After all this time, No Man's Sky finally releases....

[Misery]

Yep, so it's finally here.  One of the most hyped games in recent memory (well, in my recent memory anyway) and one of the very few that I've been excited about for a long time before it even comes out, which is something I normally reserve only for games I can actively test during their development.

This was supposed to release a few weeks ago, as I'm sure everyone here knows... I had been pretty freaking irritated when I heard about that last-minute delay.  Having now found out the actual reasons behind it.... yeah, that irritation went out the window.   They basically pulled an Arcen, is how I'm phrasing it (hah).   Grand, sweeping changes at the last minute.  Which all sound pretty great, honestly.  Really, I love that indie devs can do stuff like that.  The big AAA guys would NEVER do this, even in situations when it might drastically improve their game.

So I'm wondering, are any of you guys planning on getting this?  I expect that most here would be buying the PC version, if any of you are getting it.   I personally have anti-patience, so I'm just going to grab the console version tomorrow and probably grab the PC version later, because why not.   

I'll be detailing some of my experiences here.   Emphasis on "detail", as per the usual.


For those that might be interested, the big list of changes/additions can be seen here:  http://www.no-mans-sky.com/2016/08/update-1-03/


Entertainingly, this means that those that were so excited about being able to get pre-release copies actually didn't get to see quite a lot of the game's content.  Kinda sucks for the guy that paid over $1000 to get a copy.

[Draco18s]

I've heard its very bland and devoid of a lot of content. I.e. "oh hey a rock" every ten feet, and that sums things up beyond shooting the rock to collect resources so that you can upgrade your ability to carry more resources.  There's a lot of stuff, but it's not terribly interesting stuff.

Also single player.

[wwwhhattt]

It sounds like there's a lot of space for wandering around looking at pretty things, which sounds perfect for me. Wont have anything I can play it on for a while though.

It'll be interesting to see how it copes with expectations.

[Misery]

I've heard its very bland and devoid of a lot of content. I.e. "oh hey a rock" every ten feet, and that sums things up beyond shooting the rock to collect resources so that you can upgrade your ability to carry more resources.  There's a lot of stuff, but it's not terribly interesting stuff.

Also single player.

To be honest, something like this starting a bit low on content is kinda what I expect at this point... not all that bothered by that, I've seen so many games now release in that state.  It seems though that these guys are pretty focused on adding more stuff though.   Even something like Terraria, which is now known for having a bloody absurd amount of content, was pretty low on it at release.   And the less said about Minecraft's early days, the better.  I remember when chickens were new and exciting.  CHICKENS. 

Not just that, but from what I understand from reading about and watching bits of the game, one reason for what seems like a lack of content is that for whatever reason, planets with lots of STUFF on them were set to be very rare (wut?), in the version of the game that the leaked copies were.  So players kept encountering a lot of barren planets, instead of ones teeming with life.   You know, the sorts of big lush planets full of things to look at and do that were shown in trailers, those were apparently super rare.   I doubt this'll remain the case for long (if it's not already changed) because it'd detract from the experience.   Though in all honesty, what IS there is already pretty interesting to me (but then I'm the sort that even IRL finds places like desert regions to be endlessly fascinating despite being made mostly of rock and sand). And I do understand the reasoning behind having some things be pretty rare, but I don't think that's quite the RIGHT thing to have be rare.  It'll get balanced out over time though, I'm sure.   Though I think I do know what the reasoning was for having this specific type of planet be very rare.

The big thing that gets me though:  the lack of doing things like building up a base and such.   Granted, yes, a huge focus here is on exploring and such... I definitely get that.  Plenty of sandbox games have that sort of focus, I've certainly played many like that (hell, Starbound is like that).  But the ability to build a base/home or even set up on a space station as a base just makes so much sense that it's odd that it's not in the initial release.  But it's nice to hear that it's coming.   Though exploration should remain the main focus.

And SCREW THE WINDOWS KEY.   Whose dimwitted idea was it to have that stupid thing on a keyboard in the position where it is?

*ahem*

Either way, I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

I'm kinda expecting that people's opinions on this game are going to be kinda polarized, as is often the case for big, hyped games.  Kinda expecting what I'm now calling the Starbound Response with this one; where there's players that just adore it, players that just hate it, and not all that many that are in between.



As for the multiplayer thing, ehhhh.... I'll be honest, that's NOT what I wanted out of this game to begin with.  I just... don't care. It's the same for me as it is with Minecraft and those games;  I want my world to be MINE, and the absolute last thing I want to do is to be in a player group where I have to WAIT for people to do things, or watch them do things that are bloody stupid... gotten enough of that from MMOs. That being said, it seems the devs have gotten at least a bit of the message from the playerbase on this topic; they're adding the ability to have discovered systems appear marked on the galactic map.  AKA, with enough coordination, you could probably work with friends to find each other based on discovered/named planets and regions within the galaxy.    Though this also makes it easy at the same time for players such as myself that want nothing to do with that.  Rather expecting though that they'll add a bit more to the game later to make multiplayer more feasible, if only to shut people up.

