The Clayton Awards 2023

Game of the Year 2023 – Starfield

I can understand why others may not enjoy Starfield as much as I did, why they may think it dated, but for all its flaws, I still think Starfield is a pretty remarkable game and experience. It’s the kind of game that reminds me why I still love and enjoy playing video games. It’s a one of a kind experience. The kind of game that doesn’t come along very often. A game I’ve already lost myself in for 200 hours and yet, I still want to keep going. There’s a lot more space out there for me to explore. (Full Review)

Most Disappointing Game of 2023 – Sons of the Forest

What I will say in its favour is that the potential is there. It can surpass the original with the right focus and updates. But, right now, I honestly can’t recommend it in its current state. I’d say it’s best to wait for those updates. I wasn’t sure if I should score Sons, given it’s in Early Access. But if they’re selling it, I’d say it’s fair game. I will, however, update this score over time if the game does improve. Let’s hope so, because I really would like to play this again when it’s more complete. (Full Review)

Gallery: Starfield (Part 1)

Now Playing: Scorn

Scorn is a (sort of) horror, (sort of) puzzle and (sort of) action game that I picked up on sale recently. I say it’s ‘sort of’ those things because it’s a little bit of everything but it doesn’t really excel at anything. The reason why I was interested in Scorn and, frankly, why anyone probably will be, is the visuals. Clearly inspired by the art of H. R. Giger, the visuals are the only real standout feature of Scorn, although they’re also not without issue.

I like how the main menu opens immediately into the game. There’s no exposition in Scorn. No cutscenes. The ‘story’ such as it is, is told entirely through the environment and your actions. It’s a story that does leave various aspects to your own interpretation but it provides enough information for you to come away feeling satisfied by the narrative. Well, I did. Others may find it frustratingly obscure.

As you traverse the impressive looking environments you’ll come across various puzzles to solve in order to progress. These are all fine. There’s nothing particularly challenging, but there’s nothing that’s too easy, either. Some require a little trial and error to figure out, but nothing that should annoy.

You’ll also have to fight a few enemies on your way. You can avoid a lot of these, and I’d recommend you do so where you can because the most common enemy you’ll face is of the irritating ‘spit goo at you’ variety which is never fun. There’s a couple more, but nothing very interesting. I do like the weapon / tool design though and how it integrates into the experience.

Your path through the game is entirely linear which does feel like a missed opportunity. The first puzzle, for example, has a couple of different solutions. I thought all the puzzles might offer a couple of different choices on how to proceed but unfortunately not. It’s a shame because doing so might have then resulted in a different outcome or ending based on the choices you made.

But no. After the first puzzle, everything is a linear progression and there’s no alternative ending. Not that I thought the ending was bad, just that an alternative path through the game might have encouraged another play.

Because Scorn, for me, is very much a ‘one and done’ kind of game. It’s short – about 4 hours max – and it has zero replay value. The visuals are great, but the style can grow repetitive in some areas and can result in some confusion when trying to navigate identical winding paths. There’s a strong atmosphere to the world but I never really found it as imposing or intimidating as I think was intended. The puzzles are fine – what few there are – as is the combat – what little there is.

Overall, I’d have to say I did enjoy the experience and I’m glad I played it, but I’m also glad I picked it up on sale. So I would recommend checking out Scorn, but only if you can get it on the cheap. It’s a decent experience which I felt was worth my (4 hours) time.

6/10

The Clayton Awards 2023: GOTY Nominees

It’s that time of the year when everyone gets very excited about Game of the Year awards. And by everyone I mean publishers who want to slap ‘Game X won 200 GOTY awards!’ on the cover of their GOTY editions. Because there’s so damn many GOTY awards these days and all of them are as meaningless as all the rest.

For some reason people think ‘The Game Awards’ is the ‘real’ one because it calls itself ‘The Game Awards’ but the last time I watched it most of the awards were handed out off-screen whilst ads were playing or corporate mascots were dancing in the aisles.

But we all know the truth – the only GOTY award that matters is right here – The Clayton Awards – and this is the 12^th Annual Clayton Awards for the Game of the Year 2023 & The Most Disappointing Game of 2023. No other categories, because I like to keep things simple.

