I think I may be one of the only people on the planet (that regularly plays video games, anyway) that had almost no prior knowledge of “No Man’s Sky” before it was released last Tuesday, August 9th on PlayStation 4. I was familiar with the overall concept, but I stayed away from in-depth previews and the cult of personality that developed around its creator and lead designer, Sean Murray. “No Man’s Sky” has arguably been the most hyped game of the last decade. As such, critical response to Hello Games latest offering has been divisive under the weighty expectations.
The premise of “No Man’s Sky” is that you are a lone intergalactic traveler, navigating through solar system after solar system and finding undiscovered planets and moons that you plunder for resources. There are so many solar systems, in fact, that a staggering 18 quintillion possible planets await exploration. That’s right: quintillion. “No Man’s Sky” is a technological and mathematical marvel; each planet you discover (which, by the end of the game, will probably be between 50 and 100) is procedurally generated to ensure slight variation among the many floating rocks you will slowly (very slowly, the movement speed is decrepitly sluggish) discover. It also features randomly generated flora, fauna, and animals. Here are some of the critters and locations I came across on my journey:
“No Man’s Sky” is classified as a survival-resource game, which actually means that you just repeat a few similar tasks over and over (like mining this to produce that which will, in turn, help you produce this) which becomes quite burdensome by the time you find your way to the center of the galaxy, the end goal of the game. I’ve actually never played any of the other survival-resource games like “Minecraft” or “DayZ,” so the mechanics, while not wholly unfamiliar, were mostly new to me.
The combat is razor-thin. You basically fight nothing but little flying drones that float and wait patiently for you to slowly whittle away their health bar. Occasionally you’ll fight these dog/robot things if you find a glowing ball on the ground:
There are also strange AT-ST looking robots that I only encountered once and of which I wasn’t able to get a photo. But every battle plays out the exact same: stand in place and hold down the trigger while aiming your little dot at the robots. Slowly reload your weapon. Robots blow up. That’s it. Space combat is a mess of lolling about in zero gravity getting a few precious hits in on the passing pirate ships (maybe destroying one or two) until you inevitably die and have to stare at a pithy quote while the game loads.
While there is certainly a Zen-like state that can be induced by exploring countless alien planets in search of say, heridium to upgrade your multi-tool or thamium to upgrade your pulse drive, it's almost always arduous exploring the same craggy and desolate landscapes in search of rare resources just to advance the story and get on with it. I found that either I was in the mood to play this game or I was not; there was no forcing it.
“No Man’s Sky” is a perfect example of the law of diminishing returns. When I first started playing the game, I was thoroughly absorbed in its aesthetics: the unique and often beautiful graphics, the relaxing and nuanced soundtrack. Then I became absorbed in the pitch-perfect sense of isolation and loneliness, the waking up alone and stranded on an unfamiliar world coupled with the excitement and wonder of discovery. I was actually blown away by this moment:
I know it seems a little unremarkable but, after spending hours exploring the surface of my first planet and eventually repairing my damaged starship, it was kind of amazing when I blasted off into space and realized the almost infinite expanse of the game. It made me feel something that almost no other game before had managed save maybe “Morrowind” or “Bioshock;” I felt like a visitor to a very lived-in universe that had loads of secrets and intricacies to be discovered. It isn’t until later in the game that I realized just how sparsely populated “No Man’s Sky” actually is. NPC's exist to vend or reward and possess no discernible differences. I did like learning the different alien languages via the monoliths peppering the landscapes, it just didn't make much of an impact on the experience.
The progression in the beginning is deceptively well-paced comparative to the rest of the game; you initially have clear and definable goals accomplished with relative ease that introduce new mechanics and refinements while establishing the addictive upgrade system that is, in all honesty, the only reason I finished the game. After the first ten to twenty hours, the game becomes a blur of warping and surface-skimming and bartering just to move on to the next solar system to do the exact same thing until you reach the center of the galaxy. As has been mentioned almost everywhere else, the resource management system is a pain in the ass and makes everything in the game more of a task than it needs to be, a constant disruption to the flow.
Honestly, I think that this is the kind of game that you should just get really, really stoned while playing and zone out. This creature had me laughing hysterically, for example:
And then there were these tragically malformed beasts:
Then boredom set in:
I know, I’m a monster.
Towards the end of the game, instead of being immersed, I was just going through the motions. I watched a couple episodes of “Stranger Things” while using my laser to whittle away dozens and dozens of mineral formations and listened to Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” while cruising around in my starship looking for a drop pod to upgrade my suit or a trading post to unload all the random (and often useless) items I recovered from so much aimless wandering. In these moments, I realized what Sean Murray meant when he described "No Man's Sky" as "...a very, very chill game." Very chill, bruh. So chill you need a distraction from the more tedious bits.
Hello Games deserves credit for accomplishing the seemingly impossible and creating a world that is vast beyond imagination. The videos you've watched and the creatures you've seen in the body of this article haven't been seen by anyone else and likely never will, because no one reads this shit anyway. It’s just a shame that, even without personally having the monumental expectations that most had for this game, it still wound up disappointing me with its shallow mechanics and wasted potential. Perhaps the game will get better with some of the downloadable content that Hello Games has planned otherwise we’ll just have to wait for “No Man’s Sky 2” for the concept to be fully realized.
As for me, I’m going to get back to “Axiom Verge,” which is totally awesome and couldn’t be more different than “No Man’s Sky.” If nothing else, “Axiom Verge” proves that, at the end of the day, fun gameplay mechanics are all that a game needs to be engaging; boring gameplay will remain boring even if you can do it in 18 quintillion ways.
