No Man's Sky

It all started great. The game started up without any of the black screen problems, others have experienced. The game was a bit lacky in the beginning, but that also disappeared. I played the game, and had a really great time. Early on I found an easy way to earn units, and quiet fast had millions (that should turn out to be important later on) But the good times did not last forever. Suddenly I began to have a problem, where the game loaded the same safe over and over. No matter what I did I always ended up the same place. There and I thought that it was it. But I found out that I just had to find some outposts, and otherwise just do some of the gameplay elements. That braked the loop. So I thought I had dodged a bullet. But then I tried to fly up to the anomaly station to see of the problem was gone. That turned out to be a mistake. I landed on the station without any issues. Then I proceeded to close down the game and launce it again, to see if the load loop had been broken. It turned out that the loop had been broken, but when I loaded in, I was somehow outside the normal area of the “gaming world”. That meant I was standing roughly 1 ~ 2 meters over my starship. The result of that was, that I could not get in to my ship and fly away, and I could not get into the area where the NPC’s was either. I decided to try to die, and hoped that would reset the game, so I could continue. But instead I was revived on the normal spacestation. Initially I thought that was a good thing. But then I realized that my spaceship was still on the other spacestation… Soo now I was on the spacestation without a starship… Luckily, as mentioned earlier, I had a lot of units, so I was able to buy a new ship. But had that not been the case, I would have been stranded on the spacestation, and forced to start over again. In the end I decided that enough was enough, and asked for a refund, which was granted without any problems. Right now, I would not recommend this game to anyone.

Exploration. It's lonely. It's gorgeous. It's threatening. It presents you with your limits, and opportunities to push past them. It offers choices on how to proceed. And if that's what you are looking for, NMS delivers. The game installed quickly, after which the first load after the intro screen took some time to complete - subsequent loads when much faster. Day 1 for PC, there were rare visual stutters when panning quickly around - on my system, all of these were resolved with the patch later that day resolved nearly every instance of that (there are still very rare split second jags when panning past multiple structures in zoom mode), and the game has run smoothly and seamlessly on the ground and in space. Based on depictions and descriptions of the game, I expected an essentially single player experience with a highly unlikely, but possible, chance of finding things friends had discovered and uploaded to the shared universe server - but at no point expected a "multiplayer" experience as commonly perceived by the gaming community. Nor should you, since that is not an explicit part of the game. However, you can expect to slowly grok the language of aliens, interact with and experience memories and history of the aliens of a different galaxy, learn secrets of an ever present mechanical infestation, upgrade your suit, ship, and tools seeking synergies and what is essential to your survival and progress. You can expect variations on a theme at first, and then stranger vistas as you move farther from your starting point. But the core gameplay - explore, resource, upgrade or revise, and push on - remains. If I have an issue with the game, it is the manual refresh of shields/life support/environmental protection from your inventory - either a quick key or an automatic setting should be there, so long as you have the resources. But it isn't. So, be prepared to tab out of what you are doing to click on the necessities of survival. Irksome, but tolerable. Enjoy

A lot has been said about this game, much of it not good. If I had to summarize it in one sentence, it would be this one: "A game made by people who have never played a game before" Everything in NMS makes me feel this is true: The user interface that seems to be designed by a confused sadist (in particular, the mouse-hold instead of mouse-click); the artificial waiting periods and interruptions while the game is slowly displaying often irrelevant text to you; the timeouts on stamina, jetpack and mining tool/gun heating; the semi-functional graphics options that require mods to really work as they should; the non-existing gameplay... Most of this has already been fixed by mods that were written by unpaid fans of the game (and not by the paid developers) and the game becomes playable once the developer paradigms have been removed from the game - yes, the game becomes more playable the less it conforms to the visions of the developers, imageine that! But - and that's a big but, one that I can only write here as BUT! - no modder has been able to or may ever be able to fix the core gameplay. There's none. I've been playing 3, maybe 4 hours and it already feels as if I had played a few hundred. I'm bored. I played the game. I put it away and spent 16 hours with Kerbal Space Program. I played the game again, with mods. I put it away and played a few hours of Dark Souls 3, to cool down my anger. I played the game. I put it away and played 8 hours of Subnautica, doing exactly what NMS should have provided but didn't: Exploration, resource gathering, surviving, crafting, and more exploration. I, like so many others, wanted to like NMS. But the utter boredom of (after modding) running around, inventory (after modding) clicking, enjoying (after modding) the occasional, rare and random scenery... it just overcomes me. I got NMS for $45, I paid $18 for KSP and $12 for Subnautica, for the remaining $15 I could have bought NMS at the next GoG sale. That's where it's headed.

