The Gaming Desk finished playing the space opera, Starfield. Total of 180 hours since December 20. It had its good moments and it had frustrating moments, and it had more moments of tedium than either of the other two. Some of the missions felt more like chores and mainly consisted of being told to go somewhere else and do something mundane, and then return for another tedious assignment. The main story missions were mostly alright, and some even good, but the side missions were so obviously filler that it was almost insulting.
I've now moved on to The Last of Us. I'm late to the game, I know, but it's only recently come out on PC. I watched the HBO show, and realize now that the program was remarkably faithful to the game. There were a few embellishments in the show, but they were almost all good and didn't divert the plot from the main points at all.
I loved the story in the television show and in the game, but I really hate the game itself. At least in its PC version, it's a nearly unplayable mess. It crashes all the goddamn time. If I can get two hours in of solid playtime without the game crashing, it's a cause for celebration.
There are other aspects of the game I don't like. There is no "save game" option, so you can't save your progress during a chapter before facing some other danger ahead. The game autosaves fairly regularly, so that if you do die, you usually respawn again not too far back in time, but if you log off mid-chapter (or if the game crashes), it starts back up at the beginning of the chapter and you're forced to replay long sections of the game over again.
There is no HUD map or destination markers, so you often have no idea of what direction to proceed or where to go. It's not an "open-world" game by any means, and you usually discover pretty quickly that going the wrong way usually just winds up at a dead end. That's not normally too bad, but when you're in stealth mode trying to sneak through a horde of infected clickers, it's frustrating to learn you have to turn back and try again.
The game is visually quite rich, with remarkably detailed textures and light. But these details, which are arguably richer than needed to enjoy the game, use up a lot of system resources and probably result in some of the frequent crashes. I've capped the fps all the way down to 60 to compensate which helps some, but I still get crashes almost every time I'm in crafting mode.
The Last of Us is one of those games where you never have enough ammo or supplies, and you have to constantly scrounge for more resources. It's rare to have more than a half-dozen bullets, and it usually takes two to three bullets to kill enemies, and that's assuming you don't miss any shots. And the game relies on the use of shivs to kill both infected and living enemies, but they break after one use. To craft a replacement requires a lot of resources, so it's back to scrounging, only to find you need to break your brand new shiv again to pick a locked door.
Okay, I get it that the "make every bullet count" ethos adds to the suspense of the game and it's not a shooter game anyway, but the constant scrounging and constantly being underequipped only adds to the frustration of the constant crashing.
Still, the competitive nature in me hates to quit any game before I've beaten it. I've logged 22 hours since January 25, but I swear if I hadn't watched the HBO show, I probably wouldn't have stuck with this buggy mess.
So long story short - love the plot, love the characters, hate the game mechanics. It's so easy to make a game that actually works - almost every other game managed at least that much - so it's beyond frustrating that they can't make it work for a game I really wanted to enjoy.
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