No Man’s Sky review: Explore a vast universe with limited activities

 

Platforms: Playstation 4 (reviewed), PC
Price: $59.99

No Man’s Sky has been an indie game darling for a while now. Since its impressive debut trailer at E3 in 2014, people have been clamoring for its release. After all, who would not want to get their hands on a game that has 18.4 quintillion unique and large-scale planets to explore? Who would not want a game that will literally take them billions of years to discover everything it has to offer?

After diving into the game, I have to say, No Man’s Sky did deliver its promise of endless discoveries and the wondrous experience of space exploration. But for a game that is supposed to have unlimited possibilities, it definitely felt more limited than it should be.

Here’s why.

A dream come true for the avid space explorers

No Man’s Sky starts off as if you’ve washed up on an island with no idea or memory of how things work. There is very little handholding here as you are given a minimal tutorial on how to gather materials for the beginning of your journey.

For the rest, you will have to rely on your existing gamer instinct. It is a game of exploration and survival, after all.

For the most part of my first six hours I had to piece many of the game’s core mechanics together. And if you are wondering why it took me so long to figure everything out, I blame it on this game’s overall compelling beauty. There is no other adjective to describe it. The game is just downright beautiful.

Once you find fix your ship with the right materials, flying around is the fastest way you can explore a planet.

The planets are strange and eerie but they are almost like a piece of landscape art. Venturing to space is a thrilling experience as the galaxies are all painted with colorful clouds and are peppered with glittering stars. Adding to that is its eargasmic soundtrack that I am more than willing to download for the daily grind.

If you are an avid traveler then you would understand just how easy it is to get distracted when playing this game. Each planet has several key points of interest. They will either offer upgrades for your items, help you learn an alien language, hold bits and pieces of lore, or help you discover more of the planet’s must-see areas.

They also were not kidding when they said we would get to see thousands of new species of flora and fauna. It was fascinating to meet the different races of aliens and attempt to get to know them better.

Surviving the harsh universe

Do not get too distracted though, as the planets are dangerous. If it isn’t the weather that’s trying to kill you, it is the sentinels and more aggressive creatures. They are more than ready to pounce at you if you do the wrong thing. You must learn how to craft upgrades to make the life of a space explorer easier.

Crafting and upgrading in the game is a little similar to Minecraft where you have to gather specific resources and piece together the right materials to completely finish the item. Most of the planets you visit have the most common minerals all bunched up together and so it is not that difficult to gather as many of the basic resources as you can.

However, there are some elements that are hard to find and will require you to travel a lot farther than comfortable in order to locate them. There is no map in the game and there are no ways to create a custom waypoint or marker for your HUD, so it is easy to get lost.

You survive by taking care of your exo-suit and your multi-tool. Your exo-suit’s life support and weather protection system need to be charged at all times lest you want to die. Keep in mind that dying in this game is a lot like dying in Dark Souls. There are no proper save points and you respawn by your ship without your resources. If you die, you can try to get back to where you last died in an attempt to recover your lost items.

Meanwhile, your multi-tool is your firearm and your mining beam combined. This also needs to be charged with the right elements in order for it to work. You do not want to be attacked in the middle of nowhere with no way to defend yourself because you ran out of ammunition.

Resources like Iron and Carbon are easy to find in almost every planet you discover.

Sentinels and the myriad creatures on the planets are not the only things you have to watch out for. Upon reaching a certain point in the game, you will also have to defend yourself from pirates when venturing towards outer space.

It was confusing at first for me to figure out how to properly be on the offensive and not just run around the star system to evade them. But once I got the hang of the game’s wonky space combat, it was only a matter of upgrading my ship’s weapons and technology to always gain the upper hand.

Eventually, after accomplishing the initial set of objectives and having to stop myself several times from straying away from the main path, I have uncovered most of what the gameplay has to offer and how to sprint my way to the center of the universe.  

Sadly, it all went downhill after that.

Explore, craft, survive, travel, rinse and repeat

After 12 hours of playing this game I quickly realized that the concept that drives the gameplay of No Man’s Sky is a little too simple.

After the initial shock, awe, and wonder, you are left with very routine objectives. Yes, the planets are fascinating, the creatures you meet are strange and interesting, and getting to drive around space in your own spaceship is a blast.

 

Beyond that, however, is a cycle of getting from one key point to another, so you can upgrade and collect your items, so you can get to another key point, so you can further upgrade your items, so you can reach another planet, or so you can get to another star system.

And after visiting more than a handful of planets and star systems, they begin to feel very similar to each other. While there are planets that clearly stand out from the rest, many of them seem to have only slight tweaks to their colors and general terrain.

As far as I have travelled there are no large-scale settlements for you to meet and learn more about the civilizations, and you can not exactly create your own form of shelter or retreat in any of the planets.

Different planet, almost similar terrain.

Every discovery you make, no matter how mundane it is, can be exchanged for “units,” the game’s currency.

Since there are literally millions of creatures and species that can be discovered in the game, earning enough money to buy a fancier spaceship or better crafting materials is not even a challenge. Thus, even if you stick around a planet and catalogue every plant and creature you encounter, it will not even feel rewarding.

It is also disappointing when you figure out that the only challenge of the game is surviving and that it actually feels more like an annoying chore after the first few hours.

Your inventory space is very limited even after you have upgraded it several times. Since you have to leave some space for a healthy stock of your basic survival resources, you will quickly realize that managing your inventory feels like an unnecessary mini game.

A flawed yet unforgettable game

All in all, No Man’s Sky seems more of a technological experiment injected with a bit of gameplay than an actual full game. There really isn not much to do except to survive long enough to admire the scenery until you get tired or reach the center of the universe.

Looking at it from a larger perspective though it really is a brilliant piece. This is why I believe No Man’s Sky is such an imperfect yet unforgettable game. Generating 18.4 quintillion planets is no easy feat after all, even if you have the help of an advanced algorithm.

I am hoping in the long run that Hello Games would introduce improvements such as creating your own shelter or ships, or providing us with more compelling areas to explore such as advanced settlements with several side missions for you, or full blown alien civilizations to immerse yourself in.

If you are a genuinely curious explorer I encourage you to purchase a copy of No Man’s Sky. If you are looking for something more though then I suggest you hold on to your money and wait for additional content to be added to the game. – Rappler.com