This game was advertised as a jewel for the sci-fi genre. An adventure in an infinite universe. Well, that's what it is : an adventure in an infinite universe. Pros: - Technologically impressive - Beautiful landscapes, beautiful ships, beautiful ( and scarry) creatures - Interesting (but not incredible) story. - There's crafting. - There's trading. - There's exploration. Most of the story and lore comes from artifacts and monuments you find in the vast worlds. - There's survival (a strong word here) against the elements of each planet. Cons: - There's crafting. It's simply a chore to get the elements required and store them in your small inventory. - You only see the cockpit of your ship. This was a major let down for me. It was not advertised that you could explore or customize your ship, but I would have hoped they did implement this feature. - After a (short) while exploration becomes booring and you wonder how come EVERY planet you visit has had visitors. - There are only 3 races of NPCs in the game. 3! In the whole universe! - No nebulae?! - No space-station exploration! - Gameplay wise : it's just booring. 1) Fly around. 2) Get elements for space-ship fuel. 3) Fight in space if you want (or have too, most pirates will lock down your boost to low speed for an unknown reason). 4) Fight in the atmosphere with a severe handicap (you cannot go to a low altitude, the ship doesn't accept the input). 5) Empty 4 chargers of plasma into a carnivourous spider so that it dies and stops attacking you. 6) Run from the 14 other spiders that are charging at you. 7) Discover some monuments, learn some words, follow the main objective (or not). The story is interesting, but it's also bland enough for the game to not be worth it. You can compare the game to Elite: Dangerous. It's a dumbed down Elite flight model with planetary exploration and binomes. Both are booring for the same reasons. "Math does not solve everything" is the quote that should summarize what this game did wrong.

No Man's Sky is everything you've heard. The good. The bad. The bad is that this game has limitations. What we all want it to be is nearly impossible. Nerrative, meaningful interactions, unlimited technologies and possibilities and opportunities and discoveries. Impossible. This was made, crafted by people, and is limited in scope. I get the sense that Hello Games knew they were working against time and money and expectation, so they tried to let their game do one really important thing. Let you roleplay a space-traveler. Not just a marine, or a manager of space stations and civilizations (Like a 4x, or an action game), but a traveler. The guy who sets foot on new planets, dwells under alien skies, and tries to make a go of it there. Using really neat technology it accomplishes that goal. I'm coming in late here, guys. I've seen the hype train crash and the team keep going, keep building the dream without any love. Patch after patch adds new facets to the gameplay, but most of it is just niceties. The core game, the one about exploration, and that feeling of enormity and existence, still shines through. Here you will start on an unknown planet, unaware of who you are or what you are doing there (much like being born). You will quickly learn of your limitations and needs, and try to figure out what you want to do about it. Wanna wreck the local fauna (before it wrecks you)? Wanna look for riches? Wanna reach the sky? Figure out what you live for, and then this game will help you find more of that in it's ingenious design. Fly through the atmosphere to a new world, skim the landscape, and take what you are doing in. What role you are fulfilling. Role-playing doesn't have to be about numbers and swords and combat. It's about living another life, an existence outside your own. That's exactly what No Man's Sky is about. As a note for all users: Getting this on PC is very wise. The mod scene, scarce as it is, can hone the experience to your liking.