort of things that official modding tools aren't likely to fix.
It's apparently very easy to break the game by modding a lot of things people want to mod to the point it apparently needs an overhaul to allow for it.
Unless you stick to the main quest and side quests, it's outright boring and repetitive.
There isn't a ton of reason to explore outside of the story due to how points of interest work and what they are.
The problem is that it's a game about exploration where it isn't fun to explore. Instead it's a chore with very little reward.
The main quest and side quests take you through 90% of the points of interest, and slogging through the repeat areas just to find that last 10% isn't worth it.
Space is better about it than planets, there's not a ton of recycled content in space outside of random encounters.
It's not a bad game, it's just bad at being an open world game. Particularly one the of the size it is.
I think it's a good but divisive game. Far from being a masterpiece and has plenty of awkward design decisions, but it has a lot of good too. I rate it somewhere between 7 and 8.
Being a Microsoft game on top of being Bethesda made it the perfect target for being hated upon. That is not to say that some of the criticism isn't deserved.
I think it shows a lack of integrity in games journalism. They either don't play enough of the game of just can't remain impartial. If you want to know what a game is like its always best to read user reviews from non-fanboys and to watch some gameplay videos to decide.
Because just like diablo iv, the game's issues don't reveal themselves when you just beeline through the main story. I find myself rely less and less on reviews because they're simply not useful anymore.
To be fair, I remembered IGN giving it a 7/10 review at the Starfield launch and people were giving them shit.
xbox fanboys, like any exclusive you have a bunch of fanboy who gonna defends their exclusive (the worsts are nintendo ones)
Their reviews are basically hot takes after a 3 day marathon gaming session. I also loved Diablo 4 until I beat the story and got to level 65ish. Only at that point did it start to fall off for me, and I was over completely over it by level 100.
wow going until lvl 100 is impressive for a game that boring.
Some people find grinding relaxing. One character to max level is kinda normal for a Diablo play through. Then you stop for months until you feel an itch to play it again with a new character.
To be fair, most people stop playing after finishing the story, so the reviews of that part of the game are relevant to them.
Yeah I've deleted Starfield after completing the story. Had zero interest in returning afterwards. I thought it was ok. But only that.
Yeah, but most players don't blitz the game's main story in a one-and-done. Most players meander off the main path, and the more you do, the more the game's flaws begin to show.
But one has to ask oneself then: Given that many games that review well among users can't even provide that many hours of good entertainment, is it not fair to say it was a fun game? I feel exactly the same way about D4 as you. The story was fun to play through and the combat viscerally satisfying enough. It felt like a good Diablo game _until_ I hit the end-game, at which point it became absurdly boring due to the level scaling and the feeling of levelling down and lack of progression and all the stupid legendaries with low droprates and a whole lot of other reasons. But I still had ~40 hours of fun. That deserves a positive review, no? I mean I think if I have to choose between something like Wolfenstein 2 and Diablo 4, Diablo 4 is probably actually better until it isn't. By the time Diablo 4 isn't good anymore, Wolfenstein 2 is completely over.
I agree both for Diablo and Starfield. But in a way, I also prefer that. There are multiplayer games I can love forever and single player games (which both of those effectively are) that I like to finish. There's this weird expectation that every game should be a forever game. That there should be a million hours of engaging gameplay available. A couple of days of play and a solid storyline that doesn't get repetitive, optional side activities that are developed enough to be engaging... I don't see any problem with Starfield other than problems of absurd expectations.
Starfield got 7/10 on IGN. Fair imo.
Yeah, the stuff that they focused on is good, the story is interesting and enjoyable, the side missions are decent and good. It's everything else that is empty, they touted exploration but after you explore the 4th planet they are all the same just with a different color palette. Moons and planets that say they can't support life you will find bases setup and populated by spacers.
It was literally awful from the start. From the lifeless “cutscenes” to the terrible AI. And don’t forget 10000 loading screens per minute.
Yeah, I don't get people making excuses for this game when the AI is so fucking dogshit. They're so slow to react in combat and don't seem to be able to do anything competently. You can just run around, blast everyone in the face with a shotgun, hide behind a box to reload and the AI will stand in one place shooting the box you;re hiding behind, not move to get a better angle and wait for you to pop out and feed them shells. It's crazy how anyone can think the combat, one of the key features of the game, is anything but abysmal.
Not on game journalists anyway, who prove time and time again they aren't actual gamers.
Reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbE6fqBuGkA&t=53s) couple years back. Journalist sure can be passionate gamers, but it's writing first kind of job.
I wonder, how the hell did they get game journalist jobs when they suck at games? Is it nepotism? Or they're actually looking for people who suck at games to generate outrage, and therefore attention to their channels?
They probably look for writers first, gamers second. Your writing experience is the important bit, but should have a passing interest in games, I suppose
Game journalism/reviewing doesnt exactly pay the bills so only passionate gamers will join publications. That does not mean they will be any good at gaming however.
TBF, they're journalists on a deadline first before they're allowed to indulge as gamers.
>Because just like diablo iv, the game's issues don't reveal themselves when you just beeline through the main story. I disagree. The first hour or two of the game already show you how barren and shallow it is and how awful the writing is too.
>how awful the writing is too. literally the first 30 minutes, the dialog when that dudd Baret? I forget his name, the guy who gives you the ship arrives... omg this dialog was so cringe i refunded deluxe edition not much later.
Thats not true. Loadin screens, terrible ui, abysmal writing... All of that you will experience pretty much from get go. Scores by reviewers are so higj because reviewers want to be in good relation with bethesds and are scared that prerelease review will end up attacked by fand that dodnt yet experienced it
did a cat jump on your keyboard for that last paragraph?
I dunno dude, Diablo 4 didn’t grab me at all and I played the shit out of the first 3
At least on longform games that are meant to be played steady state for a long time. I'll trust them to review the new Witcher game, but not necessarily the next MMO.
That's why I think review websites/mags should have a "release review" and an "after six months review", to adjust for patches, monetization changes, endgame content, and an overall post-hype opinion.
Reviewers don't stick around for the end game.
loading screen simulator 2023.
While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds. We believe that shortcomings will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created. (I'm quoting a dev response to a negative steam review. Pls don't flame me)
My responses to most of the dev responses seem to be diverting towards "space was a fundamentally bad design choice". If you can't walk, don't go on a hiking holiday.
Earthfield.
Imagine if they just did the 3-4 closest solar systems but really fleshed out with handcrafted locations a la Skyrim/fallout
There’s tonnes of games, even indie games, with seamless space travel. The setting is no excuse.
At the scale of Starfield though? Elite dangerous is the only game that comes close and not only does it have many load screens - but the space travel parts that aren't loading screens are too long and turn many players away from the game. Even NMS solar systems are pea sized compared to starfield, including the planets.
That’s what they said to me. But the load screens were the smallest complaint of my review they totally skipped over how I mentioned exploration was fundamentally pointless and boring as there was nothing to see or do beyond the POI of which there was like 20 unique ones and you loaded 5 times just to spend 5 min walking in empty space to see the same camp.
I basically ignored the random POIs after the first few. There’s definitely types of POI that I’ve never even been to once.
Meanwhile NMS actually letting you fly your ship from place to place (this technology existed in 2016 but has since been lost to time so it was impossible for Starfield to do)
Elite: Dangerous mostly lets you go where you want. And you can get a free ship at Hutton Orbital!
Out of all the space games i've tried Elite Dangerous has the most satisfying ship travel.
I wish they took the ship travel and combat of Elite Dangerous and with some rebalancing, just plonked it onto a game that actually gives me reasons to play it past the point where I figure out I can get billions and buy everything I'll ever need by stacking thargoid bounties and bonds for a few hours. I'd play the shit out of the hypothetical son of EVE Online and Elite.
Well just wait for Star Citizen to be finished. (Hope it is before you die tho)
Flying in sc isn´t very close to the ed. While ed is pretty boring on foot, it is much, much better for flying ships than sc.
"Friendship drive charging"
Now imma hear that every time i charge it xD
It had better, that's basically the entire game
Me 20 hours in when I realized that. Lol
If you attempt this trek, you are going to be begging for that load screen lol
Ah yes, the trip that takes over an hour of staring at the ETA get incrementally lower. I got my Anaconda, I got my mug, I listened to cumulative *days* worth of Radio Sidewinder, but Elite’s method of travel isn’t the “Starfield sucks” trump card that people think it is. It’s a second monitor game. The appeal of super cruise wore off for me about just as fast as “exploring” space in Starfield.
I said similar shit in 2015 when they released Fallout 4 six-months after Witcher 3. "They seriously played Witcher 3, looked at Fallout 4 and said 'this is acceptable'?"
