Release Date: 09/08/2016
Played On: Win
Available On: PS4 / Win
Time Played: 76h
Progress: A hundred or so planets…
Developer: Hello Games
Publisher: Hello Games
I knew the day would eventually come when I'd be ready to tackle the controversial existence of No Man's Sky. I've been following the game's story and keeping up with the good and the bad, the lies and the hype. Oh, and you might be surprised to know that I've actually spent a fair bit of time playing the game as well.
Let's get the ugly elephant in the room out of the way: this game was an intense cluster fuck of mismanaged marketing from the start. There's no denying that No Man's Sky was sold on features that simply didn't exist in the game. The entire marketing strategy was a steaming car wreck from the start, and I'm neither surprised or disappointed that everyone involved got raked through the coals for their mistakes.
It's not acceptable to sell anything on promises or lies, but that's exactly why people pre-ordered No Man's Sky. We were told that it would be the last game you'd ever need to purchase, as there were infinite possibilities of what you could accomplish. The back of the box told of incredible planets in a beautiful sci-fi galaxy that could be explored with friends or as a lone adventurer. The screenshots and trailers showed fascinating landscapes full of weird and thriving flora and fauna.
Infamously though, very little of this ever made it into the game that we were delivered on the day of its release. There was no multiplayer at all, each planet was a slight variant on the previous one, and all the procedurally generated fauna and flora was sparse and lacking in diversity. Pretty soon players managed to complete some main objectives in the game, only to find that they were left wanting after uncovering a lacklustre and ultimately banal non-ending.
I'm glad to look back on No Man's Sky's release and see how badly it was received. Nothing can take away the fact that the people behind this game took money from players for a game that didn't do half the things it was sold as doing. To make matters worse, they stayed silent through the fallout and negative backlash to the lies and falsities they had fabricated. Suffice to say that there is nothing redeemable about the way that this game was sold, or handled after launch. Hell, I can't help but think that so many problems would have been negated if the developers had publicly apologised and take responsibility for the mess they had made.
Unfortunately for everyone involved (the game makers, and the players) what was ultimately lost was the actual game released as No Man's Sky. Beneath all the hype and anger over everything the game wasn't, there was actually something worth playing.
Before talking about the actual game though, let's consider the fact that No Man's Sky will always be shrouded in a cloak of controversy. Rightfully so if you ask me, as it's a fine example of advertising and marketing getting in the way of what's essentially an okay product. If the lies had not been told, and the promises kept realistic, I think players would have received No Man's Sky for what it was: a middling space exploration game.
That's basically what it is at the end of the day; nothing spectacular, but not anything offensively bad either. Unless of course you compare it to the No Man's Sky that was hyped, which makes the actual release look like an abomination.
I hope this is a lesson to publishers and developers in the future, as we keep getting less information over time about a game before we purchase it. Demos are a thing of the past, and pre-orders are pushed before we even see a rendered trailer of lies. Let No Man's Sky's cluster fuck of a launch be a lesson to anyone trying to do the same. Learn from this lesson and be honest about what your game is and why we should actually be interested. I guarantee that having fewer customers who are one hundred percent satisfied, is better than millions of customers who hate you for everything you've done.
Now that all of that's out of the way, let's spend a little bit of time talking about the actual game. Believe it or not, there's actually a game in there somewhere that has been patched and updated a fair bit since it was released. At this point in time, it doesn't look like it will get any better than its current state, so it's probably a good time to get stuck in.
I've never been a fan of survival games where you have to craft things and stay alive through some arbitrary systems that represent some hierarchy of needs. Strange then that I enjoyed my time with No Man's Sky, which is part survival game, part space exploration game. I guess the survival aspects are light enough that they didn't seem to get in the way too much, so I was able to ignore what I didn't like about it quite easily.
In fact, I didn't find much that I didn't like about No Man's Sky during my time playing and jumping around from planet to planet. At the same time, I didn't find anything that blew my mind either, so let's not get too excited there.
