Death From Above

Built a Class C monster. The first time I encountered spacers in this ship they literally fled, screaming something about the Mantis. lol. Maybe that's because I overwrote the Razorleaf for this, but still. They're not wrong.

I ventured around with both Lin and Keller for a while. Lin has demolitions so I gave her a grenade at least just for the endless mirth of Bethesda AI chucking grenades. Keller has nothing going for him combat skills wise but at least he gives you random minerals I guess. Honestly, and I know I'm quite positive about this game, just pretty much anything to avoid spending more time with Barrett. That guy annoys me, a lot.

I did build one very basic outpost on my first character but never did much with it after that. I watched a couple Youtube videos and I definitely missed out on some stuff that way, maybe I'll do a high Science tree character at some point just to focus that. I'm honestly baffled by how much hate the new lockpicking minigame has gotten online. Personally I actually think it's a perfectly fine little bit of puzzling that makes me pay attention, but doesn't stress my stupid ass brain too far. Weightlfting 4 is honestly totally worth it just for the stagger protection. It's an S tier perk. There are a lot of enemies that will rush you with Rescue Axes and whatnot and it's one of the few combat scenarios that actually gets gnarly. Also virtually all the wildlife uses melee so avoiding 50% of staggers is a serious nerf to them.

I spent way too much time decorating that shitty little appartment you can buy in The Well.

I've been fooling around with Fallout 4 which I've never played, since I am loving Starfield. And man even with a ton of mods, this game still feels like Starfield in slow motion. It's not the worst thing, but the start is so slow it's glacial.

On the Mantis suit, it does roll a lot of the bonuses randomly for each run. My first character got a +40 carry capacity and my second one didn't, for example.

The credits on MK 1 are like 10 minutes long, there is literally no reason for even a AAA fighting game to require that many people on payroll. The industry has been out of control for a while and at some point it can't go on in that direction.

Man, I skipped it on my first character but the Ryujin questline is fucking great. Anyway, here's Neon at night in the rain.

I lied, I started a second character No escape

9 is really good, like one of the few Final Fantasy games that people actually should bother with if we're being honest.

I mind bringing in a 49 year old with hype a lot less here than in some other places in the past, mainly because say what you will about Tony Khan but he seems keenly aware about trying to keep the Seniors Tour and the World Title separate. It's not a WCW situation where it buries the stuff that actually matters long term.

I'm not really over the moon myself about the video game industry following film into the Remake Era but at least in gaming there's some (very minor) justification of bringing certain old games back so they actually work properly on modern hardware, which is at least cool. Demon's Souls remaster good, even if it's criminal we didn't get a PC release. The Dark Souls remaster basically having slightly better lighting and nothing else, not so much.

Rolled credits myself tonight and I think most of this is fair. Honestly my feelings haven't changed much as I went through it. The quest design is good, and I'd say the best quests in this game are as good as anything quest wise Bethesda has ever done. Ship design is good if a little fiddly. Outpost management is bad and useless. A lot of the exploration feels uneccessary and not worth it. I think the game does a great job of giving us the best of Bethesda tour even if it honestly has 0 real innovation. I really enjoy what the game has to offer (and I now have a real itch to dive into the Bethesda fallouts which I've never actually played), but it won't win game of the year in the same year Baldur's Gate came out because people really, really love bad d20 systems that require save scumming to advance certain skills. What can you do. As much as I loved Skyrim, the fact there are so many quests you can pass with talking and speechcraft skills is a mssive step back in the right direction for what Bethesda does best. Very curious what they do with the DLC. There are a lot of options with potential fleet or outpost management, digging deeper into the alien side of things like a big game alien hunter thing, maybe a chapter that delves more into House Va'Ruun, or more piracy would be very welcome. Mods are going to be batshit crazy for this game in time. I've had shockingly few serious bug issues for a Bethesda title (one quest jammed and I fixed it through console, one other quest jammed and fixed with save reloads, one follower of minimal importance that just, uh, vanished), or a 2020's AAA title in general for that matter. I actually feel pretty safe saying this is the cleanest release Bethesda have done on that front which is at least promising that Elder Scrolls 6 might not be a pile of code held together by string. The game did commit a couple of gaming cardinal sins: escort sections with escorts that walk at like a third of your walking speed, and also a whole planet built around gambling where you can't gamble. Modders are going to fix that, but come on. I ended my run with almost 500K credits and nothing to do with them really. I do think the game lacks for "evil" options and in a lot of places played it very safe and sterile, but the writing in general is good enough to keep the engagement with the world. I also have a ton of other games to play so I might put this down more or less until DLC launches, but I look forward to it. I'd give the game a solid 8/10 personally. I don't regret pre ordering it, I enjoyed the 75 hours or so I've put into it, and I look forward to exploring it again when the time's right.