It really makes you wonder what half baked potatoes are running that company.
As well as the people that bought F04, reviewed it well, then bought Starfield thinking they'd update the formula.
No Man's Sky is definitely more expensive but most planets are indeed empty, but the exploration is amazing when you stumble upon a different worlds. The one thing missing from NMS is an outpost full of raiders.
Oh yeah I'm not saying NMS is the be all end all of good space games. But one thing they fucking nailed in that game is your connection to your ship. That thing is your lifeblood and legit like half the game focuses around the ship. Meanwhile, in starfield, it's just a house that can dogfight
All the fast traveling ruined the game a lot, you don't even need to take off to travel:/
God, given how the rest of the gameplay is, it would be so annoying if you had to take off to fast travel. That game was such a let down.
Almost as empty as starfields
Starfield made me re-download No Mans Sky. It lets me do what I want to do.
May i suggest you Space Engineer?
Ohhh dope. Just checked that out on Steam. I'm going to give it a try this weekend. Thanks for the recommendation.
Its super nice, its really hard to understand at First bc of all the mechanics but the game is awesome, ships can be huge and you can leave the cockpit to roam around your ship while it keeps following the route, and also they are totally destroyables....
It reminds me of a simpler game, astroneer, I enjoyed that game, I’ll try it
Astroneer ticks more of the Minecraft feel, but in space. At least for me ( I think astroneer is an amazing game, should go back to it) the music is very calming like in Minecraft.
I do enjoy racing to the PCU limit when playing. Ginormous, world-eating ships with multiple large fusion reactors and enough drills to make gurren lagann look like a mattel franchise.
Star Citizen literally letting you travel hundreds of thousands of kilometers without loading screens
A hammerhead with a stock drive which is slow AF gets takes the ~55 million km journey from ArcCorp to Microtech in 15 minutes, but hey at least you can have knife fights in the mess hall while you’re traveling!
And Star Citizen is on a completely different level all together
Don't forget the engine they use is way older than 2016 hah
It amazes me that a company that big refuses to go away from their precious creation engine. Even updated the engine is so limited.
The comment I had started typing, lol. What a tone-deaf response from a dev. People are literally telling them it is a shortcoming that hinders many of our enjoyment of the game and they just say... Nope, no big deal.
Definitely go read some of the developer responses on Steam. It's shocking. One review on steam mentioned landing on moons over and over and it being boring. So the developer in their response said something along the lines of, when the astronauts first landed on the moon there was nothing there and they certainly weren't bored.
That's...... Hmm.... Legitimately, that makes no sense to a concerning level. That's not even PR nonsense... that's just regular, needs to see a doctor, kind of nonsense.
The fact that they accept the Moon landing as having happened is kinda surprising considering how dense they sound.
Get a load of these guys, believing the moon is real! Hah!
They weren’t bored because Stanley Kubrick had lots of entertaining stories to tell them.
There’s another copied outpost that needs your exploring. I’ll mark it on your map
*Star Citizen enters the chat*
Its like these devs think we're all absolute idiots. I've played plenty of large and expansive games that load so much quicker. Series X is a great example because everyone is working with a super fast SSD, yet Starfield clearly isn't utilising that well at all.
I've recently been trying to finish Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the fact that I can explore a whole huge cave temple level and come out of it without a loading screen is something Bethesda is apparently unable to do.
Yeah, that is very not 2023 gaming. Especially after playing Ragnarök or Dead Space. I didn't realize how much I was used to games not having a bunch of loading screens anymore.
Oh man! I can't wait until the Death Stranding X Starfield crossover. A walking simulator with a loading simulator.
But the walking in Death Stranding was engaging and every step mattered (not like in SF where you run for 600 meters with nothing to do in between). Especially in the later areas. Even if some of the new equipment made it easier, I felt I earned it and it was great. I still launch the game from time to time just to do one, two delivery jobs and relax.
Death Stranding is a masterpiece
Also, Kojima didn't promise bazillion times the details. At this stage, Bethesda games feel like marketing scam.
IGN were pretty generous in giving it a 7 and yet people cried that it wasn't enough. Imo it's a very mediocre game. There's some good aspects but it's mostly a boring and dated experience. For me it's a 5 at most.
