No Man's Sky

Been playing this since it went gold. I have a hi-end PC system and have had no issues other than occasional spasmic screen jerkiness. As a niche audience game (assuming the developers meant it to be an exploration game primarily) it's actually pretty engaging. The universe is huge and this game meets that expectation. I find it interesting enough to explore the planets of my 'home' system at present. In fact I'm a Nomad Interpreter of the Kovax Congregation, an old machine life form that inhabits my system. While the interface is simplistic it does work out rather well. There is enough to do right for me as I learn who the Kovax were and try to understand their language. I've run into pirates several times and after dying twice have learned how to evade them until I have something better to fight with. Overall I'm liking this game at present. Feels deep and the stories from the monoliths are well done.

PC specs: GTX 1080, i7 4970k 4.5Ghz, Win7x64 SP1, latest drivers. The game runs around 50-30 fps, at it's worse is flying on the surface. Have tried many solutions, the problem is the same at low or ultra settings. I think HG knew about the performance issues as the game upscales the resolution (to get close to native 1080p you need to supersample). Another problem, most of the time I was unable to save my game. The game would pause for a few seconds, show the 'process saved' logo and lo and behold, my progress was not saved when checking the options menu. Restarting the game would fix this, but as I progressed this problem became more common to the point that it happened after two autosaves. This game shouldn't have been released at this state or price, and will be requesting a refund with gog.

This game's definitely not worth the price of admission. I have roughly 30 hours logged, and I don't feel like touching it ever again. I can certainly say that 20 of those hours were just momentum, and trying to find *something* of substance that the game had to offer. An awful lot was promised, but it falls short in basically every regard. I've only made 12 jumps, and every system is practically identical. Suit, Ship, and Multitool can all be maxed out on the starter planet with enough perseverance. The game's designed so that progress can be made at any point, on any planet. It has to be this way, since there's nothing actually programmed into the game world. Everything is randomized, so everything has to include the bare minimum stuff required to advance in the game. The latest update removed a glitch that allowed items to be stacked in the inventory. When the ship is maxed out, it has 48 slots. Most of those are taken up by ship upgrades. Now couple severely limited inventory slots with the inability to stack items, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Limited fuel / energy / resources are simply included to force players to land once in awhile and explore for about 40 meters, blow up some crystals for fuel, and leave the planet that looks the same as all the other planets. The game's fun for a very short time, but ultimately, it's a shallow experience that's relying on unfulfilled promises both at point of sale, and future updates, with no communication from the developers regarding... anything, really.

After a seemingly never ending wait for this game, i am feeling totally let down by the whole experience. Gets boring very quickly. all you do is revisit the same dull, uneventful points of interest on each planet. the only differences being the colours of the planet. trying to find stuff you need to build half decent gear is a joke. trawled through four planets trying to find copper. pathetic. zero storyline appeal. i thought i was going to love this as i am an avid sci fi fan. properly fuming that im 40 quid down and cant even trade it in as its only available as a digital download. waste of money. dont bother buying it.

I am lucky enough to have been one of the chosen few that have not suffered from the severe performance issues of the initial launch. I run a pretty old i5 rig with a GTX960; with a bit of tweaking (disabling the GSYNC) I was able to get this game to perform at 50-60fps on an ultra-wide monitor at 2560x1080. As far as the game itself goes, it is very evident that it is not a completed game. A lot of features have been omitted or toned down, and a lot of promised content has not materialised. There also remains, to put it kindly, a lot of curious UI decisions that were ported over that feel very out of place in a PC environment. In it's current state, it gets repetitive very quickly. Once you have maxed out the upgrades on your ship and suit, it feels as though there's not really much left to do. The combat also leaves a lot of room for improvement. So why four stars? Like many others, I have day-dreamed of traversing distant galaxies and frolicking with the strange life forms I find. NMS has come the closest so far in putting me there. Although Hello Games has fallen short of a lot of their promises, I still believe they have still accomplished a huge milestone in game development with No man's sky. It shows potential that I hope is exploited by the development team.