Recent reviews by Hotfix

5 / 5 - An epic story driven player experience that is engaging, fun, a really great balance of effort vs reward and choose-your-own-adventure. Will keep you hooked for countless hours possibly leading to social collapse of our civilisation.

TLDR:
For some one that has exclusively played multiplayer player games over 5+ or so years i was reluctant to try a single player only game. Having tried Fallout 4 when it came out and not enjoyed it, never touching another Bethesda game since. Effort vs reward and mission balance just didn't engage me and felt like a chore. Starfield has me hooked. It's such a fun game to play and the balance of effort vs reward is really good. It's like watching a really awesome TV Series but you get to choose what happens along a very broad story line. The web of side-quests and options at one level is overwhelming but at the same time rewarding and fun. You can tune your own experience by exploring everything or if it's getting a bit too intense re-focus on the games main story line.

I'm currently at Level 21 but having put in more than 50 hours into it (Premium edition early release), i can say it's stable, runs well, I've only seen a minor game bugs which did not break the game in any way (eg. NPC's doing something funky but they sorting themselves out, switching map, mission inventory too fast sometimes cause one to be blank resolve by turning it on and off again). I've not yet had a single game bug which impacted my game play where i couldn't progress or continue the missions / story. Ship building / modification is well done to make it as user friendly as possible (given cross platform). So in that sense, one of the best game launches I've ever experienced.

Couple things i wished were better:

• Game is HEAVILY console / controller focused. The default key bindings for PC are bit awkward and require a bit of tuning. I recommend you spend the time and fiddle with them.
  
• Space flight / combat is a bit meh - No PC joystick support and without a controller it's not as enjoyable as it could be. Ship combat controls are clunky.
  
• Graphics are just OK - for me story is gripping enough that this can be overlooked but character models look like they're from 5 + years ago. It does not match modern AAA titles but it's good enough and it runs well across most platforms and for a story based game you want as many people to enjoy it as you can. I can understand the trade-off.
  
• Inventory sorting - overall it's good enough the job especially considering cross platform support but AID items become a bit of a burden to manage constantly searching for that "research buff" aid or "persuasion buff" aid in a long list. A category to each buff would fix this and then in the inventory menu allow user to Select categories to search for (big buttons to select) eg. Show me AID item with Damage resistance and health regeneration or show me all buffs with Diplomacy.
  
• Inventory movement - moving items between ship and home building egh is a little annoying but making this feature more advances would also complicate interface for the console. I kinda get the trade-off but man moving large volumes of stuff is a bit painful.

Other than that for a new player to the Bethesda "formula" in a long long time, the in-game tutorial probably has a lot to be desired. It's good enough but i found i had to figure things out via trial and error on a few things, like loads of the stats don't get explained in any way (like what do EM in stats mean - Ohh different type of protection vs diff weapons types Riiiiight!), there are no tips which i think will lure players onto researching online which in my view takes away from the experience. There should have been a mouse over "tips" option that one can toggle on and off to explain stuff.

TIP: I wont have any spoilers, i think people should try to discover most things themselves but...
Unlock Jet Pack skill asap - This may sound silly but when i equipped a jet pack i assumed i was already able to use (i was wearing it) and there was no dedicated Keybind for the jetpack. I noticed my character could jump a little higher with "boosted" pack AND the game didn't really say that this item is impaired due to skill. I spent all my XP on unlocking science, weapons and personal skills trees. I only unlocked Hacking early on in tech tree and that's about it. I didn't realise you had to unlock / Activate Jetpack Skill to actually get proper jetpack boost and this simply made getting a round much faster saving time. LOL OMG i wish i had that 30 hours ago :D

This is not part of in-game tutorial (or i missed it), but the "Q" quick menu is a life saver for a smoother gameplay, made such a difference and i wish i figured it out sooner. The way you add things to it is by going into inventory and selecting certain items to be your "favourite" then adding them into quick menu slots. While playing missions press Q to open quick menu overlay and select.

Gamer be-ware, you may loose track of time playing this game :D

One of the original Benchmarking tools. While there are many new, specialised and arguably better options today this was "the" go-to benchmarking tool in the late 90's and early 2000's. Nostalgia aside, great all round that can bench and test various parts of your gaming rig. Easy to use through steam, options to save / upload into cloud and compare to global users. Can't go wrong with 3D Mark, you've been a loyal friend for 24 years.

Essentially a console game barely passable as a space sim with an average implementation of the great ideas from the original xwing series, all the flaws and a sprinkling of fluff (TIE Fighter hull health regeneration, crashing into things gives you a shake instead of a spinout like movies and originals in addition to being highly survivable lol). Feels and plays like I should be on a couch with a controller and not at my PC with a HOTAS. Game focuses on non-stop action and entertainment to amuse the cohort of modern player with desire for instant fun without any depth; a model that probably generates best cost vs revenue for EA.

The graphics are unimpressive given they have very little to render, HOTAS support is sub-standard and flight mechanics are woefull. This game advertises a dream that's not really there.

It was fun to dive into the Star Wars universe for couple hours.

Refunded