No Mans Sky – An Interstellar Collect-a-thon

Greetings Travellers! Before we begin, I need to preface what you are about to read with a couple of items.

1. I never played No Mans Sky before the NEXT update they recently put out due to the negative backlash they got at release.
2. Much like the Assassin’s Creed piece I wrote, I will be playing this game using a Steam Link and my Steam Controller, so some things MAY not fit to your own experiences.
3. The game was 50% off so I had a hard time saying no.

With the above out of the way, crack open a can of my currently favourite beer ‘Ransack the Universe’ from Collective Arts Brewery in Hamilton, ON and lets get flying!

When you first launch the game, one of the first issues I thought I had was that the ‘Loading Shaders’ screen flying through he stars took forever.  When I finally started playing I realized this was probably for the best because there aren’t any load screens that I have found after this. I will take that any time over hitting a load screen when changing planets, it really adds to the immersion of flying in and out of the atmosphere. What does ruin the immersion is the framerate issues when you make that transition. I don’t have a super gaming computer, but I hit low 20s when I break atmosphere and fly down to whatever planet I’m coming up to.

The tutorial missions and planets are aggravating at best. I am glad you get thrown into the world and have to learn to survive, but without much to show me where to go or how to avoid the Sentinals I was in for a rough time. Planet interferences (storms, radioactivity, etc) are an interesting concept but very difficult to work with when you first get started on the poison planet you start out on.

After you get up in the air and on your way to the first real planet to play around on, you realize the scope of what is available for you to do. The game is gorgeous and the Third Person Perspective on the character, for some reason, makes it feel more enjoyable. You start running around lasering trees, analyzing the random animals you find, and jumping into holes in search of alien relics. It feels really good.

I am around 7 hours into the game and I still have almost too much to do. Inventory management is still a massive pain point for me. I know I will get upgrades for more space and whatnot later on,  but for the time being I find myself more often than not discarding Salt or some other item I have collected just to make enough space to collect the relic I found. The game is tied very closely to the amount of Credits you have so you can buy new ships or upgrade your items and setup, and at first you have to just sell whatever you scrounge to make due. This isn’t really a complaint as I know things will start ramping up soon, it’s just an early hurdle I have to manage.

Controls feel pretty good and I think a controller is the way it feels best, but there are a few gripes that I have. I can’t pick up my deployables with the Steam Controller, so I have to go to my PC and pick up the refinery before I leave a planet, small problem but annoying enough. As normally a Keyboard and Mouse person, the shooting feels rough on a controller but I chalk that up to me not having the FPS experience using a controller in a very long time. The jetpack and movement feel really fun so far, I haven’t hit a point where I wish something was different with them, the planets are massive so it takes time to get around and I kind of like that time to just look around.

Flying in space feels great, I haven’t played Elite Dangerous yet but I have seen a lot of people say they are similar. It feels fun to just boost around and when you break atmosphere and then search around for a good place to land it feels really good. I am still using my starter ship so I am sure when I get an upgrade it will be that much better.

At the point of writing this I haven’t had the chance to try out multiplayer just yet. I had someone join my game randomly and I was worried about getting lasered so I turned multiplayer off.. Don’t judge me.

Taking everything and more into account, I have to say that my purchase of No Mans Sky has been very enjoyable. I was apprehensive at first just based on how the initial launch went, and as you have probably heard everyone say ‘It only took them 2 years to deliver’, but I will commend Hello Games on sticking it out to prove their vision. Many times we see these preorder and crowd-fundraised games go sideways and under deliver on their promises but Sean Murray and team had something to prove, and I think it really works for them. Yes there is a lot of collecting (almost an overwhelming amount), and yes there is a complex upgrade system with some things that aren’t fully explained to you at the start, but what is there is very fun and enjoyable.

The No Mans Sky NEXT update gets a win from me, go out there and explore!