But given how prestigious and sought after the Clayton GOTY Award has become, it seems wrong not to generate hype and anticipation by announcing the nominees in advance. I thought about doing a public poll of which 10% of the vote would count towards the winner but that would be a lie and total nonsense so I won’t. So here they are – the Nominees for the Clayton GOTY Award 2023 -

Now Playing: No More Heroes 2

I played No More Heroes 1 & 2 when they originally released on the Wii in 2008 and 2010. I played NMH 1 multiple times, so when I replayed the game for review on this blog in 2017, I remembered the game quite well. I said – ‘It misses as much as it hits with its content, but when it hits it really knocks it out of the park. It’s enjoyable, irritating, bizarre and most importantly –fun. I can’t wait to play the sequel.’

I guess I got a little side tracked, because it’s taken me six years to finally sit down and play No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle again, but this time I’m not playing my Wii copy but the Switch version which, as far as I can tell, has the best available versions of NMH 1 & 2. All I could recall of NMH 2 from when I played it on release was that I didn’t think it was as good as the original – hence why I never replayed it until now.

I was curious to see how I felt about it today, to see if I still didn’t think it was as good or if, as I’ve seen so many say down the years – is actually better. But now, having finished it again I have to say – I kind of hate it.

For me, NMH 2 isn’t a very good sequel and not a particularly good game. Despite all my issues with NMH 1 I said in my review – ‘I love its style, its music, its completely bonkers world, characters and plot. And the core gameplay and missions are a lot of fun. But in many ways, the game feels unfinished. Even some of the main missions feel hastily cobbled together. It’s like they just tossed a bunch of wacky, half-baked ideas together to see what would stick.’

And I feel exactly the same about NMH 2, but whereas the high points of NMH 1 were enough to elevate the game beyond its low points, the lows of NMH 2 are much lower and the highs are few, fleeting and far between. And frankly, the novelty of the first game has somewhat worn off.

NMH 2 desperately struggles (yes, I did that) to recapture the manic energy of 1, but it’s trying way too hard. The weirdness is just weird for the sake of being weird. The sexualisation is dialled to eleven and is, honestly, just embarrassing. The humour misses way more than it lands. The story is bonkers, but it’s trying too hard to be bonkers and ends up feeling obvious and trite. There was a certain magic to NMH 1 where all of this crazy shit just came together in a way that worked – but sadly, NMH 2 can’t replicate that magic here.

NMH 2 strips the open world aspect from 1 but it doesn’t replace it with anything better – now you just teleport to your chosen map location. The side jobs you can do to earn money are now all retro style mini-games (aside from one, for some bizarre reason) and none of them are very good. They’re not terrible, but once you’ve played them once to see what they are, you probably won’t bother again. You can still buy some cosmetic items for Travis which is nice, I guess, but kind of pointless. You can also, like in NMH 1, purchase training to improve your health and attack but this is now another dull retro mini-game so I didn’t really bother with it.

Naomi is back to purchase new beam katanas from but she’s also been given massive tits because . . . because tits, I guess? She was a cool character in 1, so why not at least give her an expanded role here? All they did was give her massive, bouncing tits. Like I said – embarrassing. That doesn’t annoy me as much as what they did with Shinobu who only makes a brief appearance here. She’s playable in two of what are some of the better levels in the game, but then immediately f**ks off never to be seen again.

The combat works more or less the same as NMH 1 which is kind of disappointing as they had an opportunity to really mix things up, especially with the wrestling moves. I do like the new beam katanas though, especially the dual wield. But there’s so few levels where you really get to cut loose and just enjoy the action. There’s some really pointless little sections where you might be riding your bike or walking along a road but nothing actually happens and the game is really just padding out its already meagre content.

I finished NMH 2 in about 6 hours but I’d guess about 40 minutes of that was watching those dumb ‘intermission’ cut-scenes where the camera constantly zooms in on the narrator’s tits and ass. The side content is rather lacklustre, and the main content feels stripped back compared to NMH 1. Most of the ranking fights forget any kind of build up action and just throw you straight into the boss fight.

You might get a couple of small sections of goons to slay – all of which only seem to have two lines of dialogue they repeat ad nauseam. Enemy goon variety as you progress is also practically non-existent. Killing waves of goons in NMH 2 is still pretty fun, but there’s just not much of it because so many ranking fights just throw you straight up against the boss – and a lot of these boss fights are f**king awful.