I put my lack of disappointment down to a single thing that I will continue to use as an example for others: I didn't pre-order the damn game. Actually, I didn't buy it until about a week or so after its release. That was enough time to witness the backlash, hear all the opinions, research the limitations, and see some gameplay videos online. I watched a couple of hours of people playing No Man's Sky, which ultimately sold the game for me. Hence, when I picked it up and started playing, I knew exactly what I was getting into and avoided being let down. Funny how making an informed purchase can change your perspective on a product.
Anyway, the game basically consists of a fairly repetitive loop. You gather materials to craft better weapons and armour, or to sell for credits. Then you visit alien space stations where you can buy ships from other pilots, or buy materials from the galaxy shop. All the materials go into upgrading your ship and your weapons, which in turn allows you to get better materials to upgrade your ship and weapons. That's basically all there is to it, with an occasional run in with some space pirates to break things up a little.
The thing that sold me on No Man's Sky was the ability to explore and chart planetary systems in an unknown galaxy. Not to mention the slow grind of learning alien words so that you can better communicate with the weird beings you meet along the way. However, I was immediately satisfied when I landed on a new planet and started recording the flora and fauna into my own little codex.
Jumping to a new planet and naming it before setting out to explore its surface, is a good enough gameplay loop for me. Even though I can spend hours exploring in-game, I can also appreciate how terribly boring that might be for other players. It's kind of an analogue to Elite: Dangerous, which I play in a similar way. I spend my time in Elite exploring the galaxy and visiting systems I haven't been to before. With a few transport jobs here and there to earn some credits, I'm a happy player just flying around space and being all science fiction.
I think this is why I ultimately enjoy No Man's Sky for what it is, because even I can see that there isn't much on offer. There's some lore to be found as you discover monoliths and talk to aliens. In fact, the aliens are broken into three distinct races and most of the lore I found, talked about the uneasy relationship between the races as they traveled into the galaxy and claimed territory for themselves.
The story elements are interesting enough to make it worthwhile finding little bits as you travel around, but I would have liked to see more of it fleshed out and implemented overtly. I'm not sure if it would have changed the game much, but it would have been nice to find out some lore in a les grindy fashion than visiting hundreds of locations to uncover a sentence at a time.
While there's clearly a great deal of diversity available between planets, they often end up looking the same. Most of the planets I visited were desolate and rocky, with a simple colour palette change to indicate that you were somewhere new. Sometimes the water level would be higher, other times there would be nothing but desert.
It became so repetitive that I actually remember to this day a couple of planets I visited that stood out as something unique and different. One was a lush green planet with thick grasses and forests of trees; the other was a wintery wasteland, heavily populated with fauna and dormant flora. So far I've visited over a hundred planets, so it's a bit revealing to know that there have only been two so far that have stood out as different.
In fact that's kind of where No Man's Sky falls down in every aspect. Is as if the procedural generation engine has been dialled back to play it safe and not change too much about anything. Most of the animals I encountered were slight variants on the same base models, all of which looked ridiculous and like a procedurally generate mess.
Every planet had a collection of the same flora as well, with plant life looking exactly the same wherever I went. In fact, the only difference between some plants on one planet, to plants on another were the names and properties. Maybe one round blob tree gave carbon on one planet, but the same looking blob tree gave iron on another.
Still, this didn't manage to stop me sinking seventy hours or so into the game, but perhaps that time would be infinitely greater if these let downs were addressed. I guess that brings me to the big patch that was released in an effort to salvage something worthwhile from the game.
A while after release, we were treated to a free update to No Man's Sky that promised a whole slew of improvements and added features. At least this time they kind of stayed true to their word, except it wasn't as impressive as it was said to be.
One big addition was the ability to build bases, which immediately seemed counter-intuitive for me. Here I was enjoying myself as an explorer of weird and wonderful worlds, despite their lack of diversity. Why would I ever want to tie myself down to a single location by building a base on a single planet? It seemed stupid to me when I heard it was announced, and it seemed stupid to me now that I've played the update as well.
