Honestly, the title of this review doesn't do No Man's Sky justice, I could use many more words than that to describe how I feel about this game/sim, I absolutely love it :-D. I've played more than a few space sims/games over the years, but this is the only one which has truly knocked me off my feet, the sheer scale of what they've achieved, after such a rocky start, seriously mind-blowingly outstanding. I love every aspect of it, nothing has disappointed me so far, even falling through the floor on ONE occasion. The size and scope of what's been achieved here, outweighs everything else for me and the fact that it's sci-fi, well that is the proverbial cherry :-) Amazing!! (still not enough to cover it)
I did buy this, a few hours ago, but I HAD to get a refund after playing it for just a short time... The main problem, which showed-itself almost immediately, the controls. The joypad controls were more than a little irritating and there were occasions when they refused to work at all, being asked to press A (Xbox controller), but had to use the mouse because pressing A did nothing. Using camera controls or even the crane controls, I kept getting messages saying "Can't unload here", when I was trying to manouevre the crane/camera how I needed it to be :-/. Another issue was, you have to be so precise with what you're doing, it seemed to be necessary to do it EXACTLY the way THEY wanted it, with absolutely NO margin for even a slight difference. Hence I had to restart the job, because it wouldn't allow me to proceed, this happened TWICE on the first job, so no-doubt it would become even more irritating as the jobs became more difficult/advanced. Anyway, all that was more than enough for me to ask for a refund, it sucked all the fun out of what could have been a great game.
I checked-out some reviews on Youtube before deciding whether to buy this game. There were mixed reviews, including at least one which said that they didn't understand the story, but I soon realised that was due to lack of critical thinking, they didn't even try, just saw it all as a button-pushing exercise. I'm so glad I bought this and ignored the negative reviews. A fascinating and engaging story and the investigation techniques are superb, really make you feel like you're involved. I regularly go backwards & forwards, to determine if I'm missing something. The graphics are absolutely amazing and really give you a feeling of claustrophobia in some areas, yet show the grand scale of the City when you're out in the open, a nice mix. I did have one issue, I got stuck in some scenery and had to quit & restart my save to correct it, but besides that, no other issues so far. Got it earlier today and I've only just stopped playing, to write this review :-). It won't be to everyone's liking, but if you love a good detective story, then you will likely enjoy this.
Clearly, with this being Early Access, it's not going to be perfect, nobody should expect that, but I was honestly surprised by how good this game is, can't wait for the full release. Understandably, it does have some issues and some things aren't finished yet (WiP), but the makings of an amazing game are already in-place. I marked it as 4 stars, because it's not quite there yet and the Accessibility Options have caused me a few problems. Not having great sight anymore, I LOVE that the UI can be scaled, however... I cannot scale it above 1.2, or things start disappearing off-screen. I can just about manage with 1.2 scaling, so it's not a huge issue for me, just thought it best to point it out in case others have similar issues :-). Overall, even with th unfinished game and the issues, I'm hooked. So glad I decided to invest in this game, looking forward to seeing it fully-realised :-).
... For anyone with sight difficulties, who struggles with small text. No matter which resolution I chose, the text stayed just as tiny, forcing me to use a magnifying glass to even read it. The lower the resultion, the more-blurred the text became, but NO bigger :-/. I'm no slouch with computers, I used to teach computer skills. I tried a number of things to make this game 'comfortable' to play... All failed. As it stands, if you have issues with reading small text, this game is unplayable. Thankfully, GoG did refund the cost to me. Thank you for that, GoG :-).