Honestly, I must have scrubbed some of these fights from my memory because they’re absolutely terrible. They’re not fun. They’re not challenging. They’re not clever. There’s a lot of cheap nonsense to artificially inflate the difficulty – teleporting enemies, insta-kill attacks, perfect dodges – and there’s a lot of really irritating stuff too.

Like bosses that continually dart (or teleport) away from one side of the map to the other forcing you to constantly be chasing after them, to attacks that instantly drain your battery, or attacks that knock you down and then instantly knock you down again when you try to get back up. Or unnecessary scenery items that block your view or cause you to miss an attack. They are, on the whole, far more frustrating than fun.

Like I said, none of them are very difficult. They’re either so easy and fast that you wonder what the point was, or they’re frustratingly slow as you have to chip away at them every chance you get because they’re constantly dodging or teleporting away. I think, maybe, there were only 2-3 bosses I actually thought were well designed.

There’s one point when you think you’re going to play as Henry and fight a few bosses as him, kind of like you did as Shinobu, but instead the game makes a joke about how ‘there’s too much content in the game as it is’ (there’s not) and you just skip over them. Oh.

It’s honestly kind of hard to think of many parts of NMH 2 I actually liked, but there are fleeting moments when the game does come close to those highs of the original (transforming into a tiger never gets old). Moments when the craziness doesn’t feel totally forced like they’re desperately (and unnecessarily) trying to top the first game.

But it’s just not enough. And now I see why I never replayed NMH 2. Because even back then I could see that it wasn’t very good. It’s a short, disappointing sequel that simply can’t recapture the magic of NMH 1. It tries so hard, but it fails. It doesn’t improve or evolve any aspect of the first game. There are a few moments of fun, but they can’t save it. It’s weird seeing all those great scores it got at release. Are they mad? Or am I?

5/10

Half-life 2: Episodes 1 & 2 VR (Mod)

One of the best VR experiences you can have is the VR mod for Half-Life 2 which I wrote a post about last year. The way the VR functionality was incorporated into the game was impressive, but what was even more impressive was how a game from 2004 translated so perfectly into VR. And now, following the Half-Life 2 release, we now have full VR mods of the two Episodes.

I always felt Episode 1 was the weaker of the two, at least in terms of content, and I still feel that way now after playing them both again in VR. I do think I enjoyed Episode 1 more in VR though. The fight through the old hospital was always the highlight in Episode 1 and it’s even better in VR.

Episode 2, whilst superior in terms of content, is a more mixed experience in VR, mostly because a large part of the content is spent in a vehicle. There are several additional comfort options for how you want to play the vehicle section, but like the vehicle stuff in Half-Life 2, this is the one aspect of the game that doesn’t translate quite as well to VR.

It’s a shame, because up to that point Episode 2 is a real blast in VR. All the stuff in the mines, fighting antlion hordes and venturing into a nest is great. There’s one fantastic moment when you’re climbing a ladder and you look up to see a Vortigaunt peering down at you and it works so well in VR you really start to feel like you’re playing a game designed for VR – not just a mod.

But then you hit that vehicle section and things can feel a little awkward and annoying. It’s not so bad once you get used to it and, like I said, there is an impressive range of choices with regards to how you play it, but none of it is really ideal for VR. It’s the one aspect of these games that just doesn’t quite work.

Overall, like Half-Life 2 VR before it, these Episodes are a must play if you own a VR platform. Vehicle stuff aside, they translate brilliantly into VR, even to the point that you might forget they’re nearly 20 years old and never designed for it.

That’s a testament not only to the fantastic job the modders have done putting together these VR versions, but also to just how well designed these games were at release and how well they hold up today in terms of visuals, animations, combat, pacing and level design. If you’ve got a VR set, be sure to give them a spin, I guarantee they’ll offer you a better VR experience than a lot of actual VR releases.

Now Playing: Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

It took me some time, but I finally got around to playing The Lost Legacy, a stand-alone expansion to Uncharted 4. In The Lost Legacy you play as Chloe Frazer, a character who has appeared in previous Uncharted games – but not in 4, the only Uncharted game I’ve played. So I didn’t know the character, but the expansion does a decent enough job of establishing who she is and what’s important to her.

