Gaming No Man's Sky Review

Ive played 11 hours so far and just moved to my 3rd ship with 22 slots but the weapon and engine upgrades seem to have negated going from 16 to 22 slots and the next biggest ship I have seen cost 10 million units for 28 slots.

I have been upgrading my suit but its taking time but I'm somehow still enjoying it.

I seem to be very crap at ship to ship combat but haven't used my new ship yet and can put and engine upgrade on it as soon as in find some nickel so I hope that will help.

All in its very much like minecraft but much more than and all I want to do is find out who made the sentinels and get that bigger ship.

 

This game was super overhyped. The fact that the trailers never really showed much actual gameplay lead me to believe it was going to be a fairly simplistic survival game. I was thinking along the lines of Grav with spaceships.

Expectations met!

I feel the game may be overpriced though. For the amount of content it offers it feel like it should have been $30 - $40 USD instead of $60. But then again they stated there will be no paid DLC. However they also said there would be multiplayer.

It is OK though, glad I didn't jump on the hype train. Having a good time with it.

Seems people are having a lot of technical issues though. I had to edit the config to make it render at the proper resolution. After a few hours the game slows to a crawl, seems to be triggered by exiting my ship. Will go from 80+ FPS to 13 FPS for no apparent reason. It isn't just a choppy experience, the game actually slows down so it takes ages to save and exit so I can relaunch.

I've only encountered one crash and it was at one of those multitool stations inside a space station behind a v1 door. Every time I would interact it would just CTD with no error.

In the config, I had to set "UseScreenResolution" to false for it to render at 1440p instead of the apparent upscale from 720p. I use a gsync monitor as well and it is notably smoother with gsync enabled. There is still the annoying hitching apparently caused by the object/terrain generation though. I tried the experimental version and it caused a massive FPS hit. Hope that isn't what they push out for the next patch.

I sure hope they fix some of the issues to make it smoother. Overall I say No Man's Sky is meh. It isn't the worst game i've played but it really isn't that good. At least it has an interesting story.

 

It its a lot of everything but it does it good enough to be enjoyable imho. Having played 20ish hours and it is still lots of fun if you want something different than FPS for a change. Looking forward to when building is possible etc.

 

There's something about this game that whispers "Freelancer" in my ear, and it's incredibly enticing.

However, from everything I've seen and read, it appears short on story, high on repetition and sounds like it ODs on micro-management and crafting.

Pass

 

I'm still undecided on this. I quite like the idea of discovering and exploring at my own pace, even (or perhaps especially) if it's aimless and I could do with a new slower-paced game to dip into from time to time.

 

I'm enjoying my time with it. It's a relxing game to play and one that's hard to put down.

 

I understand that many people do enjoy this game. I have watched several streams, some from known big gamers, and some I have just randomly tuned into to see what they are doing, each time I tune in though, not really seems to be happening, lots of landing sequences, lots of rock smashing, and lots of selling stuff. For me this isnt really a game I think I would enjoy so I am going to pass on this.

 

So far, I am enjoying my play through quite a bit, I have worked out a set process for arriving at a new planet in that I'll try and scan for the spaceport and see what's needed and valuable at that place then go looking for other tech before working out what stuff I need to mine to make it.

I'm quite liking the unstructured, easy-going nature of the game, I can hop on, do a bit of what I feel like, scan a bunch of critters then log off easily when my wife finally works out what she wants for dinner.

However, having said all that, there are a few things which I am finding frustrating. Firstly the whole Atlas pass thing, you start off right next to a canister that needs a v1.0 pass, knowing full well that there is an almost certain chance that you will never go back to that exact spot when you have the pass to open it. It certainly isn't made clear what the path to getting the pass is (yes, I know you get it during the story).

The second is the languages in the game, these are learnt by finding stones or bribing aliens but each time you just learn a single word, even when reading an alien encyclopedia you still only learn a single word at a time. There could be so much more scope for story and background if only we could learn the languages easier or faster.

I am hoping that what we currently have is an awesome framework for new content to be added in the way of more structured things to do, IF YOU WANT TO. Something along the lines of Freelancer's job board in space stations would be a great start, the ability to undertake repeatable resource gathering or combat missions, perfect if you need some cash or want to have a bit of a scrap.

 

Looks even more boring than Destiny. Not one for me.

 

People get caught up in the hype and then convince themselves they're playing a great game albeit with a few issues.

18 trillion worlds of largely the same with mediocre combat and no multiplayer.

No HOTAS support. Not even close to a space sim. More a cutesy alien generator.

 

Thanks for your continued input Stanley.

 

You're welcome GravitySmacked. I should think about posting more frequently. Like No Man's Pie my output is randomly generated.

 

My x55 works in the game so not entirely sure where this No Hotas support comes from.

 

Aha. Thanks for clarifying. Some steam buyer numpty said no Hotas.

 

@Stanley - Dont disagree with your view on the game, but the first line is pretty unfair IMO.

The developers have spent years hyping the game, nothing shocking in that, but when you're talking about all the things that are in the game, and showing them in all your promotional video, and then when you release it a heap of features have secretly been removed and you're playing a dumbed down version, thats not buying into hype, thats expecting the developer to be honest and provide features he's announced, and not remove them and tell nobody.

There was a thread on Reddit which collected many of the key features which were announced, in most cases provided multiple video sources where Sean Murray talked about them, highlighting those made in the last 4 months, and providing quotes for easy following. Sadly, despite it getting over 5000 upvotes, the commenter deleted their reddit account little over 24hrs later (having received 9x 'gold' when i'd seen it), most likely because of pathetic threats via PM.

The moderators have found a cached copy and stickied it, because its worth seeing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4y4i3a/wheres_the_nms_we_were_sold_on_front_page/

I followed it from a distance, hoping for a great way to waste a couple hundred hours, but never saw anything that explained the games purpose, it hadnt shown more than what the early E3 presentation showed (landing on random planets and discovering new lifeforms and some crafting), and was completely unaware of all these things people have heard straight from the developers mouth, including suggestions of multiplayer, which given the fact that it was debunked on day 1 by players, has never been an honest answer by the devs, only the improbable likelihood of ever being in the same place with someone at the same time to see them.

This is a classic case of being told the game had a vast array of features, showing various videos over long periods of time with specific feature, conveniently leaving unfinished features out, then telling nobody about it and just releasing it anyway. Its dishonest, and the fact that Hello Games arent being crucified for it a week on, is a joke.

 

Could you not have checked HOTAS support in the 12 hours you played the game?

 

Good points. It's rather shocking when you consider the amount of effort and skill that goes into game development and yet whole teams of developers can fail for any number of reasons. Silently removing promised/suggested features or rushing a game to meet a deadline seems to happen too often.

I think No Man's Pie has some very nice ideas and really stunning design but let down by various factors. Another "could have been" game. It could have been so much more. Question is whether it will be revised now or if they'll develop a sequel or just move on.

 

I coulda... If I'd played it. I have not played it ever.

 

hum....I'll wait a bit