It's not the incredible build-anywhere system that was advertised, in fact bases are limited to derelict sites on each planet. These destroyed bases were present in the original version of No Man's Sky, but now we could use resources to fix them up and build our own base on the same site. I haven't explored this feature at all, because I'm still confused as to why I would ever want to put time and effort into a fixed structure. I'd just leave it as soon as it was finished anyway, so why waste all those resources.
Not all the updates were bad though, as there are some nice quality of life improvements that should have been in the game from the start. Now you can review the minerals and resources available on a planet you've previously discovered. It makes finding that rare resources you need much easier, as you'd previously be stuck planet hopping until you found the correct one.
Inventory slots have now been split into different categories, which helps with the finite space available to carry things. Now your backpack, ship, and multi-tool have separate compartments for upgrades and materials. My backpack was about one third full at all times thanks to the upgrades I had installed, so freeing up that space for more materials is a welcomed change.
Perhaps the most drastic improvement in the big update, was the addition of more NPCs to interact with. However, they mostly seem to be carbon copies of the NPCs that were in the game already. Now instead of one alien at a hub to interact with, there might be three or four. Unfortunately though, this does little to expand the experience and literally just makes the grind a little easier.
Although, there's now the possibility of visiting a quest giving NPC who will give you a list of specific tasks to complete in exchange for the new currency. I can't remember what the new currency is called because I ignored the quests as soon as I realised they were simply structured version of what I had already been doing. Instead of mining minerals to craft something, I'd now have the joy of mining minerals to sell to the quest giver. Yay.
There are more changes to be found in the changelog that accompanied the update, like the ability to fly around freely over the surface of a planet. Previously you'd be locked into a distance from the ground, but now you can crash into mountains as much as you want. I didn't really notice anything else as I explored the updated version of the game, but I didn't look too hard either. Ultimately, the big update that changed everything, really amounted to a few fixes and some shoe-horned content to fill out the already empty list of things to do.
The update seemed more like a way to add some filler, when all anyone wanted was something killer. Apparently it also changed the disappointing ending, but I didn't bother seeing if that was the case.
In fact, I didn't bother seeing about much after the big update dropped. I had already kind of worn out my play time in the game, and none of the changes were interesting enough to get me hooked back in. However, I did enjoy the new photo mode, which is a silly reason to say that you enjoy a game, so let's not.
I'm not even sure if I would recommend No Man's Sky to anyone after all of this. Part of me still enjoyed the experience of travelling through an alien landscape and discovering planets and galaxies. I think it's the same part of me that likes watching Star Trek, or playing Elite: Dangerous, as it's the part that's interested in science fiction in general. Thankfully there's a rich world of sci-fi available already, so No Man's Sky doesn't serve any unique purpose on its own.
If there's anything I can recommend about No Man's Sky, it would be to remember the lessons about a company lying to its customers in order to make money. Companies are all about making money and they are not your friends. As consumers, it's our responsibility to hold them accountable and make them earn our hard earned cash. If a company wants me to give them my money, they had better offer me something I actually want in exchange. When they rip us off and lie to our faces to trick us into parting with our money, they should be dragged through the streets as a warning to anyone wanting to do the same.
So stop pre-ordering games when you have no proof that they will be as wonderful as the people paid to sell them say they will be. Do a bit of research and wait a little bit of time, so that all the wrinkles can get ironed out and you can make an informed purchase.
My reaction to No Man's Sky is a resoundingly average "meh", which is pretty positive in the sea of opinions on this game. The only reason I think I'm not angry about it being middle of the road, is because I waited to before I bought it and made an informed choice.
Perhaps we'd all enjoy ourselves a lot more if we know what we're getting into from the beginning. Remember that companies are not your friends and you are under no obligation to offer a company your loyalty, or your money.