No Man’s Sky Review
Long have we waited for this elusive title from developers Hello Games. For the last two years we have been teased with screen shots and quick tid bits of game play. Every new piece of information driving the hype train till the final release date. When the day finally arrived I could hardly contain my excitement. Then I started my journey, crashed landed in the middle of an undiscovered galaxy. Literally thrown to the wolves with a broken ship and no real clue what to do next. There were a few prompts as to what I needed to repair the space ship, but not your normal tutorial. I was left mostly to my own devices as to what to do first. The planet I first encountered had life on it, but it was barely inhabitable due to its excessive heat. I was soon learn the true nature of No Man’s Sky, survival.
Walking around this new planet I quickly realized that I had to mine for materials just to survive. All along trying to find materials for my ships repair to get off of the planet. The good thing about No Man’s Sky is that you can usually find exactly what you need quite easily. For the most part every planet is set up the same when it comes to finding materials. Not all planets have exactly the same material either, for example the first planet I explored had lots of gold. Gold is a value material used to sell to acquire credits, No Man’s Sky form of currency.
One of the greatest aspect to No Man’s Sky is the ability to discover new planets, galaxies, and life then rename them. You upload all your discoveries for anyone to see if they come across them. You can spend hours scouring the planets to find new discoveries and rename them permanently. It’s exciting finding new life on the planets then uploading them to the server claiming your discovery. Gives you a feeling of really being an explorer, finding new life on new planets. The procedural generated planets means you will come across different life forms spanning every new planet. In the time I have put into the game I have come across some really interesting creatures during my exploration. From flying bat like creatures to full on dragon like creatures that slowly glided in packs in the sky. Some creatures will be passive and not bother with you at all. Unless you decide to feed one of them, then you have a friend who will bring you materials on its own. Not all creatures are so nice though, if you are like me you might come across some aggressive creatures who attack before you even see them. Being attacked from an unknown assailant in first-person mode is a bit unnerving. I was spinning around in circles trying to find out where this thing was attacking me from. Turning around and coming face to face with a huge tyrannous looking rat running at me with its jaws unhinged. I quickly ran away for what I thought was a long enough period, but this bastard followed me. It was obvious that I had to defend myself or perish on this planet all alone, so I switched my multi-tool to kill. That was not my day to die!
In a game where the main story line is far from the real draw of the game, No Man’s Sky has a lot to offer. Spending time on a new planet just taking in the sights as the planet goes from day to night is fun. On some planets the change from day to night changes the look of the planet itself. I have been lucky to have been placed in a galaxy with planets that have varying climates. One in particular I landed on the surface of a planet covered in snow and ice. The sun was down on this side of the planet dropping the temperature down to where ice began to form on the trees, plants, and ground. The blue aura in the sky was amazing to look at giving the whole feel to the planet a winter wonderland. When the sun rose back up in the sky the landscape melted away to a rocky world with sparse greenery. This made sense for a planet that had such cold harsh evenings. Upon further exploring of the planet I found animal life only came out during the day. Giving No Man’s Sky a more realistic approach to it’s design by Hello Games.
Now let’s talk about the flying of your very own spaceship and how you are finally given the control every gamer has always wanted. You literally have to engage thrusters to lift off the ground before you can even start to fly. Thrusters need a lot of fuel so be prepared to be constantly mining for materials to fuel them. Once in the air you can fly all around the planet in its atmosphere or fly out of it all together. Flying off the planet is all in your control, there is no auto pilot loading screen. You control how you fly completely off the planet into space to reentering a planets atmosphere and landing. The flying does take time to go from place to place with little markers for each area. The markers show time and distance to reach the area. This is where having a hyper drive really helps with traveling to far off planets.
A few other things I can mention is that story wise No Man’s Sky’s main goal is to get to the center of the universe. During your travels you will encounter different aliens and you will need to find stones to learn their language to talk with them. The more you learn about each individual race puts you in better standing with them. Which in turn leads to better interaction with the aliens while you encounter them during your travels. Your gear is upgradeable and you can also get better new gear later on. The spaceship can’t be upgraded so you will need to save up credits to purchase a better one. All in all No Man’s Sky is everything Hello Games promised it would be for the PS4.
In time I hope that they will patch a few little bugs I have come across, but otherwise the game is amazing. I would also like to be able to see other players, especially friends show up on my screen while I was playing. No Man’s Sky is not a game for the casual gamer, most gamers will like it at first. I’m afraid that after a while some may get bored with this wonderful exploration title. That being said if you get a chance to play a copy of the game I highly recommend it. This is definitely a title to give a chance and just play it. You will have many different conflicting reviews of No Man’s Sky, but I encourage you to give it a try! I have personally played some crappy titles in my time that i cringe thinking about playing. No Man’s Sky, even with it’s little bugs, is a true next generation title at seeing how far gaming has come.
