‣ 8.5/10 – Biggest gaming comeback in history.

‣ Thoughts: We all know the story of No Man’s Sky and how it became an amazing game. I’m just here to confirm that: game good. I have tried to play this title about 10 times throughout the years and it just never grabbed my attention. But finally, after like 30 free expansions I got hooked.

It is difficult to surmise what I liked from my experience, but something about simply traveling across the galaxies and exploring all the whacky combinations of flora and fauna just scratched that random itch in my gaming brain. What truly surprised me is how well written and interesting the story was. Having all these existential questions get thrown at me really made me think. The journey felt personal and worth the hassle.

Although No Man’s Sky still feels undercooked in some of its aspects and has plenty of bugs and glitches the overall package is still fantastic. I truly think this is one of the best sandbox games I’ve tried in recent years. My only major complaint is the lack of multiplayer (it exists but on a very basic level). There is such a perfect foundation for amazing co-op missions but most of them boil down to people being in the same place, doing their own missions. I guess it matched what the story tried to tell but ruining the online aspect of your game for the sake of breaking a 4th wall is ridiculous.

If you have never tried this title because of its reputation, I strongly suggest you give it a chance. The base building feels odd, but like anything in here once you play around with it, everything comes together and feels rewarding. Units received.

So I've played this in many iterations since it came out, and feel like it has gotten better with their updates, with more stuff to do and a greater variety of interesting things to view. It is genuinely fun to fly around, for some amount of time to collect materials, play with base building stuff and just view some beautiful and baffling worlds. It is not a great game in terms of its progression and mission hooks, as you get to see some extra interesting stuff, but not much that makes it worth it. the VR mode, while reducing the visuals is still an extra positive feature that play to strengths of the game's exploration, flying, and chill vibes(though it's a little wonkier to control on index).

I do plan on returning to this, and I will absolutely be flying around but as far as the core "game" parts instead of interplanetary nature walk, I'm pretty done with it.

This kind of game is typically not my thing. I usually prefer games with more of a focus over pure sandbox, but here I am 60 hours deep and I've really enjoyed my time with it.

Despite many of the gameplay systems being very surface level, No Man's Sky has kept me hooked with the intangible desire to just keep exploring. The planets are more often than not quite beautiful and cohesive, which is impressive given that they are all procedurally generated.

My main complaint is that ship v ship battles are insanely simplistic, which to me is a big part of the fantasy of space exploration. Does this kind of game need super deep combat? Not necessarily, but it would be very welcome. Hope this is part of a future update (which are all free by the way).

Overall, the game is really good. Excited for any future updates and to see how Light No Fire turns out. Glad Hello Games stuck with their game and came out the other side more successful than ever.

For the love of GOD: do not get this at full price or anything less than a 50% discount, you will almost certainly regret it. Having gotten it at half price I'm still torn on whether the game represented any real value for money, even in its current state.

The core gameplay loop is tedious busy work and quest marker hell. Knowing about the game's development was a clear detriment in this respect, as I quickly became painfully aware of how I was spending precious hours of my life on what is essentially a visual skin over a noise function. At least when you're grinding away in a Far Cry game, you're interacting with hand-crafted content that hundreds of people labored on for years. Here you are doing the exact same thing you do between missions in those games, only what you see on screen is all generated at run-time using some nerd's fancy Perlin noise algorithm. The more you think about it the more disconcerting it becomes.

The sheer idiocy that the game's systems generates and expect you take at face value is staggering. We're talking swimmable liquid oceans on planets with 130 degree or deep sub-zero temperatures, vibrant plant life and mammalian fauna on planets with little to no water... the list goes on and on. Every space station and point of interest is not just very similar, but completely identical, up to and including the placement of chests and other interactable items. The repeating patterns become obvious quickly, contributing immensely to the overall sense of tedium and despair that sinks in after a few hours with the game.

Yet, as I've progressed through the story I have to concede that it has kept introducing new systems and switching things up, enough for me to be compelled to continue as a sort of ambient activity when I'm too tired to do other things. At around twenty hours, I'm still getting new hooks introduced around the core loop, and have started seeing new varieties of alien life pop up that are significantly different from the mammal analogues that have populated the game until this point.

I don't know if the devs really believe their pablum about the game somehow being about the "joy of discovery" or whatever. In any case the game is not about that at all. It is certainly an interesting exercise in... something, but that something seems more like a variation of the dumbed-down gambler/collector loop that powers most of today's open-world time sinks. Like these games, it consumes a lot of your time and gives almost nothing in return. And unlike those games, you don't get to absorb the energy of intent and artistic flair from all the effort that goes into their production. One and half stars. May update if I ever manage to complete it.

Lo compré día 1, vi todas las entrevistas y me maravilló las primeras semanas que lo jugué. La estética del juego me encantó, desde la selección musical hasta el tono visual que hace referencia a las portadas de libros de ciencia ficción y aventura espacial. Pero, con el tiempo algunos sistemas para avanzar y tener mejor equipo me fue pareciendo cansado. Recursos increíblemente complicados de conseguir y diseños repetidos, que no me fomentaban mucho el seguir jugando.

Tiempo después, admiro al estudio por crecer tanto el juego y dar variedad de jugabilidad, diseños, planetas, naves... sin embargo, el núcleo de lo que me cansó la primera vez que lo jugué sigue ahí. El sistema de creación y avance, me parece aún complicado, sin que fomente mucho mi sentido de exploración y evolución espacial.

Aunque este juego no terminó siendo para mi, admiro mucho todo lo que los desarrolladores han mejorado con el tiempo y espero que sea un gran ejemplo para varios de que siempre hay espacio y tiempo para mejorar u experimentar.