Ever since I was a little boy I have looked up at the stars and wondered where my place is within the great big infinity that we exist in. What lies beyond our planets edge and of course will I ever get the chance to go to space to glimpse at the vast blackness that encapsulates us. No Man's Sky, for me, is a way to live out these impossible fantasies of mine. Of being a space explorer that travels the unknown universe in search of new worlds, new life forms, new adventures that I am the first to discover.
In the days following its release, No Man's Sky has received an unprecedented amount of disappointment from players and critics because it didn't align to what they initially thought the game would be; they talk about what they would rather have seen done with the property and what they hope to see added in the future. Whilst I'll certainly touch on what I would like to see added, I'm looking at the game as what it is, not what I wanted it to be. What is it exactly? Well it's quite possibly the most engrossing game I have ever played.
Your goal in No Man's Sky is relatively simple. Travel to the centre of a universe so large that you cannot possibly visit every planet or solar system that has been created by the games complex algorithms, responsible for randomly generating everything you see. You start next to a crashed spaceship. It's badly damaged, out of fuel, and your life support is slowly draining away. You might have even been spawned in on a planet with a dangerous climate, or like me, infested with vicious wildlife, to make your first few hours that much harder. Once you've collected the resources necessary to get your ship flying, you're free to continue exploring the planet for as long as you like, or to jet off into outer space to find even more cool things that will possibly never be seen by anyone else.
The game leaves you to your own devices from there on out. Do you start heading towards the centre of the universe? Do you freely explore? Or do you take an interest in one of the optional storylines that NMS has to offer? Personally I opted to follow the Path of the Atlas storyline. Which so far has more than a feeling of 2001: A Space Odyssey about it...which is no bad thing. Speaking of which, you can clearly see that Hello Games have spent a lot of time with classic sci-fi literature, the kind of stuff I grew up on (like Dune & Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) and it's amazing! I know of people who are 20+ hours in and have still yet to leave their starter planet because they are just so content with where they have spawned.
In the days following its release, No Man's Sky has received an unprecedented amount of disappointment from players and critics because it didn't align to what they initially thought the game would be; they talk about what they would rather have seen done with the property and what they hope to see added in the future. Whilst I'll certainly touch on what I would like to see added, I'm looking at the game as what it is, not what I wanted it to be. What is it exactly? Well it's quite possibly the most engrossing game I have ever played.
Your goal in No Man's Sky is relatively simple. Travel to the centre of a universe so large that you cannot possibly visit every planet or solar system that has been created by the games complex algorithms, responsible for randomly generating everything you see. You start next to a crashed spaceship. It's badly damaged, out of fuel, and your life support is slowly draining away. You might have even been spawned in on a planet with a dangerous climate, or like me, infested with vicious wildlife, to make your first few hours that much harder. Once you've collected the resources necessary to get your ship flying, you're free to continue exploring the planet for as long as you like, or to jet off into outer space to find even more cool things that will possibly never be seen by anyone else.
The game leaves you to your own devices from there on out. Do you start heading towards the centre of the universe? Do you freely explore? Or do you take an interest in one of the optional storylines that NMS has to offer? Personally I opted to follow the Path of the Atlas storyline. Which so far has more than a feeling of 2001: A Space Odyssey about it...which is no bad thing. Speaking of which, you can clearly see that Hello Games have spent a lot of time with classic sci-fi literature, the kind of stuff I grew up on (like Dune & Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) and it's amazing! I know of people who are 20+ hours in and have still yet to leave their starter planet because they are just so content with where they have spawned.
Of course NMS gives you an incentive to explore by rewarding you for discovering new animal species, plant species, planets, and solar systems. It not only rewards you with in game currency when you find this stuff, but also gives you the opportunity to name it whatever you want if you are the first person to discover it (which is highly likely).
I've yet to encounter another player, or something already discovered by someone else in my 15+ hours with the game, but in that time I have discovered 10 solar systems each with various planets, moons, and space stations to explore.
Nothing in my entire life has quite given me the thrill of being able to take off from one planet, fly around space for a bit, land on another planet, and experience it all without a single loading screen. Every time I engage my hyperdrive I get a little giddy about what I might come across, and every single time I am blown away when I'm presented with something I didn't expect to see. It's one of the experiences in my life that I can say truly took my breath away the first few times I did it.