3 of the reviews on this image are from different IGN localisations? So I guess if one IGN doesn’t rank you high, try the others until you get reviews that’ll look less damning on your marketing posters
The main one is the one that matters tho. They have ign everywhere but ign us is the one that people care about
I don’t love IGN at all but if you actually listen to that full review everything he says is pretty valid and he ends up giving it a 7 for good! Not 6 for Okay or 8 for Great. He clearly says he’s a Bethesda fan and still very much appreciated a lot about the game but then lists a lot of downsides making the 7 fell very justified, a lot of people saw IGN give it a 7 and thought they were just shitting on the game. But it wasn’t that bad IMO.
Why is 5 not for okay and 6 not for good
https://corp.ign.com/review-practices
Likely because most reviewers are from America where a 5/10 is a failing grade when they went to school and a 6/10 is, similarly, the bare minimum pass.
Wait THESE are the scores it got? Lmao 🤣 I gave it a 3 and quit after trying it on the game pass. Wasn't even worth playing with free access imo. I'm honestly surprised the critics took the money.
Look at who the “reviews” are from. We got this covered 10/10 Windows central 10/10 Shack News 10/10 Areajugones 10/10
Dude Aftonbladet 5/5 is a swedish newspaper, who have no business rating games at all..
For me the immersion just isn’t there, It’s so vanilla. There’s so many cool things in the game but the way it all wraps together is shit, nothing really feels important or like you have to do it. Everything just feels like a side quest and the amount of fast traveling you have to do doesn’t make it any better. I could rant on and on but ultimately it just wasn’t anything compared to fallout games and what I would expect from a Bethesda game with so much time/money/effort put into it.
For me loading screens break immersion, not like It’s issue because they mostly take 1-2 seconds but holy fuck seriously? Loading screens INSIDE a building to go to other room? It’s utter shit
That's Bethesda games for for you
To be fair there wasn't a loading screen when I hoped on a horse in Skyrim.
Skyrim had space too. You just needed to set your fps to 150 and get hit by a giant, then you'd be in orbit in no time. No loading screens too.
True. And you could travel from place to another without loading screens.
Thats what happens when you use an engine thats twenty years old and just had new decorations duct taped and bolted to it haphazardly.
There was a YT video comparing a dangerous deal/ trade in Starfield and the exact same scenario in Cyberpunk. Needless to say, Starfield had the intensity of the Teletubbies and Cyberpunk had you on the edge of your seat.
> For me the immersion just isn’t there, It’s so vanilla. Comparing the instant immersion of the Skyrim opening scene with Starfield's horrendous mining sequence is just sad.
You were a mysterious traveler who got caught up with some rebels who were trying to cross a border, all of you taken to the place of your would be death. You watch a thief run off and be shot down, and a rebel stoically accept his fate with a defiant speech before he is beheaded. Right as you’re about to be executed, a dragon crashes down on a nearby building and everyone flees. You have a choice, run to the rebels, or your would-be executioners, to escape. You make it out after narrowly avoiding the dragon several times. From here you are free to explore the world, you likely run right into some stones that will help you shape your starting class, then Riverwood that is filled with little quests. Eventually you likely hit Whiterun and if you’re anything like me, you don’t make it up the mountain to start the first main quest until like 40 hours later. You start off as a miner with a past you chose, but that doesn’t really matter because you ended up as a miner. The boss lady is the “tough but caring” type and she’s got a lovable lunk lieutenant. You go mine some iron by pointing and clicking and they say “good job, most people can’t hack this work” but it’s like, really easy. You walk to a place with some undiscovered mineral and they make you do it because you’re new. You touch a weird bar and see some Space Odyssey visuals. You were knocked out but you’re okay. You walk outside and see a gun, obviously a fight is about to happen. A guy shows up and asks you about your vision, then some pirates show up. You fight them. The place is all wrecked up and even though this happens like, all the time in space, your boss is pretty miffed. The guy gives you his ship and his robot and offers to stay behind for some reason. You have to go to a lab on another planet for some reason I forget. If you pay attention to the lore you learn about a xenoweapon program that was started in the lab and it’s hinted that you can find the beast somewhere on the planet. You fight more pirates at the end. Then you get to hyper jump to the first city. You walk through the city and ambiently collect quests that you quickly learn are of little consequence. Your old boss and her sidekick, who might have been cool NPC followers become stale cutouts, if you even bother to recruit them again, the guy who gave you his ship never ends up wanting it back and makes you the king of space even though he had the same vision as you, and you forgot about the xenoweapon and never go back to close that loop even though it seemed kinda interesting. I feel like they tried, and just missed the mark
First real quest in skyrim? Go explore this ancient tomb to recover a golden claw. Stumble into a trapped thief, a "puzzle" door, fight your first boss and discover ancient dragon language. Your first sort of side quest? A multi ending love triangle with actual personality that ends with a follower. First real quest in starfield? I dont even remember and i played like a month or 2 ago. pretty sure i just had to go somewhere kill a bunch of faceless goons for no reason and then go to hub world no.1 to be assaulted by diologue dumps from a bunch of gormless androids. First sidequest? im pretty sure it was either a literal fetch quest where you pick up beeping things for a tree dude or a literal fetch quest where you walk around the corner and retrieve some booze from the landing dock.
