The Starfield Direct at the end of the Summer Games Fest Xbox Showcase was absolutely a rousing success for bringing back up the hype train for this highly anticipated title. With this latest Xbox Showcase finally showing off a considerable amount of gameplay for Starfield in intricate detail, skills like the Neurostrikes are starting to look like instant classics that could spread through the rest of the medium.
From the look of the Neurostrikes attack, it has some similarities with the iconic kick that had been made famous in the film 300 and has appeared in games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey. The Neurostrike in Starfield, however, look like they could pull off that iconic power fantasy of the Spartan Kick while still sending enemies flying in into the distance.
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Even when games offer the player big guns to play with that have a huge kickback and tear holes through enemies, there's little else as cathartic as just punching something really hard. While the level of combat tactics available through Starfield's skill tree could allow players to rain death from above or funnel enemies into choke points with mines, the Neurostrike offers a simple tool for any encounter. As long as the player can get the enemy close enough, a Neurostrike can knock them down, blast them out of combat, or kill them outright.
From what has been shown so far of the skill, the Neurostrike seemingly has a major stagger effect with its main attack. Which, in a combat encounter against a handful of enemy pirates or bandits, can mean fewer guns firing in the player's direction at any given time. While it might not be able to mind control Starfield's aliens, the empowered punch is also just a nice tool to have in the pocket in case the player runs our of ammo in the middle of a firefight.
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What especially sets the Neurostrike apart from other combat skills is the way it appears to interact with the low-gravity planets and moons in Starfield. The specific interaction being that the Neurostrike as shown in the clip that introduced it appears to show it capable of sending enemies flying into the air depending on the gravity of the planet the player happens to be on. So, if the player is fighting pirates on a moon, the Neurostrike is able to launch an enemy into the air, sometimes even sending them flinging over a cliff to a rather rough landing down below.
This type of stun could even open up more combat utility if the enemy can be stunned, but might otherwise survive the first Neurostrike and try coming back to take revenge. Not only could the player send an enemy flying over a cliff, but just hanging them in the air for a second before unloading their pistol into them could be a winning strategy against tougher enemies. By expanding the Starfield's combat beyond just shooting, this could be a defining part of a player's toolkit in the later parts of the game, as fights grow increasingly difficult.
Of course, all of that might as well come second to how awesome it generally feels to run up to an enemy and just punch him really hard in the face. It's the same reason the Spartan Kick became such a staple of gaming for so long, with the ability to kick an enemy hard enough to send them flying just being incredibly cathartic. This is exactly the kind of power fantasy that something as grounded into hard science-fiction as Starfield needs to keep players engaged in the moment to moment gameplay.
Starfield is set to release September 6th, for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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