No Man's Sky - That's Not A Moon

[Charlie_Miso]

Yo - let's rap about NMS here. I feel they'll be a few stories.

I did get a bit moody when on my starting planet I got lost in a cave and couldn't find the way out. Was in there for about 20 mins getting cranky. I did walk out with 1000 of units of plutonium so made the next hour very easy.

Still can't get over the scope.

I spend 2.5 hours in my starting system before I hit a new one and called it a night. Felt like I left so much undone but there is a whole universe out there.

Can't wait to get home. Damn job.

[Swordfactor]

Looking forward to hearing those stories...

I don't have a PS4 or PC, but I was originally very tempted by this game (to the extent that I was contemplating diving in and buying a PS4 finally), but I'm gonna wait and see how everyone enjoys it, and what happens a few days or few weeks - does everyone still love the exploration, or is it just boring after a while? Do the personal discoveries and stories keep up the interest?

[Joka]

Do the personal discoveries and stories keep up the interest?

I somehow imagine that if people were injecting their own backstory into the game or running a personal narrative, then it would keep some solid interest.

I like how they found the colour pallet and went nuts. Good to see that planets are mixed and not just brown or grey, they have some good life to them with the colours.

Oh and aluminium is not Americanised!

[Scubafinch]

My starting planet provided some nice resources and little in the way of dangerous space spiders. I've only had time to hop one system and explore from there. The new system was varied, with a couple of space stations good for trading.

Have since spent most of the time on 'Cathy Planet' (named for my mother in law). It's only slightly toxic but full of resources / drop pods / research stations.

My protagonist has stocked up on a warp core ready for the next jump and has expanded her suit inventory by a few slots. Definitely getting FTL vibes with the resource management, ship space etc. No Man's Sky is playing out like a first person FTL!

Enjoying my time so far, but at the moment I feel they set the expectations bar a little high with its $80 price point. A good game is a good game, but I feel NMS is a little overpriced.

[Charlie_Miso]

It's a bit rich asking for 80K for one of the warp parts. That's a fair bit of coin.

I do have a million space bucks after 2 systems though so can't really complain.

What's really pissing me off is when naming shit R2 is accept as opposed to Shift. So I keep fucking up my names and you can't change them.

[Scubafinch]

I've finally hit 1M credits, mostly because I keep dropping coin on extra space for my suit via the drop pods. Completely sidetracked by an Atlas path through the galaxy, as opposed to the path to the centre. Excited to see where is leads.

A couple of planets had extremely hostile atmospheres with hostile creatures and aggressive sentinels, so I'm starting to learn that "Nope, I'm outta here" is an acceptable response. Spent 3 hours exploring a very nice planet with plenty of resources like gold and these little cubes worth a packet. My daughter asked me to carve statues out of gold using the mining laser and I happily obliged (refrained from juvenile dick sculptures, because PG plus parent).

I like that the resource gathering and construction gets easier. I mean, you start crash landed at the far end of space... it shouldn't start easy. Though I can understand that in this day of mission maps littered with collectibles and hand holding tutorials, this may come as a shock.

Some of the bugs are very annoying, but I'm sure they'll be patched out with time. These included full crashes (twice), unstable online connection (could be load), bouncing out the atmosphere when taking off (could be a tractor-beam), and not being to use the pulse drive / warp near enemies, when the enemies are no longer to be found. I'd also like to be able to swap inventory without the need of a blank slot.

So far, Hello Games have delivered on their promises. However the extensive marketing by Sony, coupled with the high price point have led people to believe it is something that it is not. I'm not sure I've ever seen as much projection onto a game as this one. Go in with the expectation of a fully 3D FTL, and you'll have a ball. Certainly not a game for the masses.

[Fyre]

'Cathy Planet' (named for my mother in law). It's only slightly toxic

Ha ha ha.

Lucky she is only slightly toxic!

[DexX]

The price is kind of staggering, considering this is a small-team indie game. I've never seen a double-A launch for more than US$40, so I can't help feeling they've set themselves up for failure, at least in the view of a lot of customers.

[Sam]

Glad I didn't pre-order!

[Gorath44000]

A couple of things I've noticed - I've bought the game but haven't played it yet, I've had a wedding and a trip mean I haven't had a chance to start.

The reception so far has been very divided, but reading between the lines even the most favourable reviews seem to admit there isn't much to do but repeat a limited set of goals for no greater purpose other than any enjoyment you can derive from that cycle. That already doesn't bode well for me - I dislike 'survival' games as they always feel half baked and a way to squeeze more playtime - basically the modern version of a JRPG random battle system.

Secondly, the pricing. This is the first indie game I can think of that had asked for a full $80-100 upfront without the guise of a Kickstarter/backer rewards system to justify the price tag. Now I don't have a problem with it, if you think the price is too much for what is on offer then don't pay it, plain and simple. I did however think that it raises the question of "What are indie games worth, really?" - have Hello Games simply valued their time and effort more than other independent dev teams?