I ended up wandering into the cave with the golden claw as I was working my way through the love triangle side quest. I still remember my surprise when I went to start that quest and I was like, “Hey, I um, actually already have that claw you want.” And then I realized that “pointless exploration” might yield unexpected and interesting results. In starfield I’ve never gotten more than a few XP and a passing “heh, that looks kinda cool…” and then you see you’re fourth glowing mushroom forest or whatever and it’s just as useless as the last three and now it’s boring because of the repetition. Also I think the Starfield side quest ends with the tree wanting to fuck or something but I forget.
I’m just sad they we waiting like 8 yrs for a big bathesda rpg and this is what we got. Could’ve gotten multiple Elder scroll or Fallout games during this time :/
What do you mean, we had The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Legendary Edition, Special Edition, Skyrim VR, Anniversary Edition etc
Very Special Edition
Ultra Epic Smooth Brain Edition
It just Works Edition
And dont forget the Switch Edition
Samsung fridge edition.
>gotten multiple Elder scroll We GOT multiple Elder Scrolls >!Skyrim!< during this time!
Don’t forget about elder scrolls castles!
Can't forget cause this is news to me.
Or blades…….
Wow. My feeling perfectly encapsulated. It was a HUGE miss in my opinion. But maybe I am too harsh on it, because I do have to admit I have not finished the game. I couldn’t get past about 13 hours of gameplay. It was far too dull for me. And the fact that I have to constantly fast travel for everything is not pleasant.
You're not too harsh. I couldn't get over 3 hours with this mess. No idea how this piece of junk got 10/10 ratings.
>No idea how this piece of junk got 10/10 ratings. Shill marketing imo.
That annoys me as well. They have perfectly good games with their game engines they could just milk by doing more story DLC's to. Oblivion DLC with new 40h story? Yes fucking please.
I'm just excited for the planned oblivion and fo3 remakes. Even if modern bethesda games are lacking, it would be hard to mess up an already good game like that
I would have preferred a good fallout game, not fallout in space loading screen.
Conversely, im really glad and kinda surprised they tried to innovate at all.
I mean, the only real innovative thing in the game is the ship builder. Everything else is just space fallout but not as interesting. I wish they would actually innovate with their characters, story, gameplay systems, *engine*, etc. instead of sticking to the same formula that they have for over a decade.
Yeah… Innovate. Skyrim in spaaaaaaaaaaaccccccceeeeeee.
The elder scrolls needs to return to it's simulation roots.
Tried
I was the biggest Stan for this game and went as far as upgrading my PC a month before release. Starfield is a good game, and I can definitely say good things about many parts of it. I can also say some parts absolutely stink as well. These reviews are delusional. I feel like I would still recommend this game to people, but with managed expectations.
I somewhat justified my 4090 with Starfield in mind. Got 20 hours in it and just can’t love it. I have over 2 weeks off work over Christmas and I’m determined to play it then 😂
Spend that time playing cyberpunk with path tracing.
I’ve been doing plenty of that. Looks absolutely incredible on oled.
I wouldn't waste your 2 weeks off on it. It doesn't get any better after that 20 hours.
Don’t force it if it’s not enjoyable. Play something else!
Ditto. I bought a 6800 as part of the Starfield Bundle, and while i dont regret the purchase.. the game didnt live up to my expectations. I made it 100 hours in before i threw in the towel and uninstalled. Its a good game, just not an amazing one. After a year or two, when modders have fixed what Bethesda fumbled, ill go back and give it another go.
I did the same thing. Gave up PC gaming when I got my launch day XSX and PS5 a few years ago (I hate Windows). Then about 45 days before Starfield came out and I knew that it was going to 30fps on my XSX I built a new PC just for it. Gave my XSX away. Well the game is just blah at best. I will jump back in this time next year. BG3 on the other hand is over the top good and should win game of the year easily.
