No Man's Sky: Initial Thoughts.

After four years of waiting and delay after delay, No Man’s Sky has finally launched. The initial release has been successful, and has not had the same server crashes that have become a signature of launch day titles. Created by Hello Games, No Man’s Sky puts you in the shoes of an explorer traveling the vastness of a seemingly endless galaxy. Throughout your journey you will need to find minerals and other items used to craft upgrades for your ship. Doing so will allow your ship to continue traveling until you reach the end game goal. But the games enjoyment lies in what you do in between reaching that goal.

Discovery is the major driving force behind my enjoyment of No Man’s Sky. Finding and exploring new planets is loads of fun. You truly feel like the first person to step foot when you land your ship on an alien planet. You can also find and travel to planets that other players discovered. The developers of the game pride themselves on the fact that the game contains 18 quintillion unique planets to explore. Each planet is procedurally generated to be completely different from other planets in the galaxy. This also includes the fauna and plant life found on the planets as well. I discovered a planet with red flora and vast green oceans that I named “Crimson Tide”. On the planet I found a new species of dog with insect looking wings that I named “Canuswingus”. Naming new discoveries is immensely enjoyable and gives players a sense that they are contributing to the games vast universe.

There are also “intelligent” aliens that you can find. They can give you upgrades for your gear and other gifts. I found an upgrade for my mining tool/gun in an outpost on a planet. Inside was an alien that offered to upgrade my weapon after I answered one of its questions correctly. I was ecstatic to have just received a super weapon just for having the luck to be at the right place at the right time. You can also find alien megaliths and monoliths that teach you their language. This will help inevitably help you to understand the dialogue and answer their questions appropriately.

   

So far space combat has been pretty lackluster. While traveling to a planet I was ambushed by four space pirates. My measly photon gun had a hard time shooting down their laser beam wielding ships. All you really do in combat is turn, shoot, follow the arrow on the HUD display, turn, shoot. It reminds of playing any World War II airplane combat simulator on previous generation consoles, very clunky and not a lot of fun. My only other gripe is the only time the game stalled for me was after I was ambushed a second time by space pirates.

Inventory space can be a real pain especially when you have so many different minerals and no immediate use for them. All mined minerals can be used to craft or be sold in the in game marketplace. Sometimes you will find minerals like “gold” which you think would be rare but in fact is not, and I have yet to find a blueprint that requires them in crafting. The market fluctuates so some minerals can be worth an astronomical amount while others can be worth little. This makes it hard to decide which ones to keep in your limited inventory space. Equipment upgrades also take up a slot of inventory which can be very frustrating when you want to add new upgrades but can’t because you need the space for a rare mineral you found. I hope they add more space or at least a bank feature in a future update.

Regardless, No Man’s Sky is shaping up to be a great game and possibly in contention for best game of the year. The few hours I have put into it have been very rewarding and the game play is super addicting. I have faith that Hello Games will continue to add improved content to the game, especially after they delayed it so many times to make it as perfect as possible. With an entire galaxy to explore, No Man’s Sky is providing me fun and addicting gameplay that I have not had in an FPS adventure game in a long time.