But as marvellous as the whole idea of NMS is, it's core gameplay is somewhat less exciting. Dull resource mining, time consuming item crafting, and unfairly small inventory slots plague an otherwise magnificent experience. The best comparison I can give to NMS is Minecraft. You have a particular thing that you want to build, so you gather the resources you want to build it. But the biggest difference is that in Minecraft it's generally much easier to find the resources you want, and they are usually more plentiful. In NMS it's a slow grind to achieve any kind of progress for upgrades to your ship, exosuit, and multi-tool. You could spend hours working towards a blueprint and never actually progress anywhere because the randomly generated planets you've been visiting are low on the particular resource you are looking for. I had this problem when searching for Aluminium, a fairly common element that somehow managed to avoid being generated at all for over half of my playtime so far, when all I wanted to do was build one simple upgrade.
To quickly shine a light on the inventory issue. Whilst it is possible to upgrade you inventory semi-regularly via drop pods (exosuit only, paid for with the game currency that increases by 1000 every purchase) or by encountering new ships that either need to be repaired or purchased. You only start with barely 30 slots to share between resources, upgrades and essential items that cannot be removed from the inventory. It doesn't take long for this to fill up with fuel for your ship & life support, as well as quest times you will pick up along the way. My point is that it is far too difficult to upgrade your inventory in the game, and therefore it does halt progress very quickly if you cant afford the price of upgrades. This is perhaps my biggest problem with the game, it becomes a chore to play because of one crucial game mechanic.
Of course you're also going to see similarities in what you find on various planets. This does somewhat remove the magic of landing on a new world to see that most of the plants are more or less identical to ones you have found on the last 5 planets. Realistically you couldn't expect it to never repeat itself, but sometimes the regularity of which the game repeats itself can become tiresome. Speaking of repetition, I hope you enjoy seeing the same building designs and points of interest on every single planet, because you'll be spending a lot of time with them. All the architecture from the other spacefaring races looks more or less exactly the same, all of the ancient ruins are again identical to one another, and once you have spent a few hours figuring out what you like seeing most in NMS you'll quickly begin ignoring some structures and looking out for others...or perhaps just ignoring them all entirely. Personally I always hunt down ruins, monoliths, plaques, and other structures that allow me to gain insight on the intelligent races and learn their language. Occasionally I'll pop in on an observatory to see what interesting stuff pops up but generally I steer clear of mining facilities and small outposts because they don't hold rewards relevant to what I want out of the game.
I've yet to encounter another player, or something already discovered by someone else in my 15+ hours with the game, but in that time I have discovered 10 solar systems each with various planets, moons, and space stations to explore.
Nothing in my entire life has quite given me the thrill of being able to take off from one planet, fly around space for a bit, land on another planet, and experience it all without a single loading screen. Every time I engage my hyperdrive I get a little giddy about what I might come across, and every single time I am blown away when I'm presented with something I didn't expect to see. It's one of the experiences in my life that I can say truly took my breath away the first few times I did it.
But as marvellous as the whole idea of NMS is, it's core gameplay is somewhat less exciting. Dull resource mining, time consuming item crafting, and unfairly small inventory slots plague an otherwise magnificent experience. The best comparison I can give to NMS is Minecraft. You have a particular thing that you want to build, so you gather the resources you want to build it. But the biggest difference is that in Minecraft it's generally much easier to find the resources you want, and they are usually more plentiful. In NMS it's a slow grind to achieve any kind of progress for upgrades to your ship, exosuit, and multi-tool. You could spend hours working towards a blueprint and never actually progress anywhere because the randomly generated planets you've been visiting are low on the particular resource you are looking for. I had this problem when searching for Aluminium, a fairly common element that somehow managed to avoid being generated at all for over half of my playtime so far, when all I wanted to do was build one simple upgrade.
To quickly shine a light on the inventory issue. Whilst it is possible to upgrade you inventory semi-regularly via drop pods (exosuit only, paid for with the game currency that increases by 1000 every purchase) or by encountering new ships that either need to be repaired or purchased. You only start with barely 30 slots to share between resources, upgrades and essential items that cannot be removed from the inventory. It doesn't take long for this to fill up with fuel for your ship & life support, as well as quest times you will pick up along the way. My point is that it is far too difficult to upgrade your inventory in the game, and therefore it does halt progress very quickly if you cant afford the price of upgrades. This is perhaps my biggest problem with the game, it becomes a chore to play because of one crucial game mechanic.