But we'll see what happens!  I'm going to try to find as much detail as I can about all these things once I have the game.  I'll also TRY not to sound like a ball of angry hatred when discussing it but I make no promises.  Even when I like something I still tend to sound like that.

[Misery]

I swear, every time I go to download something on a damn console, it makes me appreciate Steam that much more.

10000 years from now, this should be ready to play.   Sigh.   On Steam this download would have finished last week.

[Draco18s]

I can understand the desire for SP, but the are those who want to explore together.

[Misery]

Well, some interesting experiences so far....  the biggest issue I have is that the game has some... problems... with explaining itself.  Which is to say, it doesn't.  Good luck firing out where to find Thaumium and Zinc, for instance (which you need to repair a couple of things at the start, not to mention that they also have to do with fuel).  It's obvious that you have a mining laser, sure.   It's NOT obvious that these two things come from FLOWERS.  No mining involved.    Then there's the Pulse Drive... once I got the damn ship to move, after my eternal search for bloody Thaumium ended, it said I could use the Pulse Drive to get around faster.  Okay, makes sense. Couldn't figure out how to get it to STOP at the spot I was aiming at.  Eventually bounced off the nearest asteroid and sorta ricocheted a bunch.  Immediately found out I wasn't using it properly, of course, but the game doesn't tell you this.   It just says "hit these two buttons to use pulse drive!". 

Though, that's not THAT much of a complaint:  I've never, EVER seen a game of this genre that actually explains itself.  Never.   Some of them sorta make a pretense of doing it, but many seriously don't bother.  So I'm used to this aspect.

As for the gameplay... yep, this is a survival game.  It's very exploration focused, but as in most survival games you're going to have a lot of things you need to do in order to keep yourself going.  Your suit needs power, your mining thingie and gun need power, your ship needs power, there's temperature to worry about in some places,you need various resources to craft important gizmos.... and as is also typical you never have even close to enough inventory space.  There's always resources and items to find, you always WANT them, but you sometimes just cant HAVE them.  The usual, really.   And it can be easy to get lost in certain types of areas... best to be careful when exploring caves in particular.

Much of my time so far was spent doing a few things:

1.  Wandering around looking for stuff
2.  Mining
3.  Getting shot at, running from horrible laser thing; this happened more than a few times
4.  More gathering resources as I headed to various waypoints, displayed as "?" marks, they are where you're likely to find abandoned buildings or other interesting things, there's usually rewards for doing this; the trouble is getting to them, of course
5.  Trying to figure out what interaction with animals does
6.  Trying to figure out why I was being bitten by a tiny crab made of leaves
7.  Falling in holes
8.  Got lost in a cave for quite awhile (after all the survival/sandbox games I've played, you'd think I'd know to be careful about that by now, but noooooo)
9.  Eternal search for blasted flowers.  It eventually turned out that.... yeah, I needed to look near the big obvious place stuffed with a million plants and things.  I suppose maybe I should have thought that out a bit harder.  I'm blaming the weather.   Still, they're oddly hard to spot...


Interestingly, the planet I started on seemed barren at first, but some exploration revealed that this wasn't entirely the case.   There were places to find with lots of animals and big plant/tree/something things, but the planet wasn't drowning in them.  Desert world, actually. 

The game's controls work quite nicely, though obviously I'm stuck on a damn console with it for the time being.  But there's absolutely no issue with that part.  The UI works nicely too. All of this both for being on the ground, and being in space.   Flying the ship is fun, though you have "liftoff thrusters" that have their own fuel source... every time you start up the ship it'll take a big blob of that away, so you cant just be constantly leaping from one spot on the planet to the next.  This is good, because if this wasn't the case there'd be no need to ever actually be on foot for any reason.   Considering how huge the game is though, sometimes some distances are just... too far, so you're going to want to do that.  At one point, after finding a huge beacon thing, it marked down a location for an "advanced life form" on my radar thing.  A quick look at it determined that it was a 20 minute walk away.   ......yep, used the ship for that!  Found some alien's home there, couldn't understand a damn thing he said.

I mighta not taken quite as long to leave the planet if it wasn't for my usual obsessive need to investigate damn near everything.  I do that in Minecraft and the others as well.  Got specific things I need to do?  No no, that's gotta wait, there's a huge rock here, gotta see what's on the other side of that first, it's imperative, the universe will clearly collapse if I don't...    Honestly, easily distracted players will find themselves... well, frequently distracted.


Graphics are just lovely, the game is gorgeous really.   They did a great job with color schemes and lighting to make different areas stand out from one another.  Also space is apparently green now.  No, I don't know why...