What did help though was the return of Nadine Ross and Sam Drake, characters I was familiar with. Nadine is your main partner throughout the expansion, with her and Chloe acting in a similar way to Nate and Sam in UC4. It worked then and it works here, with some fun banter back and forth, some co-op puzzle solving and enemy beatdowns.

The expansion is fairly short – about 8 hours if you want all of the collectibles, and even shorter if you don’t. The levels are mostly linear with some basic puzzle solving interspaced with enemy encounters. There is one ‘open’ jeep driving level similar to those in UC4 but honestly, the expansion probably didn’t need it. Traversing all those mudbanks gets a little tiresome.

Although I enjoyed the new location and architecture, The Lost Legacy does re-use a lot of assets and – more importantly – gameplay mechanics from UC4 which isn’t a surprise and certainly nothing to complain about, but it does also mean that you don’t really feel like you’re playing something new.

The story is decent but the villain isn’t terribly interesting. You’ll be slipping, sliding and swinging your way through levels just as you did in UC4. There are plenty of ledges to climb – aside from those that are scripted to break for a dramatic moment. The combat is solid and fun, just as it was in UC4.

If you liked UC4, I think it’s pretty safe to assume you’ll enjoy this too because it’s really just more of the same. Which in some ways, is a little disappointing, because maybe it would have been nice if The Lost Legacy had introduced a few new ideas or meaningful mechanics of its own. But it doesn’t.

Overall, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my time with The Lost Legacy because it is a polished, good expansion to UC4, but I also don’t think there’s anything special or unique enough about it to make me want to replay it in the future. I am glad I played it though and if, like me, you’ve picked up the Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC, there’s really no reason not to give it a go too.

7/10

Gallery: Hi-Fi Rush

Now Playing: Starfield

I feel like I could write two very different reviews of Starfield – one very positive, the other very negative. There’s not a single aspect of Starfield that isn’t flawed. It’s the game of a thousand nitpicks. A game in desperate need of a dozen or more quality of life improvements. And yet, I kind of love it. For me, Starfield is a perfect example of a game that’s far greater than the sum of its parts.

If you’re going to compare Starfield to other games in order to criticise it, then I think you should also compare those games to Starfield. Because no other game offers the same scope, variety or scale of Starfield. Very few games attempt to be this ambitious – and even fewer succeed in pulling it off. Other games may do the individual pieces better, but no other game combines them all in the way that Starfield does. As Todd Howard once famously said – it just works.

The main quest in Starfield revolves around the search for a set of mysterious, powerful artefacts. It is, I believe, the best main quest I’ve played in a Bethesda game. Admittedly, that’s not a high bar to clear, and the main quest in Starfield is certainly far from perfect – as I said, every aspect of the game has its flaws. But there’s some genuinely engaging missions to be found as you progress. And the way the main quest leads into a New Game Plus mode is both clever and exciting.

The most disappointing aspect of the main quest is – and this isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the damn trailer – the ‘space magic’ powers you can unlock. It’s not that the powers are bad as such – although how useful they are varies greatly. It’s more how you unlock them that’s the problem.

The powers in Starfield are the equivalent to the dragon shouts in Skyrim, but whereas in Skyrim you could discover shouts in various locations, in Starfield your powers are all acquired from the same copy / paste ‘temples’. I never ended up getting all of them because, honestly, it’s kind of dull and just not worth it.

As part of the main quest you’ll join an exploratory organisation called Constellation. Four members of Constellation serve as your main companions throughout the game. You can take these companions with you on any quest, anywhere, and by performing actions they approve of, you can improve your ‘relationship’ and unlock a unique mission for each.

The four Constellation companions are easily the best companions Bethesda have done, at least in terms of how much they interact with the content in which you’re engaged. I was pleasantly surprised by how many unique interactions each one has, not just as part of the main quest, but any quest. Oh, and these four companions can all be ‘romanced’ if you want to enjoy some incredibly awkward dialogue.

I do wish there was a little more – shall we say – moral variety, to the Constellation characters, but you can choose to leave them behind if you’re going to be doing something particularly unscrupulous. There are other companions you can recruit, but the Constellation four offer the most interactions.