Of course you're also going to see similarities in what you find on various planets. This does somewhat remove the magic of landing on a new world to see that most of the plants are more or less identical to ones you have found on the last 5 planets. Realistically you couldn't expect it to never repeat itself, but sometimes the regularity of which the game repeats itself can become tiresome. Speaking of repetition, I hope you enjoy seeing the same building designs and points of interest on every single planet, because you'll be spending a lot of time with them. All the architecture from the other spacefaring races looks more or less exactly the same, all of the ancient ruins are again identical to one another, and once you have spent a few hours figuring out what you like seeing most in NMS you'll quickly begin ignoring some structures and looking out for others...or perhaps just ignoring them all entirely. Personally I always hunt down ruins, monoliths, plaques, and other structures that allow me to gain insight on the intelligent races and learn their language. Occasionally I'll pop in on an observatory to see what interesting stuff pops up but generally I steer clear of mining facilities and small outposts because they don't hold rewards relevant to what I want out of the game.
All this time talking about No Man's Sky and I haven't even mentioned anything about what it's like to fly around in space yet. Well to put it short it's fantastic and I could do it for days without ever getting bored so long as I steered clear of space battles. It may be because I can't find a better ship, nor find any of the resources needed for upgrades, but fighting A.I ships is a chore that usually results in nothing but death because of how quickly you're outnumbered and how much damage they can deal to you before you have time to react. Other than that space is pretty devoid of things to do, which is fine because it's space. But I do like plotting a pulse jump to a planet across the other side of the star system, then just kicking back for a couple of minutes and watch the rocks, ships, and distant stars whizz by in all their glory.
Visually No Man's Sky is spectacular...if you like cartoony child friendly graphics. I can't help but wonder what the game would have been like if it went for a more realistic aesthetic, but then at the same time I don't care because I have already fallen in love with it's beautiful art style. I would also argue that the game has one of the most gorgeous boxarts I have seen in quite some time, to the point that I actually just like to sit and look at it sometimes because it makes me feel happy. The soundtrack is equally spectacular and one of the game's truly indisputable amazing things. It perfectly captures the attitude of the game for any kind of player. The various songs work in every situation, not to mention are beautifully composed and arranged.
So how do I put a stop to this review for a game so gigantic that it will have vast areas that will go forever unexplored? A game that has divided the gaming community on where they stand with it. A game that despite it's size, is ridiculously repetitive. A game that no matter how much stuff I find problems with, I can't help but fall in love with it every 5 minutes when I do something I never thought I would do in my wildest dreams.
The bottom line of a review is to give your personal opinion on a game, and despite it's problems I think that No Man's Sky is amazing. Because no matter how often I see the same plant, no matter how little inventory space I have, no matter the lack of variety of what there is to do on planets; I can't help but love every second I play it.
To those who disagree with me, you can call it denial, you can call it ignorance, you can call it what you bloody well want to be perfectly honest with you, because for me No Man's Sky is fun and it makes me feel like that little boy who stayed up late at night looking at the starts with his toy spaceships, dreaming of being a space explorer. And in my 21 years on this planet, nothing has captured that quite as well as No Man's Sky has. So thank you Hello Games for making one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had the pleasure of playing; I look forward to spending hundreds more hours in our shared universe discovering the unimaginable.
Visually No Man's Sky is spectacular...if you like cartoony child friendly graphics. I can't help but wonder what the game would have been like if it went for a more realistic aesthetic, but then at the same time I don't care because I have already fallen in love with it's beautiful art style. I would also argue that the game has one of the most gorgeous boxarts I have seen in quite some time, to the point that I actually just like to sit and look at it sometimes because it makes me feel happy. The soundtrack is equally spectacular and one of the game's truly indisputable amazing things. It perfectly captures the attitude of the game for any kind of player. The various songs work in every situation, not to mention are beautifully composed and arranged.
So how do I put a stop to this review for a game so gigantic that it will have vast areas that will go forever unexplored? A game that has divided the gaming community on where they stand with it. A game that despite it's size, is ridiculously repetitive. A game that no matter how much stuff I find problems with, I can't help but fall in love with it every 5 minutes when I do something I never thought I would do in my wildest dreams.
The bottom line of a review is to give your personal opinion on a game, and despite it's problems I think that No Man's Sky is amazing. Because no matter how often I see the same plant, no matter how little inventory space I have, no matter the lack of variety of what there is to do on planets; I can't help but love every second I play it.
To those who disagree with me, you can call it denial, you can call it ignorance, you can call it what you bloody well want to be perfectly honest with you, because for me No Man's Sky is fun and it makes me feel like that little boy who stayed up late at night looking at the starts with his toy spaceships, dreaming of being a space explorer. And in my 21 years on this planet, nothing has captured that quite as well as No Man's Sky has. So thank you Hello Games for making one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had the pleasure of playing; I look forward to spending hundreds more hours in our shared universe discovering the unimaginable.