No Man's Sky

I have been waiting forever to try out this game and then people start to give this game bad reviews! for no reason a lot of the time, like performance drop, its not the game its computer!!! also you cant give a game a bad review if you have only played 5 hours, that's stupid to give a game a bad review so soon. But right now what my make this game better is this!: make it to were you can crash on planets, find the aliens you can trade with and all that stuff walking around, see them walking around in stations and other places, see them come from the ships and go back in them. Also multiplayer were 2 or 3 or 4 people spawn with each other would be very fun!

The interface is pretty horrible. Sometimes you click on things. Other times there's a delay while you hold down a button, for no obvious reason, making things seem sluggish. Often you've clicked, then realised nothing happens, try again, then realise you have to hold the button down ... So weird, no other PC games I've played have adopted that silly scheme. It makes it feel like the game is fighting you. I can't believe there's still no installation or setup option to make the game offline, so that no other players' namings or whatever can appear in your game. I had to mess around in firewall settings to block the game. It wouldn't let me redefine the Insert key for some reason. I wandered around a bit, but felt no sense of wonder. Just an over-used amnesiac plot device, and an overwhelming number of popup labels and an interface that felt quite hostile. It's nothing like the misleading (and exciting) trailer. This seems a bit over-priced. I've uninstalled it. Maybe I'll try again at some point, and possibly update this review (if that's possible), but first impressions were a bit sour.

Ironically, considering others reviews on more powerful rigs, this runs fine on my Alienware Alpha i5. Yes, on an Alpha of all things!!! The graphics obviously aren't at max, but still looks good and very playable. Have to run it windowed though. Tried full screen but I got crashes and had to delete my config files to force the game to build them again. Phew! There is one major frame rate issue I am coming across. Bearing in mind I played this for 5 hours yesterday, on two occasions the frame rate went really chuggy. I restarted the game to fix it. As for the gameplay, I shouldn't be enjoying this but I am. I'm not in to survival-type games and it should be boring as hell, but for some reason I found the initial learning curve really rewarding. I generally hate any kind of of inventory management and crafting activity in games but I think that 's because they usually play second fiddle to the storyline games I like to play. I can see that when it's the main part of the game, I actually enjoy it. But for how long I wonder? The music, look and scale of the sandbox environment create a subtle but unique atmosphere that I'm enjoying exploring. They way I'm playing it, it's very chilled out. The constant replenishing of materials to keep you going provides a constant sense of peril that is again subtle. For now, I'm enjoying the learning curve and soaking up the atmosphere. Key moments so far: an annoyingly aggressive scuttley stick insect type thing that kept chasing me. And then I built a gun. Not wanting to leave the first planet I'm on, because I felt there was more to discover. I understand the negative reviews people are giving, without a doubt it's definitely over priced. I went in to this purchase as a gamble and so I can't complain too much. I've given this four stars because of my generous nature. If it runs on your machine, I'd definitely recommend it (but read the reviews to make a judgement call first). But, like the majority of other reviewers, had it not run well on my machine, it would be a 1 (I'm less generous when I feel I've been conned).

Where to start; I won't mention the lies, that we all know, but even with these elements in it (and the developers are slowly adding to the base game, filling the lies with some implementation), this game is still bland and plain. I enjoy it for sessions here and there, but this is not the game that make me think "I can't wait to go home and go play NMS!". Probably I had this feeling with games like Skyrim or Mass Effect, to mention something fairly recent; but in general wth the selection of games nowadays, it is hard to suggest NMS. Plain and bland...some may like it; a zen experience, like someone called it. Not my thing, and not because I don't enjoy the zen experience...I play Elite dangerous going around mining mindlessly asteroids, or jumping from a system to another without any sort of idea about what to do; just to scan systems, so I can sell data...I even play stuff like Farm simulator, Bus simulator, Truck simulator; so I know the meaning of dull gameplay made to relax. This game does not even do that. The problem? The gameplay. You go to X, you look around; randomly generated stuff, cool...but what do I do? Grind. Once done, let's go explore! Jump to another system (after grinding for the hyperdrive fuel), and more grind, same assets over and over, same aliens. Now the new update added missions; but it is adding a bit of variety; to a boring mechanic. There is also a new storyline, which is interesting, and made me go back to play; but it is too little and too late; considering that once done, you are left with 300 billion worlds to grind. Procedural generation was the key to get random events and different situations; different places to see...instead it was used for the planets/animals/plants, and that's all. Great technical achievement for sure, but not from the gameplay perspective. If Hello Games people would watch just few episodes of Star Trek, they could have enough inspiration for 100M adventures on worlds far away. Instead, another planet and another resource block to grind, more animals to scan, which are a mish-mash of generic parts; same assets over and over placed at random. Welcome to No Man Sky...a game that not even 60% off is attracting people.

So I bought this game because I'd heard that this game was actually good now. The game loaded up fine and I got into the introductory mission. As soon as I attempt to enter the ship to run the diagnostics or whatever, my character's body falls through the ground and stares directly up into the undercarriage. I get out of the ship and I'm fine. A bit strange, but not game breaking. So then I begin the next phase of the mission where I need to search the nearby buildings for supplies to fix the ship. The doors on the building don't open properly, so I can't enter the building and find what I need, meaning I can't repair my ship. Now its game breaking. I started a new game twice after that and had the same experience yet again. I'll be sending this report to Hello Games, but I still thought people should know what to expect.