Now I will have my friends from Gamer Laughs to add their own personal take on No Man’s Sky. The sheer size of this game I think it’s only fair to have multiple opinions on it. I also encourage anyone to drop us a comment on their experience or opinion!
Richard Dobson
For me, No Man’s Sky has the ability for everyone to experience their own unique quality about it, much like a Skyrim (like the time I watched as a Flame Atronach attack a helpless goat. The goat dodged the fireball by jumping off a ledge into a pool of icy water below) But those stories could exist on the first planet, and then the player simply collects resources for the rest of the journey, or there could be something waiting on their last planet, but they will have lost interest in the repetitive nature by then. It is repetitive in gameplay, and you will spot similarities between planets and the creatures that inhabit them.
To keep players going right through to the end, excitement from later on in the game should be from finding a planet that has already been discovered. And then being able to leave your personal mark on it alongside other players’ discoveries.
To keep players going right through to the end, excitement from later on in the game should be from finding a planet that has already been discovered. And then being able to leave your personal mark on it alongside other players’ discoveries.
But you get out what you put into it. And if you are willing, and to an extent hoping, to spend in excess of 25 minutes flying cross planet to a crash site on the horizon given to you by a monolith that gave you a simple maths problem (1, 2, 6, 24, 120, …) then you will experience a very unique game. These experiences, in a universe of 18 quintillion planets, may not be enough to keep you going through to finding the centre of the universe.
Will Carter
Nowadays it’s hard to get away from the massive expectation that is directed towards video games. They are teased to the audience months, years even, before release. No Man’s Sky, the game that promised not only the world, but the universe is no different. It’s been out for just under a week now and I’ve already sunk a lot of time into it. The range of emotions I have experienced during this time have been extremely varied unlike some of the planets I have visited in my exploration. I don’t think I have ever looked forward to a game as much as I have with No Mans Sky and I honestly couldn’t tell you if I am disappointed or not as it’s such a slow burner. The game has you start on the outer reaches of the universe with a broken ship and little explanation as to what to do next. I actually really liked that, I’ve said it before – games hold our hands too much. After shooting some crystals and mining some rocks I took off from my starting planet and started my epic adventure in the starts which boiled down to how much plutonium I could hold in my inventory. The flying mechanics are not what I thought they would be as in you don’t get as much control on the planet’s surface as I’d like and it pretty much flies itself sometimes. The space battles are also a bit clunky and more of an annoyance than anything else.
What I will say is Hello Games have given us a beautiful game with well-constructed and well worded story elements. The level of detail they have put into the game is breath-taking and I think it shows how far we can push the current generations of consoles. There are some elements that are a bit glitchy with objects clipping through the environments but I think considering the scale of the game this can be forgiven. The narrative parts of the game are subtle and almost like Dark Souls in that you’re left on your own to figure out what is going on. I really like the way you have to learn the alien languages, I think it adds to a bigger picture.I think my main criticism of the game is almost a lack of things to do. It becomes a little repetitive mining resources and jumping to the next system. There isn’t enough on many of the planets to keep you occupied once you’ve seen them a few times. This however is simply the game, Hello Games always said they were looking to make an almost realistic universe and sadly most of the universe is empty. I know that the developers are working on extra content for the game already, I’m hoping they can change No Mans Sky for a beautiful universe simulator, and into a great game.
Cameron Corliss
I could go on forever about No Man’s Sky, but this is a group article and I have to share. If you really want my opinion listen to Platinum, but I’ll condense it down to this: A team the size of Hello Games creating a game the size of No Man’s Sky is amazing. Especially a game that plays so well, albeit with some crashing issues on PS4 and a PC performance as optimized as the American Judicial System. No Man’s Sky isn’t for everyone, but if it is for you you’ll adore every second as I have.
Danial Aziz
In my opinion, No Man’s Sky isn’t for everyone. Anybody going into it expecting an action packed adrenalin rush with guns and explosions similar to so many other mainstream releases will be greatly disappointed. No Man’s Sky is all about taking your time to do some proper exploring and surviving alongside the usual mucking about in the vast universe. There is little to no story in this game. From the moment you start, you are left to your own devices in order to survive. The fun comes from the constant feeling of wonder and being able to explore and discover things that nobody has ever seen before. Being able to discover weird places and animals in the universe at your own pace is incredibly fun! If you’re the type of player who prefers having constant directions on where to go, what to do and who to shoot, this game probably isn’t for you. However, if you’re a fan of slower paced survival exploration games, you should give this game a try. I have spent a massive amount of time playing this game for the past few days and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. No Man’s Sky accomplishes what it set out to do and with Hello Games’ list of updates it will surely become even better over time.
