No Man's Sky

[Gurkha]

Steam reviews going down well it seems.

[Olafson]

To be expected? Its a game build on a completely randomly generated world that is also fucking huge. How is this supposed to be fun.

[Riddlez]

I think I'll buy it. I never get on hype trains (except when it's called 'Mass Effect: Andromeda') so I never get disappointed, really.

I didn't get hyped for Watch_Dogs: had awful good fun playing that - thrice
I didn't get on the hype train for Rome II: Total War: had awful good fun playing that.

Meh, I'll give it a try. It'll only get better from this point.

[Brave Sir Charge]

Saw the 3.0 gamescom vid today, Definetly considering getting it.

Edit, just saw there was 2 more pages. Star Citizen seems better

[StevenChilton]

[Riddlez]

Okay so it's not Skyrim in Space MMO. Besides that, what is wrong with the game?

[StevenChilton]

Okay so it's not Skyrim in Space MMO. Besides that, what is wrong with the game?

The constant lies/false promises from the developer which only fueled the completely unrealistic levels of hype, and which resulted in the massive gap between what was promised and what the finished game looks like. IMO the worst lie was during the E3 2015 presentation where he pretended what he was showing was something picked at random and therefore indicative of actual gameplay, whereas it turns out it was entirely scripted (which was only discovered after the PC build was data mined upon release).

Leaving aside all the bugs/glitches/crashes etc, the game itself is kinda boring and repetitive, the planet textures are dated and the AI is terrible. It's also ridiculously overpriced for what is essentially an (unfinished) indie game. I didn't buy into the hype seeing as a) it's a small development team, and b) all games companies lie, but I expected more than that. I played it for a couple of hours and got a refund.

[Brave Sir Charge]

Dunno, you could try Emperion.

[Toffee]

I can't remember which it was but there was a video somewhere that talked about how the studio itself may not have been prepared for the hype to get so big and there was so much pressure on what was a developer that was unproven with regards to blockbuster titles. The hype was not created by the company itself but by the coverage of the game by the media. Granted this does not excuse the fact that the game is apparently pretty poor according to some however what I'm trying to say is that the hype train reached such exponential levels that it was quite frankly impossible for the game to reach it since the expectation was crazy high. Sort of like Destiny except bungie also contributed to the hype themselves for that title.

[Riddlez]

This is a review I completely agree with, after buying the game:

Warning, this review will contain a fairly large amount of text. I'll try to break it up into key points so that it's easier to digest. My review will reflect my experiences in-game and not the points made by other reviewers. Yes, that is a dig at the huge amount of Steam users piggy backing on negative reviews after a whopping 2.5 hours of play time.

Performance
- I'm running everything at max, I've not had a single wobble, frame drop or glitch that I've noticed. NMS is running as smooth as butter for me, sadly not all Steam users are experiencing the same performance. I really hope we get a patch that fixes this, you're missing out on an awesome game.

Stability
- I've had one crash. I lost an hour of really enjoyable game-play. I expected this, I'm not going to cry and leave a negative review, because, well because I'm not twelve years old. We're playing a game that procedurally generates a universe for us to explore. Expect some issues at launch, release date delays or not. If that's not OK, don't buy it.


Some key points:
An unlimited amount of planetary exploration. Find loot galore, a huge variety of minerals, materials and goodies to hunt.
Animals, creatures, monsters, cute and weird things to hunt, scan, chase, feed or just ignore.
Plenty of upgrades or merchants to buy from: New equipment, weapons and ships.
Great visuals, music, sfx - Very atmospheric.


EDIT - As of my 35 hours in game.
I have exactly 35 hours in game. And I'd like to touch on a few points. Things that I didn't mention in my previous review text, I've enjoyed enough of the game to accurately describe how I feel about NMS.

Exploration after 35 hours
I'm still enjoying exploring. The variation of planets is insane. Sure, the creatures on planets are generated from a massive pool of body parts, so you get giant dinosaur like creatures with thin birdy legs, but why this upsets some users is beyond me. This is a science fiction exploration game not an evolution simulator.

Also, so what, we fall through the creatures when we try to jump on them. I read a review by a man that swings a giant sex toy around that focused on this, saying NMS is like a house of cards.
We can hunt and scan a vast amount of alien creatures in this Universe. Why is it so upsetting that can't ride them? I mean, if you want to ride a dino-alien, go and play Ark. It's awesome.