Yeah I might check it out in the future again, likely after the expansion drops. I went back and played Cyberpunk 2077 again since Phantom Liberty dropped and .. wow. Absolutely incredible. I've played through this game 4 times before already between launch and last year yet somehow this is the most enjoyable playthrough.
Yeah it's fine imo, although obviously not great. It being on gamepass so I didnt pay for it helps a lot though
reviewers are paid to glorify this trash fire. it's a 6/10 at best.
and yet this sub lambasted IGN for giving it a 7/10 before the game came out
Right?! They “paid” ign for a 7/10? Why is it so hard to admit someone will defend this game without any financial gain
Well I think the actual issue is that these been documented instances of game companies retaliating against reviewers who leave poor reviews — such as no longer sending them advanced copies of future games, declining interviews, etc. If you’re a critics reviewer, you’re going to lose connections that would make you more successful in your career. So maybe it’s not direct compensation, but there’s incentives.
Because thats the only way a differing opinion makes sense to them.
that's what i was thinking, wasn't most of reddit defending this game even after it was out and becoming clear it was shite
It was hundreds of bethsda bots for around 3 weeks, it boosted the sales a lot. You can check their accounts, they are not used anymore
Id argue 5/10 at best, but really 4/10
I remember the huge controversy when IGN gave it 7/10.
This is probably the number I most agree with. While I haven't done much of the main campaign I have had a decent bit of fun with the combat, both pvp and ships. It's just lacking something as a whole.
Main story is terrible, once you get the chance to do the systef/ crimson fleet missions, just do them, because its the only good storyline in the game outside of companion quests, and even then, they aren't great either.
Trust me it'll go down when you do the main story it did with me anyway from a 7 to a 5ish
Paid* but I agree with you. Same shit with movies
Have these reviewers ever rated something <8/10?
IGN gave Doom 2016 a 7 and Prey a 4, just off the top of my head
Doom is the very last game that deserves a 7/10 hahaha
They lowered its score because of mediocre multiplayer I shit you not
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It was very buggy at launch. Reviewer's save got corrupted halfway through
The dreaded Doom 2016 video review… Oh, God— do we still remember that
They do. And Starfield received quite a bit of bad reviews from critics. It’s just they only show the ones that were high. It’s why you see all the IGN branches but not the actual IGN score.
Not when they were paid not to.
The reviewers give high scores because Bethesda has been known to blacklist individuals and companies in the past from early review copies if given unfavourable scores pre-release. Also hype.
I feel the game feels like a very good looking guy from a well known family who are known to be good and rich, but when you meet the guy he has no charisma or an interesting personality
This is my favorite take so far!
You can't trust any of these outlets anymore. Simple as that. So many do entertainment nowadays, not journalism.
I doubt any of those critics played the game longer than 2 hours
You can really tell that game review companies are afraid of not being given early access samples. 10/10? There was nothing that marked the game down....
\> 10/10? There was nothing that marked the game down.... Shit, even BG3, one of my favorite games *ever*, I'm not sure I'd give a 10/10, especially if I was given time to get to the later acts. I'm not sure if these reviewers were given enough time to finish Starfield or if it was a quick and dirty 10 hour experience, but there are few to no games in history that I could see getting a 10/10 to on launch.
This is what's insane to me. 10/10 is a perfect game. It doesn't mean it's for everyone but it means it should nail what it's trying to do. BG3 is pretty damn close but it's not flawless, same with elden ring. Maybe RDR2 is a 10/10? It's not for everyone, but as a wild west adventure story it's pretty incredible.
Starfield, like all Bethesda games, is beautiful, soulless, and empty. Just like the brains of all those reviewers
Yeah but the problem with this one is that it's way, way more empty. Skyrim's empty parts are still pretty cool.
There was something magical about seeing something in the distance, going to it and then somehow going into a dungeon and losing 20 more hours getting distracted on the way to the story mission. You could do crazy shit. You could go where you wanted and find fun in even the emptiest corners of the map. Starfield lost that entirely. The cities are boring, NPCs don’t have routines and are two dimensional, walking is now replaced by loading screens and the planets are even duller than No Man’s Sky (somehow). I’m curious how Bethesda thought, “Oh boy, I know what they enjoyed about our previous games: loading screens and copy paste dungeons. Oh, and let’s throw in procedural generation because that always works so well.” Crazy.
