No Man’s Sky has had a lot of publicity, especially as of late, but is there a reason to pay attention now? I think there is.
For a bit of background, No Man’s Sky was released in August 2016 to PC and PS4, having been at the forefront of a massive hype train of epic proportions. Its official genre is an action-adventure/survival game, but during its promotion and marketing phases it blurred the lines between many different genres. The game fell flat on a majority of players expectations, receiving negative or mediocre reviews initially. Rather than taking the money and running, it’s Developer and Publisher Hello Games has continued to release content patches for free to all users. It’s most recent patch has brought the game up to roughly 90% of its promised content and has pushed the game to the Xbox One platform.
No Man’s Sky Next is the title of the newest patch, and honestly it completely changes much of the game. I’d put about 15 hours into the game prior to the release of Next just to get a feel for it’s current state. Now having played 15 hours into Next I can say that what the company has added makes this feel like a much more polished experience than I expected.
The Good:
Graphics are amazing. There has been a lot of under the hood modification of the previous game systems, bringing a major increase to the graphics quality. This does mean that players who have previously played may experience some framerate drop on older equipment. World are more vivid, water reflections are more detailed, and everything looks more refined. Small texture changes to ships and structures add more “greeble” (developer parlance for small details, changes, additions, ect that add more variability to the shape or feel of an item) and it makes it feel like a more lived in universe. They’ve also added in character customization, and third-person view. I’m not a third-person view player, it detracts from the immersion, but it’s nice that it’s an option now. Character customization is rather simple, but gives enough options to make a majority of players happy.
Procedural Generation has been a highly lauded feature since the inception, even winning it awards. They’ve taken it to a whole new level with Next creating more variation in plant, animal life, and even environments. Take a quick glance around the internet and you can see the massive variation all around.
Base-building is a completely new experience for this game. Even compared to the previous incarnation of it, it’s much more modular, and accessible to the average player. Before you had to find specific spots in which to build, now however, you can build anywhere. This allows for more emergent gameplay, especially with the newly implemented multiplayer addition.
The Bad:
Multiplayer is a bit of a double-edged sword. It’s a welcome improvement to the system since it was originally promised as being massively multiplayer. As of this writing you can only play with 3 other explorers, for a total server size of 4. I don’t know about you fine folks, but in this day and age a limit of 4 total players is a little pathetic. Granted, even with 3 other players it does add in a new dynamic to the gameplay. I simply want, and expect, more players in a server. The goal from Hello Games is to continue increasing the server sizes as time goes on, but it’s still a far cry from what we were originally promised.
Bugs are still present, especially during respawn after loosing your ship. In my play through I had three different experiences where the ship was upside down and stuck part way into the planet on respawn. Thankfully it took just entering the ship, exiting, dying again, then respawning to reset it to right side up and on the planet. Other bugs include the launch system occasionally allowing you to take off, before dropping you back onto the ground because the system is actually unpowered; or occasional rubber banding during landing, causing your ship to glitch through the surface of the planet.
Game logic is another one of those fuzzy areas that tends to be more bad than good. I’m not sure if it’s working as intended, and just poorly implemented, or if there’s something very wrong. Sentinels can be killed, and you can avoid reinforcements by clearing them out quickly enough; to me that’s a good system. You can kill what you need to, while avoiding a massive build up of forces that will eventually steamroll over you. It takes some skill and is highly rewarding. However, System Forces (in game system police) will continue to harass you until they eventually kill you. No mater how quickly you destroy them, no matter how fast you run away, they’ll eventually get you. They emit jamming signals that cause your pulse jets and warp drive to become unusable, and even when they’re jumping in (with a countdown of 10 seconds) they’re still able to scramble your systems. I don’t see how this fits from a balance and gameplay perspective. You can now run from pirates, but not system security… something here doesn’t fit.
Overall:
No Man’s Sky is getting better, much better. On its own merits (and not the promises from 2 years ago) it’s now a reasonably good game. There are definitely some highs and lows, but it has easily become a game that is worth picking up. As of this article you can find No Man’s Sky for 50% off, bringing it down to a much more reasonable $29.99.
Score: 8/10