Overall, the damn flowers aside, this is pretty much just what I'd hoped it'd be.  Is it perfect?  Ye gods, no.  Of course it isn't.  But the devs seem very committed to dealing with what problems it has and adding to it, so that's good.  Overall though, I'm loving the game so far.  This sure isn't going to be for everyone.... particularly those that for whatever utterly baffling reason were expecting a big AAA game that's extremely story driven.  There seem to be more than a few people out there that are angry that the game ISNT that.   Seriously, I don't know where they get some of these misconceptions.


Currently I must go to bed, and have stopped and saved my game in a nearby space station.  Later I'll continue and see what happens.  Hopefully further travel will not require bouncing off more asteroids.

[crazyroosterman]

looks like something ill really enjoy if I can get the frame at a good enough pace ill put some time into it.

[Aklyon]

That sounds surprisingly good.

[Misery]

BLASTED THING NEEDS TO STOP CRASHING.

EDIT:   Well, the crashing stopped entirely as soon as I disabled the PS4's internet connection.   So that's good.   Now I can get back to being repeatedly attacked by space crabs.   

[mrhanman]

I've been interested in this game from the start.  Not $60 interested, though, so I'm going to wait for a sale.  I might snatch it at $30, but right now it looks too empty for full price.

[Mánagarmr]

I've said this MANY times before about hyped games.

*sits down, takes a deep breath and waits for port reports and reviews and let's play videos before forking over money to a studio that has nearly no reputation whatsoever*

[Misery]

I've said this MANY times before about hyped games.

*sits down, takes a deep breath and waits for port reports and reviews and let's play videos before forking over money to a studio that has nearly no reputation whatsoever*

Oh, sure, I can typically understand that.

Normally I do the same, but I'd heard enough about this one (specifically, enough that wasn't wild internet rumors) to know what I was getting myself into.

That being said, this one... for me at least... has turned out to be exactly what I thought it would.

I know there's a lot of people complaining about the game, but when I look around and read some of that, pretty much *all* of them seem to have gone into this with a TON of random misconceptions that I assume came from the chaos of the Internet over the years.  They expect something like Elite Dangerous here, or whatever, when that's not even close to what this is.   Not that the space-flight portions of the game aren't fun, mind you, because they are, but yeah, this is NOT Elite and plays nothing like it.    Among other things that it DOESNT play like, that everyone seems to have thought it would.

Frankly, I find the whole thing baffling.  I know hyped games and in-development games can be hard to follow, but there's even more misconceptions with this one than there are usually.   It's ridiculous.

Either way, I'll have more to write up about it later; I spent most of yesterday playing this, time which I do not regret.  It took me about 10 squillion years to finally get Hyperdrive going... because I kept getting distracted by shiny things and also decided that I *had* to have a new ship before leaving the system (yay, greed).... but it's been a pretty interesting experience getting to that point. 

[crazyroosterman]

I have just one question to ask and that is is there anything that attacks you on foot? I ask mainly because form all the footage I've seen there doesn't appear to be a single thing of the sort.

[Misery]

I have just one question to ask and that is is there anything that attacks you on foot? I ask mainly because form all the footage I've seen there doesn't appear to be a single thing of the sort.

Hostile creatures / monsters.

They do a widely varying amount of damage.  Some of them don't hurt you too much, others hit like a freight train, and having your personal shield go down is all sorts of bad.  Oddly there is a type of flower that restores your shields if picked () but it's fairly rare; there's also one that restores your health.  Mostly it's best to do everything you can to avoid taking damage.  When dealing with hostile creatures, you have the option of simply killing them, or if you don't want to do that, doing enough damage to simply scare them off.   With Sentinels though (the robots), unless you can find a really good hiding spot (typically a building), you have to fight them off, and quickly, because they constantly summon more robotic jerks.   There are grounded robots, too, you just don't see them as often because they don't appear unless summoned.  Where as the basic floating Sentinels are freaking everywhere.   Seriously, it's hard to go 5 minutes without running into a couple of those things.

Oddly, Sentinels aren't inherently hostile (usually).   They react to what you're doing; they seem to have this big issue with you breaking/destroying basically anything.  If you smash something up for instance, and Sentinels are around, you can often watch them sort of hover over the spot and scan it; or if they're feeling irritable or whatever, they'll hover over YOU and just keep flooding your view with this blue scan beam.   Do too much more when they're clearly watching you, and they summon their unpleasant friends.  The longer you let them go without destroying them, the more enemies get summoned.   Sentinels of all sorts will also attack *instantly* when you break into locked buildings, which you'll run into every now and then (and needless to say, there's always STUFF inside that you want).   When that happens though I think they give up a little too quickly, I'd like to see that changed a bit.  Which is odd, as Sentinels that have been angered by basically anything else are EXTREMELY persistent and very hard to shake.


On the note of things attacking you, I didn't mention it before (I think) but dying in this game can be pretty harsh.   I have no idea just what happens if you explode in space, but on the ground, well.... if you know what the term "corpse run" means, that's pretty much what happens here.  So it's a very, very good idea to be bloody careful; avoiding confrontation and only fighting when absolutely necessary is the way to go.  Fairly typical of survival games, that.