Date played: August 12th and 13th
Platform: PC
No Man's Sky is finally here!
This game is very unique... It features an unfathomable amount of solar systems and planets, all ready to be discovered, mined and explored for me. The game begins as the hero wakes up beside his crashed ship on a random planet. Every player begins on a different planet, on a different solar system, all of which are randomly generated.
My first task was to fix my ship. Armed with a mining multi-tool, I set out to explore my home planet and find the necessary materials to get flying again. Various elements can be mined from rocks, plants, animals and other objects.
My home planet, which I renamed "The Alpha", was pretty cool. The sky had a red tint to it and the rocky ground was sparsely covered with vegetation. After I found the elements needed to repair my ship's flight capabilities, I now had to repair it's pulse drive, a speed boost that is used inside a solar system. Once that was done, I was ready to leave The Alpha.
Sitting in my ship, I aimed it's nose to the stars and stepped on the throttle. There's nothing quite as spectacular as leaving a planet's atmosphere and seeing the stars for the first time. If there's one thing this game gets fucking right, it's the sense of scale. Everything is gigantic and mostly, spectacular. When I landed on the second planet I found, I couldn't help but be in awe. There's something just amazing about landing on a planet without any loading times, without any artificial barriers.
That comes at a cost though. I'm playing on a pretty powerful PC, and it's still not enough to generate the terrain quickly enough. There are always some jarring graphical bugs as I fly at full speeds, so that's really unfortunate. I also had about half a dozen hard crashes to desktop, so that fucking sucks. The frame rate is fickle also, sometimes running at full 60 FPS, sometimes slowing down to sub 30 FPS.
Aside from all these technical issues though, I'm loving the game. There's a ton of different stuff to do too. The main objective is to reach the center of the galaxy. The main thing that prevents me from doing that is warp drive fuel, which comes from a warp cell, which must be built with anti-matter, etc etc etc.
At it's heart, No Man's Sky is a crafting and survival game. On most planets, it's either really hot, really cold, toxic, irradiated or dangerous in other ways. This means recharging the space suit's hazard protection system and life support systems at regular intervals. This is done by gathering and expending various elements, all of which can usually be found on a planet. The same can be said for every device in the game. The ship requires launch fuel, pulse drive fuel and warp fuel. The multi-tool requires recharging too.
One would think, simply gathering a ton of elements would be a good solution, except that the inventory space is severely limited, at least at the start. There are many ways to expand inventory space, all of which requires exploration. It's a really fun mechanic, it motivates me to explore.
Speaking of exploring, every plant and animal can be scanned, which awards money. Money can be used to purchase new upgrades, elements, multi-tools and even star ships! I can't wait to buy a new star ship... I made my way to the second solar system and am slowly gathering upgrades. I discovered a really cool moon, filled with lush vegetation and dinosaur-like, gentle beasts. It was a real pleasure to explore.
I can't end this post without talking about the aliens. There are various alien races that live in small shelters and research stations on the planets. These guys speak another language, so it's hard to communicate. They will often have simple requests, but it's difficult to understand them. The key to this mechanic is finding new words out in the world. At monoliths and other alien structures, there are sometimes words to be found, which expand my hero's alien vocabulary.
There's so much I want to do in this game, I can't wait to get back to it. I just hope the technical problems get patched soon...
Platform: PC
No Man's Sky is finally here!
This game is very unique... It features an unfathomable amount of solar systems and planets, all ready to be discovered, mined and explored for me. The game begins as the hero wakes up beside his crashed ship on a random planet. Every player begins on a different planet, on a different solar system, all of which are randomly generated.
My first task was to fix my ship. Armed with a mining multi-tool, I set out to explore my home planet and find the necessary materials to get flying again. Various elements can be mined from rocks, plants, animals and other objects.
My home planet, which I renamed "The Alpha", was pretty cool. The sky had a red tint to it and the rocky ground was sparsely covered with vegetation. After I found the elements needed to repair my ship's flight capabilities, I now had to repair it's pulse drive, a speed boost that is used inside a solar system. Once that was done, I was ready to leave The Alpha.
Sitting in my ship, I aimed it's nose to the stars and stepped on the throttle. There's nothing quite as spectacular as leaving a planet's atmosphere and seeing the stars for the first time. If there's one thing this game gets fucking right, it's the sense of scale. Everything is gigantic and mostly, spectacular. When I landed on the second planet I found, I couldn't help but be in awe. There's something just amazing about landing on a planet without any loading times, without any artificial barriers.
That comes at a cost though. I'm playing on a pretty powerful PC, and it's still not enough to generate the terrain quickly enough. There are always some jarring graphical bugs as I fly at full speeds, so that's really unfortunate. I also had about half a dozen hard crashes to desktop, so that fucking sucks. The frame rate is fickle also, sometimes running at full 60 FPS, sometimes slowing down to sub 30 FPS.
Aside from all these technical issues though, I'm loving the game. There's a ton of different stuff to do too. The main objective is to reach the center of the galaxy. The main thing that prevents me from doing that is warp drive fuel, which comes from a warp cell, which must be built with anti-matter, etc etc etc.
At it's heart, No Man's Sky is a crafting and survival game. On most planets, it's either really hot, really cold, toxic, irradiated or dangerous in other ways. This means recharging the space suit's hazard protection system and life support systems at regular intervals. This is done by gathering and expending various elements, all of which can usually be found on a planet. The same can be said for every device in the game. The ship requires launch fuel, pulse drive fuel and warp fuel. The multi-tool requires recharging too.
One would think, simply gathering a ton of elements would be a good solution, except that the inventory space is severely limited, at least at the start. There are many ways to expand inventory space, all of which requires exploration. It's a really fun mechanic, it motivates me to explore.
Speaking of exploring, every plant and animal can be scanned, which awards money. Money can be used to purchase new upgrades, elements, multi-tools and even star ships! I can't wait to buy a new star ship... I made my way to the second solar system and am slowly gathering upgrades. I discovered a really cool moon, filled with lush vegetation and dinosaur-like, gentle beasts. It was a real pleasure to explore.
I can't end this post without talking about the aliens. There are various alien races that live in small shelters and research stations on the planets. These guys speak another language, so it's hard to communicate. They will often have simple requests, but it's difficult to understand them. The key to this mechanic is finding new words out in the world. At monoliths and other alien structures, there are sometimes words to be found, which expand my hero's alien vocabulary.
There's so much I want to do in this game, I can't wait to get back to it. I just hope the technical problems get patched soon...
