Playing the heck out this beautiful game so far. Well right up till i got stuck on a planet with no take-off fuel and no resources in the immediate vacinity.
I wondered if anyone else was playing this yet. I am on PC, so voyaging for me until tomorrow or the following when it is released.
I am interested in the exploration idea, but also wondering if you will run up against the reward versus monotony possibility since the story element is minimal with heavy sandbox qualities.
Still - I am very interested and give my own feedback soon.
I'm on PC as well, already have it pre-ordered. Download appears to start around 11 AM.
I might have to get this on my PS4 to check it out. Cosmic exploration has been a fantasy of mine since my father, who shares the same desire, introduced me to Science Fiction novels. I blame Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein. =)
Unlikely real life will catch up to my dream in another 40-50 years so this will probably be my best bet.
I got it...have to install it now.
I've got about ten hours into this so far, and I must say I'm enjoying it. It has some issues, but they are minor compared to most big title releases, and I can see if you don't like survival games it wouldn't be your cup of tea. It feels very niche and artsy and looks really good for the most part. I can easily tell that there is no "right way" to play the game. I for example comb each planet in detail looking for monoliths to learn the languages and scan animals. I can fully see others just jumping from planet to planet gathering just enough resources to proceed.
That being said I can't really see how the guy who said he beat it in 30 hours actually played the game at all. I've barely looked at four planets in the time I've spent playing it and for all my effort I didn't make a truly exhaustive search of those.
For now I'd give it an 8/10, I may revise that later if the exploration variety truly doesn't live up to what I've seen so far. But even then I think the worst I could give it would be a 6/10.
Having now played about 15 hours, I would agree that game is about exploration and some survival elements to move you ahead. But there's no over-arching meta-plot that would drive me to get moving constantly.
The game calls back to me to a time from about the mid-80's to early 90's when I was really into the first-person space-craft simulators. Games like Elite, Nomad, Lightspeed, Privateer, and maybe even Starflight (although that probably bears more of resemblance to FTL). Some of those were more about the combat; but some of them had diplomacy, trading, and resource gathering elements that you needed for a quest or equipment upgrades.
But it touches on the same amount of curiosity I had with those old games to see how much I could discover or what unique things you could find. The difference is the limitations. NMS is obviously way grander in scale - a result of the procedural generation versus actually building every element in the galaxy a lot of those older games did.
So, while I can't say it will impress as much as the hype as played it up for some, I do find it interesting in that sort of is a callback to that style of gameplay.
I've spent about 30 hours playing the game so far, and I have to say I really love it.
At the start of my game (because every start is going to be a little different) I skipped the tutorial offering, unknowingly, and began to try to fix all of my stuff without any more guidance than what my mission objective is. It definitely felt like a survival experience to me as my Life Support and Radiation Protection slowly ticked down. I only got everything repaired and learned how to interpret scans at the point my Rad shields failed. As my life started to tick down I found some Zinc and charged it enough to allow me to find another batch, then another.
After that experience I slowly crawled across the surface of my planet. I gathered some tech and materials to get my ship up into orbit, flew around a bit and eventually got the requisite materials to perform my first jump to another system. Then it hit me. What is my hurry, I had only explored a section of this planet no bigger than a small town in real life.
At this point I have spent close to 25 hours playing the game. I eventually found all the fauna on my starter world, most of the flora (I guess), many tech upgrades, inventory slots, and some interesting bits of lore about the game.
Alien language Monoliths/Plaques/Knowledge Stones are great to find. Abandoned buildings have interesting bits of information about other travelers. If I wanted to keep exploring my starting world until the end of my days, slowly filling in the vast map with places of interest. I decided as much as I loved the gentle animals (despite being 15 ft. tall), harsh radiation from the nearby star, and toxic air, I wanted a change of pace.
My next stop was incredibly boring, a large barren world only good for gathering resources. I stopped there long enough to be convinced it truly was empty and went to the next planet. I cruised through the atmosphere until I spotted a landing pad and shelter, disembarked, and took a quick look around.
Very cold planet, largely hostile fauna, snow and trees more closely related to my real life home than the swamp-like flora on the last world. A drastic change, very welcome, and I can't wait to spend hours running around this planet (hopefully getting enough units to buy a new starship).
If you like exploration and survival with a sci-fi dressing, this should probably be enjoyable to you.
It wont work on my machine so I picked up Subnautica based off a friend recommendation instead. For anyone looking for a similar exploration game set under water with base crafting, I recommend.
It has far more survival elements to it than I thought, and it's an interesting way how language slowly becomes unlocked.
Can get a little deja vu after awhile...
Different and yet the same.
Beautiful game... But while the environment has effectively infinity variety, the mechanics of the game are a tad too repetitive for me... You do pretty much the same thing in every planet you find. Then you move on to a new planet, rinse and repeat...
And inventory space is a pain in the ass to manage. :P
Not a bad game, but I'm underwhelmed.
That cold planet turned out to be a near waste of time. I did identify all the creatures fairly quickly, but "Points of Interest" were so spaced out it could take 10 minutes walking or a few minutes flying to get to the next. Maybe my starter spoiled me with a PoI almost always within sight of another. Oh well, on to the next.
The next is nearly a resource only planet, but it does have a little but on animal life, and the resources are nice to gather and sell, especially the Emeril nodes. Still looking for the last critter type here and almost to my desired 1.5M for a much larger ship.
I did discover something interesting (I avoid reading things about the game to keep the sense of discovery now and then)
If you want to figure it out yourself, like I did, don't read on.
I have run into one creature that required a lot of bolts to put down. Most only require 20 shots or so. The big guy though got to close to some gold harvesting and turned hostile. Rammed me once for 40% of my highly upgraded shield (Holy Crap!), after a full load of bolts (40+) and me getting rammed again (10% left, Dang Beast!) it stopped being aggressive and ran off.
I eventually found a decently organized 23 slot ship. Get as many shield upgrades linked together as soon as possible. Forget the cannons, leading them properly on a console sucks. Upgrade the Phase Beams with as much damage and cooldown as you can get. Channel them on the pirate for a full blast and most will die in one go.
Since upgrading the ship I haven't even needed to charge shield mid-combat against 7 pirates.
I'm just kinda popping in here to give my own two cents about the game's bad publicity:
No Man's Sky is the best exploration experience I have ever played. It's vast, it's beautiful, it's brilliant, and I love it. It's just when it tries to be a game is when it flounders.
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Yeah, I pretty much agree with AJ on that. Those first few hours are amazing before you get mired down with all the unnecessary minutiae. I did find the OBJECTION! segment of the review rather amusing.
How do you get that clearance stuff?
I am pretty sure you get the V.1 Pass from just going through some of the story stuff. After making the first warp jump I believe that you will be directed to an NPC that gives you one.
V.2 can be obtained (at least this is what I read) from successfully completing a problem at a Manufacturing Facility. Blow off the door, go inside, fix the issue, the random reward could be the card.
V.3 is obtained the same way, except from Ops. Centers. I found that my V.3 card would open anything except for containers needing a V.1. Doors for V.1-3 can be opened with it though.
Angry joe not very pleased with it
Kinda glad I can't run it and got a refund now.
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Playing it. Enjoying it for what it is. I wanted a giant exploration sandbox where I could wander around and see amazing new worlds. That's exactly what I got.
Anyone gone back to this after the major "Foundation" update? Three different game modes now. Base Building. Feels like a whole new game.