"No Mans Sky" launched this week. A game incredibly ambitious and game changing in concept alone. The game had a very rocky start. First, on the PS4 launch, the game's multiplayer capabilities came into question when two players managed to find the exact same spot in the universe, yet were unable to see each other. Through a series of vague tweets, the game's director, Sean Murray, seemed to imply it was because of server overload.
The PC launch was even rockier. The game didn't release on Steam with a needed script, causing the game to crash on launch. To Hello Games' credit, the patch to fix this was released almost immediately. The game had severe frame rate issues for many machines, even strong ones. (For full disclosure, my Nvidia 860m and 16 gigs of RAM ran the machine fine, after optimization) These issues caused the games steam rating to drop fast, with over 50% of the reviews being negative. It seems that was only a reaction to the bugs, however, as far more people were able to play, and have been slowly leaving good reviews. At the time of writing, 58% of the game reviews are positive now. I'll be adding one more.
"No Mans Sky" is an imperfect game. It has severe issues in nearly every facet. Planetary terrain gets too similar, there are only a few variations of outposts, and the main thing you'll be fighting in the game is not the intergalactic police force known as the sentinels or aggressive aliens, but instead your inventory space. Ship combat is a bit clunky and slow, having to manually recharge your shield happens far too often in combat, and environmental hazards pose nearly no threat at all.
With all of those said, the game is amazing. I adore it. If I wanted fantastic ship combat I would be playing Rogue Squadron. If I wanted great gun mechanics there are approximately a hundred million games I could be playing. If that's what you're looking for, "No Mans Sky" is definitely not for you. If you're infuriated by slow progression, "No Mans Sky" is not for you. What "No Mans Sky" does have is near perfection in exploration and rewards. The payoff for fully documenting a planets life forms is huge. The feeling of getting a new inventory slot for your suit is pure ecstasy. I'm at a point where my suit can hold almost as much as my ship, and soon I'll be buying a new ship that's one step away from being a cargo freighter. And that feels great.
I'm still warping my way across the universe, slowly but surely making my way to the center. I've taken a few detours to get to Atlas interfaces, strange and mysterious 3-D rhombuses from the games box art. They give me something of immense value and teach me a few words of some alien language. I'm not sure what the items they give me do yet. I don't know if I ever will. I'm still on my way to the center, and maybe I'll figure out there.
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And that feeling of not knowing is something I've usually only experienced in the Dark Souls series. Modern games don't let you experience not knowing that often. You'll get a pop-up saying "Use this over here!" or "Use this to ____" Not here. I received my Atlas Stone, its item description say's essentially "Who know's?" and the only other information I have is how much I can sell it for. That number alone tells me it's important. If I'll ever use it in this vast universe? I dunno.
