Starfield Lands on PS5, But is it Any Better? [Review]

Starfield took its time coming to PS5. After two years of updates and refinements on the Xbox and PC platforms, Bethesda’s sci-fi action-RPG has touched down, giving Playstation gamers the chance to see what the hype is all about.

Firstly, for PS gamers who may not know too much about Starfield (which may be understandable given the fact you thought you’d never play it), it’s a big, Skyrim/Fallout-esque RPG adventure set in the furthest reaches of space. Players who have played any of those Bethesda games will feel immediately at home with Starfield; and while it is a departure from the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout and the dark fantasy world of The Elder Scrolls, Starfield‘s interplanetary adventure is still grounded in the hallmarks of what make these types of games so engrossing.

As for what’s new in comparison to the original release, you obviously get all the tweaks and subtle patch improvements from the get-go, which admittedly, were necessary. So, you get a much more refined experience out of the gates. Furthermore, haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support have been integrated, so combat feels a little more ‘punchy’ than on Xbox, making the already-meaty gunplay even more enjoyable.

Besides combat feeling a little more unique on PS5, the rest remains the same, but thankfully, all those facts of the game are solid. Exploration, interesting missions, bizarre characters, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and tons of side-missions will keep you more than busy for 100 hours or more, if you choose to dive into as much as possible. And that’s not even taking into account the incredibly deep ship-building element of the game.

Of course, you can just plough through the main mission of the game, which will take you around most of the key locations, but it’s finding these weird and bizarre things, such as abandoned stations or bizarre aliens, that make it so unpredictable. You are most commonly tasked with jetting off to a distant planet, where you’ll most likely retrieve, kill, or save something, which usually ends up in you shooting things in the face, anyway. But it’s how those missions play out and the colourful twists along the way that make it so enjoyable.

There is a whole lot more to the game, such as solving some environmental puzzles and base-building, which are enjoyable in their own right, but the bulk of the meat of the game is the moment-to-moment gameplay of exploring, indulging in some on-foot, zero-G, or spaceship combat, and meeting interesting characters, which is all incredibly fun and gels together seamlessly. It’s clear that the approach was making you feel like a space explorer, and throwing in some fun gun combat, and in that regard, Starfield coming to PS5 will just allow a whole lot more people to experience it, which is only a good thing.