That’s not to say that other companions aren’t worth adding to your crew – they all have a little backstory you can explore and each possesses their own unique skills and personality. Some you can simply hire, others you’ll unlock by completing various quests. Or, like most aspects of Starfield, you can choose not to engage with companions at all.

Like previous Bethesda games, Starfield offers a remarkable degree of player freedom. It allows you to engage with the content that you want to. Outposts are a perfect example of this. I’ve dabbled with outposts, constructing a few small mining operations on a couple of moons, but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in delving into – at least not yet.

But I don’t have to. I can choose to ignore the feature entirely. You, on the other hand, may want to spend hours constructing a complex network of cargo-linked outposts across multiple star systems. In the meantime, I can happily spend hours carefully designing and redesigning my fleet of ships. Hours – an obscene amount of hours. You, on the other hand, may simply stick with the starting ship and upgrade a piece here and there as required.

Don’t care for planetary scanning or exploration? Just don’t do it. Nothing is forced upon you. You’re free to try everything and stick with what you like. Speaking of exploration, I’ve seen some criticism of Starfield regarding its exploration or perceived lack of. Starfield is a game about exploration, but without exploration – at least, that’s how the criticism goes. But I can’t quite wrap my head around or agree with that assessment. There’s lots of exploration in Starfield, it’s just a different kind of exploration than you might be accustomed to from previous Bethesda games.

In Starfield you have a star map of around 100 systems and when you jump into a new system, you have no idea what you’ll find when you arrive. Some examples – I jumped into a system and discovered a space station, but the station wouldn’t respond to my hails. I docked and boarded the station only to discover it was an abandoned space casino inhabited by nefarious spacers with whom I engaged in a very fun zero-g fight.

Another example – I jumped into a system and picked up a distress signal. I followed it to a nearby planet and unlocked a multi-part side quest in which I helped a group of colonists drive a band of spacers out of their system. The point I’m making is this – I wouldn’t have seen or experienced any of these things if I hadn’t picked an unknown system and taken that jump. Exploration rewarded me with new content, new missions and new random encounters.

That said, I would agree that the randomly generated planetary points of interest are one of the weakest aspects of Starfield. The problem is – there’s too damn many of them. In my view there should have only been one or two per planet – and only the ones you can detect from orbit. Instead, the game randomly generates half a dozen or more wherever you land, all within walking distance. I assume this was done to give you that classic Bethesda feeling of exploring on foot and discovering cool things.

But, like I said, the exploration in Starfield is different to previous Bethesda games and this misguided attempt to mimic those doesn’t really work because they are generated and repeated far too frequently. There’s nothing wrong with empty worlds. It makes what you do find feel more special. But like so many features of Starfield, I can just choose to ignore it. So I didn’t bother with the randomly generated POIs unless I wanted to farm some loot or experience, or if I hadn’t seen that particular POI yet.

There are four faction quest lines in the game and, once again, I’d say these are some of the best Bethesda have done. Like everything else, they’re not without their flaws, but they each offer a fairly extensive and engaging experience, unique characters and locations, and they all lead to some interesting choices. I’d say the UC Vanguard line was my favourite overall – and also the most consistently good from start to finish – but I also really enjoyed the Crimson Fleet quests even if I felt less like a pirate and more like a spy.

You do get the option to properly join the pirates in the end but because Bethesda seem allergic to the notion of locking the player out of other content, the choice feels rather hollow as you can simultaneously be one of the most wanted pirates in the settled systems but also easily apply to become a space cop for the UC. I think this is one area Bethesda really needs to be bold and improve upon in the future – making big decisions like the one at the end of the Crimson Fleet line should have real consequences and gameplay implications going forward for the player.

Ryujin Industries is a quest chain that feels like something straight out of Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a story of corporate espionage in the city of Neon and conceptually, it’s really quite good. Unfortunately, the first several missions are some of the worst in the game. They’re incredibly dull, simplistic, easy and aren’t really any different to the randomly generated mission board quests. Thankfully, it does pick up and the final run of missions are pretty fun and engaging and offer a few different ways for the player to resolve things.

