I’ve started giving the game No Man’s Sky a spin. It got a veritable hate storm (like every bigger game now, it seems) at its launch since several features promised where not implemented (to the crowd’s approval). Now, four years later, the developers seem to have redeemed themselves by continuously updating and adding functionality.
This is the first time for me trying the game and I have to say: it’s a marvellous gem at first and second sight. Does anyone here play it? Maybe you’re looking for some peaceful exploration and Minecraft-but-not-Minecraft vibes. The game is really good at creating an experience of being out there in the universe somehow.
I’ve never found it to be a peaceful game… every planet is always killing me with deadly radiation and I feel like finding necessary resources is a slog. A couple of times I’ve gotten to the point of starting to build a shelter but can never find enough resources to finish the job, have gotten bored and frustrated and gone an played a game that is more of a game and less of a process of frustration. Crafting style games just aren’t my kind of fun I guess.
Yeah, I understand the hesitation on crafting games. However, I am finding the controls surprisingly intuitive. As for the game trying to kill me: I think those are scripted events to amp up the drama. The game spit me out on a lovely paradise planet as the second stop and everything appears to be quite peaceful. If a storm is coming, I simply drill myself into the ground and weather the storm there. Resources seem ample. Maybe it’s a random luck thing… just ran into the space police once and made the wrong choice to fight.
As you’ve said the turnaround has been truly impressive. An underwhelming launch followed by years of big, free content updates.
I really enjoy the atmosphere of the game and have played it quite a bit. I do find it a little bit ‘grindy’ in terms of gathering resources etc. so these days mainly get my fix by browsing places like the subreddit and checking out the awesome screenshots people post.
I really wanted to like the game. I gave it a solid 20 hours with a few friends. I thought the procedural generation was great, made for some really beautiful environments. I played after most of the problems relating to that had been resolved.
Unfortunately I absolutely hated the spaceflight gameplay. I thought it was really dull and unintuitive. I’m a pretty serious Elite: Dangerous player so I guess I was expecting something more akin to that. But the straw that broke my back was when my inventory was wiped by some software bug. I went crawling back to ED after that, charting the depths of our galaxy in the peaceful void. Their Stellar Forge is an amazing piece of software.