Planets are so large it's crazy. There are what seems like infinite environmental possibilities too. Exploring different outposts, Monoliths, trade stations, colonial bases, crashed ships and more is still an awesome experience for me, I enjoy searching out weird and wonderful planets. I particularly enjoy planets with insanely harsh or toxic weather. Upgrading my exo-suit to deal with these environments was something I tried to do as early as I could. Cave diving on underwater planets has been so much fun. Mainly when I'm on a planet that is light on Plutonium, I go deep underground to search it out.

Some of the anomalies that I have come across in space have been really cool too. Including black holes, alien space-outposts, Atlas interfaces, weird manufacturing facilities and plenty more. There is so, SO much more to do, more variety and fun to be had than a lot of the neg reviews claim.

Alien life
Interacting with Alien life forms is cool, this is probably my favourite aspect of the game. Find some sort of outpost, building, structure etc - Speak to an alien inside, answer a question or give the alien an item, help the alien with something, or just reply to them in a certain way to receive a reward.
Interacting with the creatures is leaving me feeling like I understand some of the alien races and what they're all about more and more. Of course, you'll find alien life out in the depths of space too. On space stations random ships will dock. You can interact with the pilot from each ship, trade with them and offer to buy their ships.

The story so far
I've also loved following the text narrative that makes up the flesh of the story in No Man's Sky. Another common negative critique I'm reading, is that the game doesn't have a solid story. But I feel it does, you just need to read the text on the screen guys, it's all there.

Combat (On foot and in your ship)
At around 30 hours I came across a distress signal which ended up being a giant trade ship being attacked by lots of smaller ships, I defeated them all and collected my reward. It was a fun break from foraging and hunting/scanning creatures and plants.
Combat while in your space craft is pretty simple, it's fairly fast paced and a really nice break from the majority of game play which is spent down on a planets surface, mining and foraging for resources.

The combat on foot is again, fairly simple. The enemies being a small variety of sentinels or alien creatures that are not so friendly. It would be great if we had a larger variety of sentinels to take on. So far I've seen three, a small floaty robo-eye thing, a mini-mech on all fours and a much taller, fairly huge, bi-pedal mech that can actual deal some damage if you're not prepared. (People making accusations that this huge sentinel is not in the game yet, can see my collection of NMS screen shots)


Things that I am not happy about/Do not like
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alien creature AI and interaction
I watched all of the No Man's Sky E3 presentation footage. Most of us have, we all saw the scene with Triceratops-like alien crashing through the jungle, pushing trees out the way. This scene also has another more Brontosaurus-like alien bathing in some fairly shallow water.
Well, I've never seen anything nearly as cool as this, in terms of actual alien life/creatures OR in terms of the way the alien creatures AI works. (EDIT - Proof of awesome looking Brontosaurus-like aliens have been posted here - https://i.imgur.com/RP4HTI5.jpg)

Alien creatures don't seem to bathe, drink or eat in anyway, or do anything really. Some times they lay down and appear to be sleeping, that's about it. (EDIT - You can feed alien creatures, so I guess they do eat)
(EDIT - They DO hunt each other)
When you come across a more aggressive alien, it charges at you. I'm severely disappointed about this.

I haven't seen an alien creature do anything cool. Actually, you can feed some of them and they will sometimes dig up a rare mineral or item for you. So, sleeping or digging is about it for now. Again, even on the more widely alien creature inhabited planets, aliens are WAY more spaced out than the E3 game footage showed.

Multiplayer
♥♥♥♥ing mulitplayer, there I said it. We've all seen the 'Tell me lies, tell me sweat little lies' YouTube video. As someone that works in the game development industry I understand and appreciate that changes can and will happen during the development process. But for me and a lot of others, it's more about the lack of clarity and the vague answers that are getting us all rather miffed. Hello Games, Sean Murray, get your act together and put out a press release. Give us some facts on how exactly multiplayer works.

To sum it all up
A good friend of mine described NMS as a 'Create your own adventure' game, and I think that hits the nail on the head. The exploration, crafting, resource collection/management is awesome, but you need to have an imagination and be able to enjoy playing with patience.

If you go into No Man's Sky expecting hardcore survival mechanics or a story with the detail and depth of something like The Wicher 3, you'll be disappointed. This is for the most part, an exploration game. Let your imagination pave the way and just enjoy the sheer variety and vastness of the Universe and beyond

[Ambiguous]

Well this game is a disappointment.