No Man's Sky

Loved the game from the beginning. All these free updates you guys; Thank you so much! Don't bother with the bad reviews. The game takes your imagination for the ride of your life. :) Atmosphere in this game is otherworldly. Gameplay is great and exploration fantastic!

I've been playing this since 2016. At that time it was probably only fun if you wanted a walking simulator. They added 3 versions, and now "Next". The base building quests and so on are a fun addition, the new freighter quests are also fun. All in all it feels more finished than the 2016 version. I honestly don't care about multiplayer, although I would try it once when it becomes available for the co-op experience.

So, No Man's Sky. This one blew my mind the first time I read a half page blurb about it in a gaming magazine, 3 years ago. I thought it was going to be the game that dragged me into the next (now current) console generation. So naturally, my mind was utterly blown and I was ecstatic when I saw it was going to be releasing on GoG. Did it live up to my expectations? Read on. First and foremost, performance. I was one of the lucky ones. My chipset supported SSE instructions (which the game now supports for all chipsets I believe) and this one played fine straight out of the box. I have a middling "gaming" (-ish) computer, several years old and a GPU to match. At 1080P the performance is about what you'd expect for a new "AAA" style game. Pretty good, and not enough to detract from my enjoyment. If you think you can play the Witcher 3 on a 5 year old system, with a GPU two generations out of date, at 4K - you're going to be disappointed here as well. Ironically it seems that the bleeding edge systems were the ones that had odd performance issues out of the gate, at least based on reviews I read. So did I enjoy the game? Yes, in fact. But that comes with several caveats. The game is really NOT the open world action space sim I thought it would be. It's far more of an exploration, survival and crafting-lite game. To that end, there is indeed space combat as well as some ground based FPS action. It's all serviceable and actually backed up by the ability to craft fun upgrades for both your on foot and in space personas. There's enough there to scratch an RPG type itch and I for one found the "lasering" of resources enjoyable. Is there a bit of repetition? Of course, and boredom can set in. But that's almost inherent in games of this type. The crafting and exploration isn't as deep as something like Don't Starve and the space combat is a bit mundane. But all and all there was enough there for me to actually enjoy the game. Combine that with the ever present quest for the next ship, search for uber-upgrade and discovery on an exciting planet that offers resources and crafting "recipes" you previously were unaware of and the game is compelling if only for a short time. It suffers a bit from its own scope (the universe seed idea is fantastic, but it really serves to accentuate that you're doing the same thing over and over). Again, nearly every game is a victim of this to some extent but here it's magnified over, literally, an entire impossible universe sized expanse. Was it worth it? This one is more difficult to say. For me, yes, but your mileage may vary. I factored into the game the value of my support for GoG landing something like this. The $60 price of admission included my desire to see titles like this launch and become viable DRM free. Without that, you may feel a bit jilted. For me, I was happy to get to play the dream come true. Even if it wasn't exactly as amazing once it made the leap to the real world.

There is some real magic hidden in this game. Ever since I was playing X-Wing in MS-DOS I fantasized about the type of game that this is. If only I could I just take my X-Wing and run off to find myself a Dagobah or Hoth... A few patches in, it now runs well (not great). It also delivers considerable variety in the planets you can find. A lot of the things people claimed were missing at launch turned out to be things they simply hadn't discovered yet. I've seen dinosaurs, flying space eels, vast oceans, engaged in a huge space battle, found underwater temples, and taken countless pictures of gorgeous sci-fi sights. The game is, however, very flawed. Navigation between systems remains abysmal. Shooting is clunky (not really "bad"). The same can be said for space flight and combat. The crafting is simplistic. The animal behaviors are simplistic. The AI interactions are very shallow at best. All in all, a lot of the negatives you have heard of it ARE true. So why am I giving it 4 stars? Because DESPITE its flaws, it has delivered experiences I have always wanted; that I hoped this game would deliver; that I wasn't sure I would ever have; and NMS has provided just what I wanted out of the game - even if there IS room for it to improve. 30 hours in, and I am still having fun. I am almost certain that people complaining about barren worlds, soulless grinds, etc simply had bad luck in where they started and threw in the towl after being faced with a few dud planets in a row. Because there's some magical stuff out there, provided you are willing to leave a dud planet behind and keep exploring. This game is a completionist's nightmare, because you have to be willing to cut your losses with a lame planet, rather than getting crushed by the grind to 100% a planet that just doesn't interest you. The game is about discovery, so go discover. Keep moving and exploring. That is what the experience is about, and where it shines most brightly. NMS is sublimely relaxing.

Great game, you will encounter many players, missions, planets and forms to build your own base, It can be builded on land, underground, underwater, etc. It have many skins to obtain by playing missions on the nexus! Great game.