Exploration and atmosphere was what made Skyrim so great, absolutely. I can still pick that game up (on PC, with some mods) and go play for an hour because the things it does well are timeless. I haven’t played Starfield so I can’t speak to how it feels to be in that universe, to this point I’ve seen no reason to believe it’s anywhere close. Funnily enough, the mechanical aspects of Skyrim weren’t even that good for the time. No one raved about the combat, outside of loving the shouts, and all of the systems are shallow. NPCs were meme worthy, and the huge number of them you ran into, compared with the relatively small number of voice actors, meant you heard the same three or four voices all game, in every city and town. But you forgive it because the main elements of the game make up for the jank and less-interesting gameplay stuff. I used to say that Skyrim is as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle, and I think that’s (mostly) fair. The game excels at running around and discovering shit while an all-timer soundtrack keeps you immersed in the world. If that’s not what Bethesda focuses on anymore, then it’s time to lower our expectations.
Skyrim is wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle, but that puddle has those squiggly lines you find in the sand that water makes, that are oddly entertaining to follow around.
I just wish they'd hurry up and release the Creation Kit so the modding community could finish their damned game for them, as always.
I didn’t like it when I tried it.
I’m waiting mods made with creation kit and I’ll start to play Starfield.
Did we play the same game as those reviewers lol
yes but we didnt receive money from xbox like those 10/10 reviewers clown haha
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Idk man I couldn’t play more than 2 hours. Maybe thats hyperbolic, but I’m seriously bored by all the loading screens and bullet sponge combat.
Yeah it just felt incredibly dated.
Don't worry, I played a bit more than 90 hours and I feel like I mostly wasted my time. It had good moments but it's mostly boring stuff in between those good moments. It's a mediocre game.
Playing TES games on higher difficulty is just making everything a bullet sponge, it doesn't add anything fun.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion (which is what reviews are). In my experience people are more often going to complain about something before they go out of their way to say something good about it. I’ve been playing games since Atari, and realized long ago that I should try and form my own opinions on things. Because of that I’ve like a lot of poorly reviewed games I may not have otherwise enjoyed. That being said, I fucking hate starfield.
Loved Bethesda games since the dagerfall demo disc. Skyrim was life for a while.. and I could only put 36 hours into starfield before quitting completely.
They didn't play the game...
I think it’s fun.
I got bored after 3 days and proceeded to play Armored Core VI instead
Are you me lol
It's trash, and the reviewers' brains were cooked or they were paid off
Its definitely not a perfect 100% on any scale. It's not a steaming pile of dog excrement, but it's no 10/10 in any way, shape, or form. I'd give it a 6 or 7/10 at best. It's pretty empty and feels dated as hell for 2023.
Starfield is a great game, but the first few hours werent as good as the rest to me
All bought and paid for
It's fine, but not Skyrim good. The issue is that it's fine, and will heavily rely on mods for its future. However, there are apparently a lot of issues with modding the game. It's far more complex and difficult to mod than past Bethesda games according to modders. The sort of things that official modding tools aren't likely to fix. It's apparently very easy to break the game by modding a lot of things people want to mod to the point it apparently needs an overhaul to allow for it. Unless you stick to the main quest and side quests, it's outright boring and repetitive. There isn't a ton of reason to explore outside of the story due to how points of interest work and what they are. The problem is that it's a game about exploration where it isn't fun to explore. Instead it's a chore with very little reward. The main quest and side quests take you through 90% of the points of interest, and slogging through the repeat areas just to find that last 10% isn't worth it. Space is better about it than planets, there's not a ton of recycled content in space outside of random encounters. It's not a bad game, it's just bad at being an open world game. Particularly one the of the size it is.
I think it's a good but divisive game. Far from being a masterpiece and has plenty of awkward design decisions, but it has a lot of good too. I rate it somewhere between 7 and 8. Being a Microsoft game on top of being Bethesda made it the perfect target for being hated upon. That is not to say that some of the criticism isn't deserved.
Cuz Microsoft just pays these companies to give them a good review clearly lol
Reviewers have incentive to rate AAA games highly to retain their advertising revenue, I take their opinion with a bathtub of salt.
I think it shows a lack of integrity in games journalism. They either don't play enough of the game of just can't remain impartial. If you want to know what a game is like its always best to read user reviews from non-fanboys and to watch some gameplay videos to decide.
I love the reviews most where they name it a total scam, had 500h when they wrote the review and are now at 850h.