Darryl Groombridge
There is literally nothing to do in No Man’s Sky. It’s resource collection/management is repetitive and at times monotonous, the story goes no further than a poor “choose your adventure” novel; and I am at a complete loss as to what the hell I’m even supposed to do in this offensively large universe. Yet, despite all of this, I am absolutely in love with this game.
No Man’s Sky is, at it’s purest, about adventure, about exploration and about unraveling the mysteries we sometimes stumble across. It taps into the the basic of all human instincts – curiosity, and tempts us to ask “what’s on the other side of that hill?” or even “what’s on the other side of this galaxy?” Sure that universe is wrought with problems; suffering greatly from some occasionally game-breaking issues, but considering Hello Games’ last title was Joe Danger, I think Sean Murray and his tiny team have done a mighty fine job with No Man’s Sky.
It scratches an itch similar to the way Minecraft did, providing a meditative experience that sets no real goal nor objective in front of you. You have a starship, a mining tool and the universe at your fingertips to make what you will of it. Yes, there are issues with No Man’s Sky, and in most games those issues would usually force me to refute a game. The texture pop-in, the awful draw distance, the mediocre FPS mechanics, the dodgy button mapping and the questionable inventory design all hinder No Man’s Sky. Each one of these problems can be easily looked over though; the concept and ideology behind No Man’s Sky simply outshines all of it’s problems. Hello Games have given us a universe to explore. AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE! They have given us the closest parallel to this long-romanticised notion of interstellar space travel to date, offering this superficial yet staggering taste of an experience we will never have ourselves. That in itself, is nothing short of an astounding achievement.
Ehab Sabry
I always knew that my opinion on this game will depend on how long before the game gets repetitive? How long before I say oh that creature has the legs, arms and tail of these other creatures!!? I thought maybe thirty hours would be great but no it didn’t take that long – not even close- to realize how shallow this world feels, it is a whole universe of boredom, repetitive and emptiness. I have been a few hours in the game and I have seen everything that the game can throw at me. I gathered materials, found creatures, violated the law, traded, traveled and fought in space and now all I have to do is to gather more materials, find more of these ugly creatures and trade some more. It is an insane loop of madness that I didn’t like to be stuck on it.
The creatures seem like a sadistic kid is playing Spore, let’s make this with no legs so it will hop its entire life, let’s gave this a cute face with a dinosaur legs and bird body that have clunky movement animation and the whole thing feels like a big bad joke – incomplete one in fact. The game has no fitting, it doesn’t work. Of course sometimes it gave birth to some kind of beauty but most of the time you don’t get the harmony that exists in nature. There is a huge lack of details to almost everything and there’s no dynamic laws to govern the universe whatsoever.
I think what hurts NMS the most is the focus on it’s survival elements rather than its exploration ones, the game doesn’t want you to explore every inch of it, it doesn’t want you to leave everything behind and go out to adventure. It just wants you to survive while pretending that you are exploring. Survive this cold, survive this heat, survive this radiation, survive this dangerous animal and survive this pirate fight. And from a survival game point of view, it is not even a good survival game!!!.
The performance is a slap in the face of everyone who bought the game for PC even after that they have delayed it several times already and launched the PC version a few days after the PS4 version. The sudden change in the frame rate and the many crashes will drive you nuts. No one ever asked to make a zibillion galaxies, if the entire human lifetimes combined together won’t be enough to explore. Instead, you could have made a few galaxies with proper interesting planets that would keep the player interested for a while, but nope they didn’t do that because of numbers. Do feel your brain melted yet?
Naturally, the game isn’t the worst thing in the world, actually I love the underwater part that seemed more interesting and lively to me and I enjoyed learning aliens languages in order to communicate with them. The first hours were magical and fun but after that it is the same thing over and over again and I lost my interest to continue playing, especially with a frame rate like that.
So here is my conclusion: it is a big empty game with a few wow moments here and there and a lot of inventory management. It suffers from bad performance, bad controls and the lack of content. it isn’t worth $60, it isn’t worth the time to play it and it isn’t even worth the words anymore. Let’s just forget that it exists.
So there you have it, the opinions of our writers here at Gamer Laughs, what are our thoughts?
No Man's Sky
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Gameplay - 9/10
9/10
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Graphics - 8/10
8/10
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Sound - 10/10
10/10
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Replay Value - 10/10
10/10
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Fun New Gameplay - 9/10
9/10
9.2/10
Robert Salvatore11 Posts
Has officially sworn an oath to the Vilebloods. Once fought along side the Belmont clan. Is currently awaiting for his ship to arrive so he may go explore the universe.