[Scubafinch]

have Hello Games simply valued their time and effort more than other independent dev teams?

I think Hello Games might have got caught up in all the hype and extensive marketing by Sony... the PC price then has to be set comparably high.

I'm enjoying my experience, but when other games with similar endless play (e.g. Minecraft) can be purchased at less than 50% of No Man's Sky, the value proposition just isn't there.

[DexX]

I bought Minecraft for about US$15. I bought Elite Dangerous for US$40.

US$60 is full retail price for a AAA studio-made game, some of which represent over a million person-hours of labour. Quite frankly, Sony got greedy.

There's a reason indie games - even double-A indies - charge less for their games. With less resources at their disposal, there simply isn't the time or money or staff to go as big as a major studio. Indies have to find cheaper ways of doing things, which is often a big part of their charm: pixel-art is not just cute and nostalgic, but also cheap and easy to make, for example.

So, here's Hello Games, a tiny studio with a massive marketing machine behind them. They've produced an astonishing technical achievement, but with the limited resources of a small indie team, I think they've had trouble really making NMS work as a game. A great game experience needs a fun early game to draw you in and teach you the ropes, then a rich and enjoyable mid-game that contains the real meat of the experience, and finally a satisfying end-game that makes everything before feel worthwhile.

Like Spore, I can't help feeling that NMS is an amazing piece of tech that the devs have struggled to shoehorn a fun game into. Once the dazzling technology has lost its sparkle, the majority view seems to be that the core gameplay is shallow and repetitive. This is the kind of thing you can forgive in a cheap indie game. In a full-priced game it feels like a rip-off.

[Vroenis]

Again, not having played it & only going by admittedly a fair amount I've read & footage I've seen, there actually is a fair amount of content to be discovered in the game, but as some commentators have said, it's potentially spread out thinly. It'll be too thin for those not happy to repeat many of the game's staple activities & just right for those happy to do so, bearing in mind that one of the chief points of subjective reward is the random variance of geology, flora & fauna.

[Joka]

One of the few games that I have read more about than played! I can't remember the last time this ever happened.

I knew that the first reviews were going to be a brief look at the game but nothing in full detail. I'm still keen on reading up as players spend more time (and poor PC users had some initial issues!) to fully inform me, but at this stage, I'm still not convinced it's a game for me.

[Dark_Wolfe]

so far this is on my radar as something to maybe pick up in a sale. Seeing as how much of it is about discovery I'm intrigued by whether that will be impacted by waiting over a year. If I actually manage to get a Let's Play channel running by that point I intend to do a series on it.
So far my experience with getting the channel running puts that firmly in MAY

[Gorath44000]

So after a few hours and one hard crash, I think it's safe to say that No Man's Sky is exactly what I thought it would be - an average game with some interesting tech behind it that is getting crushed under its own hype machine.

I think it will end up like Animal Crossing for me - I'll pop in every now and then, but very shortly I can see extended play sessions becoming tedious.

It's definitely nice to look at for now - I don't know if I'll feel the same way 40+ hours in. I think I need to go through some of the upgrade loops a few more times before I get well and truly sick of them as at the moment there is just enough story to keep stringing me along.

[smallfrogge]

Fired it up yesterday and its been running surprisingly smoothly on my less-than-state-of-the-art machine. Had to scale back a lot of the graphic options and lower the screen res, but its been running fine so far with little to no stuttering and no crashes so far.

Starting planet has been a bit poor though. While not toxic and the temp's fine, its a desert world with no water so its pretty much brown as far as the eye can see with occasional clumps of weird flora and small herds of weird horselopes and crested bear things. I'll play it for a while longer yet, maybe at least try to find a more lush world before I decide how much I'm going to invest into it.

[Charlie_Miso]

Still only in the my third system - could have left a while ago but was a big fan of the main planet so stuck around a fair bit to have a nose.

Up to 1.5 mill and looking forward to a new ship shortly. All the ones I've seen since been on the market have been pretty average.

Also went to my first hostile plant. And they weren't kidding. Hostile with shit loads of storms and night time radiation, and high security on top of that. Was mad dashes from ship to buildings/resources before my suit got busted or the robots came for me. Was actually very close to running out of fuel due to all the hops in the ship. Did pick up so serious unique rare shit.

And then I got jumped my pirates when cleared the atmosphere. But if you come at me you better not miss.

So far a lot of fun. Game reminds me a lot of Out There - just dialed up to 1000.

Random pic -

[Joka]

Anytime I see your name I think this:

And it reminds me to play Chrono Trigger again!

[smallfrogge]

Its like looking in a mirror!