No Man’s Sky Game Review

[section_title title=Gameplay]

Gameplay

Computer setup:

CPU: Intel, i5-4430 @ 3.0ghz
Motherboard: ASUS H81-Plus
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600MHz
GPU: Sapphire 290x Tri-X 4gb
PSU: Corsair CX750m

Everything about No Man’s Sky screams vast, looking at the galactic map and finding yourself stuck 178,000 ish light years from the centre of the Galaxy is daunting. I timed how long it took to get to the centre on the map, with stars flashing past, it took a few minutes. It looks like a lot of content to play with, and it is up until a certain point, usually a crash to desktop or hard lock.

You start off at the edge of the Euclid galaxy, in a random location. Your ship needs repair and your equipment is also on the blink. There is no tutorial on how to fix this, just a two line guide in the corner prompting occasionally. Because you start on a random planet you could be heading to space in half an hour or five, depending on the resources available. For my playthrough every marker to get my ship going was underwater.

Eventually, you blast off into space. From here No Man’s Sky opens up with new planets, moons and solar systems to explore. Hundreds of blueprints to find, resources to mine, ships to buy, it all sounds great. But there are so many things getting in the way of just enjoying the experience. Resources are needed for crafting, however due to the nature of the game you can go for hours without seeing that piece of aluminium you need to craft a toxic shield. Maybe you haven’t found the blueprint that you need, such as the Atlaspass, then the game provides no help on where to find them either. It’s obtuse for no other reason than because it can be.

Wandering around planets is where the fun is. Finding amusing animals, like the cow that desperately wants to be a butterfly. Just taking in the view when you come across a digital paradise. Tagging and cataloguing everything is a good source of income, but once you have seen variations on that same cow fifty times or more the novelty outstays it’s welcome. This is the real limit of the game, the number of variations on everything is too limited to sustain the quintillion planets. There are too few parts for animals, space stations and bases.