No Man's Sky

I played this on Steam, but this is my game of the decade. So far I put around 1100 hours into the game over several, and hope to go back to see the newest additions - they keep adding stuff. This game will appeal to those who favor self-directed exploration. It's really _not_ for goal driven players who want the game to present fast paced missions or challenges. There are some goals, but it's not that kind of game by design and you can mostly pursue them or not. At it's core the game is a chill exploration experience, and many days in the game might be "let's see what's over here." Everything about the game is at the player's discretion. Do you want to be a space hobo? That's OK. Want to spend 100 hours on the first planet? That's OK too. Want to build a fleet? That's OK too. Want to just explore and see planet and animal variation? That's OK. Build bases or networks of bases and manufacture/craft some agriculture or mfg goods or farming? That's OK. Explore underwater depths? Look for a cool ship? Find a planet with rare resource? Find the most beautiful planet? Find and earthlike planet to live on? There are lots of ways to to spend your playtime. For the longest time the biggest thrill for me was entering the atmosphere of a new planet and going down to land to see what new ecosystem and animals I might find. Eventually you become accustomed to the limits and tendencies of the procedural generation systems, but even then you'll occasionally be surprised by what the game presents. This is the type of unrushed, chill, exploration driven game I've wanted to play since I was a kid. (The hardest part of the game is likely at the start, so don't get discouraged if your starting situation is challenging. I've died when beginning a new game despite playing 100s of hours at the time, so it can happen if the environment is bad, but it's really not a setback - the game will restart you there. Pay attention - it's part of the story)

I meme'd the hell out of this game like most of the internet when it came out. Mostly to be an anti-hype person. I am glad that I was wrong about what this game would become though. The engoodening of no man's sky is real and Hello Games has done an amazing job making this game into a more perfect version of the game they set out to create initially. The game itself is great. Free seasonal content is consistent. Multiplayer is great fun, making bases rocks. Exploration is actually fun in this game, and I find myself walking around a lot on random planets just to see what I can. It can get samey after a while sinceits almost all randomly generated, but you will always find interesting stuff. Also note that every major patch adding tons of new systems and content to engage with, has been totally free. That is amazing. If you have a limited budget, or want to focus on a few games rather than a ton, you will find this game to be a great option. There is a ton to do and a lot to explore. With multiplayer and seasonal content, you will have reasons to return in the future too. My only complaint is that the GoG multiplayer integration made it hard to get into multiplayer properly at first. I am not sure that deserves a star taken off though because the rest of the game is great and was not a problem in later playthroughs.

I have played No Man's Sky from the beginning, when it was still under-developed. It was a fun game with short life-span, because of it's limited, repetitive management of resources. Flight was horrible, and seemed rushed, just like another feature that the Developer wanted to add, but didn't know how to make it work. The worst issue was performance, but that could be corrected with mods that removed post-processing and grass effects. It was playable. With Next update, things seemed much better. It was becoming a fun game to return, once in a while. Flight continued a mess, but it could be made better with some Mods. Space combat was just a sad event to avoid. With the Beyond update, and the change in graphics' API from OpenGL to Vulkan, the game just became impossibly slow. It's not the post-processing, or the grass generation any more. Reducing the screen size to 800x600 doesn't even offer a final solution. The frames drop is there, and it reaches the point of causing motion-sickness. Don't buy it. It's not worth the trouble and health issues to your eyes.

NMS has been making the rounds again across the internet for its continuing updates and incoming content from the ever diligent Hello Games studio. I bought it a few months ago for a friend and myself. And despite my friend's hardware being better, the game runs very poorly. They have better hardware than I do in every way - an SSD over an HDD, a desktop over a modest gaming laptop, etc. And for some inscrutable reason it refuses to run smoothly on their system, having choppiness and stutters every second. Their rig has **never** had issues with any other game. In 2020, 4 years after release, that's a huge flaw. NMS is not guaranteed to run on your system regardless of performance. A dealbreaker for most. The game's core gameplay loop - exploring, adventuring, and looking for things to do, is very one note. It doesn't take more than 20-30 hours to have "seen it all" because it's all procedurally generated. You know everything you're doing and getting, upgrades, ships you see, their color schemes, the plant flora, life, ALL of it is completely RNG. You have very little way to influence this exploration or even the way your gear and space ships looks, if any. Sure you can upgrade your ship infinitely now, but if you want to find something that looks the way you like, you're going to be wasting literally hours waiting for ships to land, and hoping they're high rank. If you want to base build however, and do stuff that makes 0 use of their world generation system, you can do all that. It seems most people who like the game enjoy this type of content which is why it has so much praise. If you're looking for intense space exploration, you'll want to look elsewhere. Also - the UI is designed for the controller but the game controls better with a mouse. Performance is garbage. Feels like an early access game that's adding more "things to do" but without fleshing out WHY to do them at all. 3/5 is generous given egregious performance problems.

Really dont understand all the negative feedback. Maybe the fact I started playing games in the 90´s so I dont give a CRAP about playing games with Antialiasing X100 and 4k and all the NINJA PC stuff. I know I will be downvoted but I dont care. Im playing with a 5 core cpu, 8 gb Ram, Medium GFX. In a 24inches monitor. 1920x1080, all graphics stuff on HIGH, deactivated FXAA (I dont care). The game runs FINE. Not 60FPS fine, but FINE. Being playing for 2 hours. I started in a HOT planet, my suit protecting me from 50plus degrees celsius. After a while I decided exploring a bit, I jet-packed over a nerby hill. Temperature drops to 31 degrees. I think "nice! The ground was hot, here Im higher and it´s cooler!" Then I realize the sun is setting, and I start to see stars. Night time! That´s why it´s cooler!" I collect some Iron from rocks around and I repair my "Scanning device" and then I see a strange creature. I scan it and name the species and upload it. The thing is jumpy and nervous, and goes away. Later I learnt how to feed it, what they eat. I interact with it and feed it. A happy face icon shows up. Now sounds like happy screams, not fear screams, and now follows me everywhere. Now I call it "Timmy", and I guess its my pet. ALL THIS happened within 100 meters around my camp, I havent started even exploring the WHOLE planet. I dont understand 99% of my inventory, and I LOVE it, cause Im learning stuff. I have already repaired my ship, and learnt and alien word from a nearby alien structure I found (I know how to say "interloper"!) I guess people unhappy have a right to be unhappy, who knows. But Im loving this game. It doesnt have multiplayer!" IT WASNT SUPPOSED TO be a multiplayer experience. Maybe it will be someday, maybe not, but it{s not the point of the game! "It doesnt run perfect in my very expensive PC!" Well, maybe some of us used to play doom in "low definition" and a small window in a 486 in the 90s. And we care about gameplay, not 4k monitors.