You can also go to (at least some) doctors to remove the empath trait if you want, though I don't know why you'd want to do this unless you were playing as a complete scumbag, since for the most part I've found empath to be basically free buffs when you do stuff your companion likes. On shielded cargo holds: you really have to go all or nothing. I tried attaching one to my ship and it basically doesn't do anything because of all the unshielded holds, which seems weird to me but that's how it works.

I think I just find it specifically weird that pickles are considered a complete weirdo pizza topping. I dunno, cutting up some baby dill pickles is a pretty easy way to (white person alert) jazz up your average grocery store pepperoni pizza, that's all I'm saying.

I can say this safely without posting any real spoilers: there's a quest that's part of main story fairly late on called Entangled which is probably the single best quest I've played in the game. Super creative and interesting design. I'm not sure what I did to trigger the Crimson Fleet stuff. I don't actually think I committed a crime, although the game's script implied I had. Maybe it's an auto-trigger for Space Scoundrel at some point based on your past? Anyway that's a great questline too. Honestly, if Bethesda Quests are your jam you probably love this game, and if planetary exploration is your jam probably not so much. But I really have enjoyed this game thouroughly. The amount of hate it's gotten online is absolutely bonkers to me. I think my biggest gripe at this point is that outposts seem completely optional and don't really have any particular use that I can see. I'd bet anything one of the major DLC's will address that though.

I ran into a bugged quest that I could only advance with a console command so I think I'm finished with getting achievements, oh well.

Where I come from that's called a good Saturday night

Yeah that was an easy night's work for Zhang. Honestly Joyce looked pretty worried from the second Zhang started throwing and never really troubled him. Why he came in 25 pounds heavier I cannot begin to fathom.

This seems to be more than enough firepower to carry me indefiinitely at this point. And before someone gets mad online the mass is just me pulling all my crafting materials out of my infinite chest at the Lodge then waddling back there after I'm done with the crafting benches.

There's so much to do in this game it's just stupid. I get how if you wanted a more NMS kind of planetary exploration this game might not be your jam, but I'm really enjoying just doing the absolute mountain of quests. I also built myself a Class B ship, though I ran into an error it took me forever to figure out the problem was that the boarding area needs to be underneath so the ladder attaches to the ship properly lol.

So here's my Steam review of MK1, spoilered for size. I stand by all of that as fair criticism of mostly strange feature stripping, but I will say that the more I've played the more I've enjoyed the actual fights. The game feels really tight and I actually really, really enjoy it when you get matches against someone on your relative level. It's a simpler game than MK 11 but that's not a bad thing at all for, you know, normal people.

I can't stand Fury so my interest in it is minimal. Even if he somehow manages to get knocked down which I doubt, the Wilder fights make me think they'll give him a 25 count to get up anyway.

I suppose I can only throw so much shade since when I was a boy I had the Game Boy version of Mortal Kombat that is notoriously shit, and I still enjoyed it a lot.

Why would anyone expect a current gen high end game to work properly on the Switch? Christ I have no idea why any third party even puts games out for that thing.