I’ve seen people say The Freestar Rangers faction chain is the weakest in the game but I have to disagree. The Ranger quests are more action focused than the other chains and as such, they provide a welcome change of pace. I do agree though that the quest chain as a whole feels a little unfinished, as if a couple of missions or potential options for the player are missing. It wrapped up much more quickly than I was expecting. I still enjoyed the ride though, and the rewards are pretty sweet.

As far as other side quests go, these are a real mixed bag. There’s so many I lost count and some are short and easy – little more than simple fetch or delivery quests – whilst others are extensive, multi-part chains featuring multiple characters, worlds and combat both in space and on the ground. The big issue I have with the side quests is how little experience you gain from their completion.

Actually, the game as a whole feels too stingy as far as experience gain goes, even for main and faction quests. And as much as I do like the new skills system, it does feel like a real grind to unlock and open up new skills. It just takes far too long to unlock lower tiers. This could be solved either by increasing the experience gain, removing tiers entirely, or simply by giving us more skill points to spend per level up.

The combat in Starfield is remarkably solid and fun. I generally stuck to ballistic weapons and had a pretty good time with it. The AI is . . . pretty bad, but it just about gets the job done. I also really enjoyed the weapon modification system to customise how they performed to my liking. Zero-g combat never gets old, especially when grenades are involved. Watching bodies and all manner of objects bounce around a ship with no gravity should never be this enjoyable.

Ship combat is fairly simple but also fun. A big part of what made it fun for me was designing my own ships and testing them out. Ships have a shield and hull rating that you’ll need to deplete in order to destroy them, but you can also target specific systems (with a skill unlock) and disable their engines in order to board and seize them.

You have a boost ability for a temporary speed increase – but also useful for evading an enemy missile lock. And then you have ship thrusters you can use to swing around a target without slowing down. It’s a shame that so many of the main and faction quests don’t actually involve much – if any – ship based combat because it’s a really enjoyable aspect of the game once you get the hang of it.

Something Bethesda have always been good at, especially with the Elder Scrolls games, is the world building and lore and that’s a trend that continues in Starfield. I know some players would have preferred a more Mass Effect type experience with a variety of alien races to interact with but frankly, I’ve been there and done that and I’m totally okay with Starfield focusing on humans and how we can f**k things up all on our own. So less Mass Effect and more Firefly and The Expanse.

I love the setting and the history and I love how aspects of that tie into the main quest. The UC Vanguard quest line is also a great (if biased from the UC viewpoint) way to get up to speed on the various conflicts that have occurred since humans departed Earth. There’s more depth here than you might realise with both of the major factions – The UC and the Freestar Collective – not quite being the idealised societies they like to portray. Digging into both of them via quests and character conversations reveals that both have their problems.

Visually, Starfield looks great. Interior detail – particularly ships – is staggering, and I love the ‘NASA-punk’ aesthetic. Exterior locations can prove to be a more mixed visual experience depending upon the generated terrain or lighting but overall, it’s easily the best looking Bethesda game yet.

It’s also the most polished Bethesda game yet. Once again – not a high bar to clear – but worth giving praise for. That’s not to say you won’t encounter any bugs – this is still a Bethesda game after all and it has its fair share of Bethesda ‘jank’ but overall, I’m very pleased. Performance could be better, but I think that problem will solve itself when / if they patch in proper DLSS support.

With future expansions, updates and mods, Starfield will only grow and improve over time. It’s exciting to think where Starfield will be in 5 years. Starfield certainly isn’t a perfect game but I can’t help but applaud its ambition and just how successfully it puts all of these (flawed) pieces together. If you’re a big fan of ‘space stuff’ like me, you’ll probably get more out of it than someone who’s not. I think it helps if you’re also a fan of Bethesda’s previous games and their style – you’ll also likely be more tolerant of the occasional jank.

I can understand why others may not enjoy Starfield as much as I did, why they may think it dated, but for all its flaws, I still think Starfield is a pretty remarkable game and experience. It’s the kind of game that reminds me why I still love and enjoy playing video games. It’s a one of a kind experience. The kind of game that doesn’t come along very often. A game I’ve already lost myself in for 200 hours and yet, I still want to keep going. There’s a lot more space out there for me to explore.

8/10