In 2016, Hello Games published the game No Man’s Sky, a space exploration-survival game that allows you to play as a mysterious traveler, land on alien planets, explore galaxies in starships and trade resources with races across the procedural-generated universe that contains over 18 quintillion planets (by the way, that number is not a typo; 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets).
I had purchased the game when it originally came out in 2016 on the PlayStation 4. It was a mess; it had bugs so bad the game would freeze – constantly. I was lucky to get an hour of game time before the game would give up and give me cryptic error codes as if I understood their secret language. There was a dearth of content and at that time, it made a less than stellar impression on me (no pun intended).
The original ambition of the game was humongous in scope but in all honesty, Hello Games did not deliver. Their original E3 video trailer showed the raw potential of the game but in the end – none of it was fully realized. Because of that, reviews around the time of the original 2016 release were poor. Some felt that the original game trailer greatly exaggerated expectations that were not met by Hello Games (including a multiplayer that was promised but never delivered on).
Soon after the initial launch, there was nothing from Hello Games on what was going on to fix the bugs in No Man’s Sky and to add the missing content that was promised at launch.
There was radio silence for months.
Then we saw the first of many, many updates to the game: Foundation, Pathfinder, Atlas Rises, NEXT, Abyss, Visions, Beyond, Synthesis, and most recently Living Ship.
It seemed like Hello Games was going to make the game into what it originally promised. It has taken four years, so what can we say about the game now?
Well, the game is still fundamentally about landing on alien planets, exploring galaxies in starships and frigates and trade with races across the universe, but now you can travel light-years through black holes, build bases, go underwater, built exocrafts to travel the planet in style, take on missions and a lot more. The game has so much in it now, it’s a little overwhelming, but we need to look past the deluge of content and look at it as a game. How is it as a game and is it fun to play?
I have yet to play any of the other modes in the game (such as Creative Mode), so this review is based on the standard Normal gameplay mode. With that, No Man’s Sky is much, much better than it was.
It’s an enjoyable albeit uneven experience. Some sessions you are having dogfights in space and shooting down space pirates, then you are talking to countless aliens to decipher their language. Sometimes you are mining resources ad infinitum and sometimes you sit in your cockpit staring at the endless things you can do and figuring out what to do next. It is both full and empty at the same time. You have so much to do and yet, the things you do you may or may not like and you may be stuck with the less-than-fun tasks until you find something you like. For example, I don’t find base building all that exciting, but if I want to proceed to the next part of an ongoing mission, I gotta do the base building. Yes, I could ignore it and do something else, but at some point, I will need to go back to doing something I don’t like for a few hours just so I can move the game forward by a couple of minutes. What I am putting in isn’t exactly translating to what I am getting out.
This is not to say the game doesn’t have enjoyable moments. In the Normal mode, taken for what it is No Man’s Sky is a universal sandbox. Full of possibilities and nearly endless experiences at every turn – just be prepared to do some menial tasks before you get to the stuff you really want to do.
This review is based on the PC version of the game purchased by the author through STEAM. Played over 80 hours in standard mode and not VR. No items of value (such as download codes or monetary compensation) has been given from either the game publisher and/or developer for this review. The game is also available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Written by Chris Murdock
