No Man’s Sky, from the comparatively small team at Hello Games, is a game balancing on a tightrope. It is both indie and mainstream, confoundingly huge and yet incredibly personal. The game is straddling the lines of two of the biggest genres that exist in modern gaming, and not quite managing to exemplify either.
To start, reasons you may not like No Man’s Sky:
Those who dislike procedural generation and the caveats for gameplay that infers will probably not enjoy this game.
Those who cannot manage the almost complete lack of player direction will have trouble with this game.
If you don’t like Survival games, you will likely not enjoy this game.
If you want an MMO with multi-player, this is not that game.
Otherwise, read on.
No Man’s Sky begins with your character waking on a random planet on the outskirts of the galaxy. Your ship has crashed. With your launch systems offline, you must grab your handy multi-tool (functional as a weapon and a mining tool) and try to find the resources on your planet to get yourself back to full capacity. This opening sequence is your tutorial for the survival aspects of the game. And you’ll also be given the option go accept the Atlas missions. You should accept those. They give the early game a direction to follow, plus help to give you access to useful tech and resources a lot easier. Refusal, while allowing for more freedom of exploration, really doesn’t serve any benefit for the player. You can always just ignore the map markers. There’s an overarching storyline which has the trappings of depth, concerned with the meanings of existence and the importance of self-determination. You can just ignore that and go explore though, head towards the centre of the universe or wherever you like.
Honestly though, in the early game, there are issues. Early wobbles while the game finds its feet. While the game does tell you what you need to collect for the repairs, it doesn’t provide any hand holding. So you have to either explore and investigate the objects around you, or wait for the game to take pity and highlight what you need. This is expanded by the games habit of telling you things once, then leaving you to get on with it. Thematically, I get it. The game pushes you to just look around, scan everything you see and see what’s out there. The tutorial is essential for allowing the player to keep refuelling their ship and for the basic understanding of how the planet side gameplay works.
For the first planet, it’s incredible. An unimaginable expanse beyond you, with a relative day/night cycle happening and potentially a whole ecosystem of life to discover. You gaze in wonder at strange landscapes and literal alien skies.
After you gather the essential resources, which are fairly plentiful, you get the chance to head back into orbit. This is the second great feeling. The early wobbles give way to confidence and determination. The game comes alive, you burst through the atmosphere and see asteroids everywhere, with ships and stations dotted around the periphery of your vision. Then you see your first planet from space. In my case it was quickly dwarfed by my second planet appearing behind it and rising into my view.
The simplified flying controls encourage the player not to waste time, just boost to the next location, and flying down onto a planet or into a space station feels like the start of a whole game on its own. There’s a rumble of the reentry and you watch as the landscape filters into view. I understand if it’s not for everyone, but the way the ground filters into view still looks pretty to me. It’s mostly to disguise the draw distance, but it has the effect of making it seem like the planet is being unveiled as you arrive.
After some more scavenging and flying, you will likely meet your first alien in one of one randomly scattered outposts, where you’ll encounter my favourite mechanic in the game, the language system. If you find monoliths or ruins while travelling around planets, you will learn specific words from one of the factional languages. When you encounter that word in your interactions with alien life, that word will be translated from their dialogue. These interactions consist of being presented with a situation, and come down to selecting one of three responses. Depending on your understanding of the language in question, you can make an educated decision. Or just guess.
Every time I see an outpost or trade port; I head straight for the aliens. The writing, what I’ve been able to understand, has been very solid, with every engagement being entertaining.
That’s your first hour or three with the game, depending on how quickly you start pushing through everything I’ve described. You’ve probably been playing all in one go, rushing to see and do as much as possible.
That’s the problem with No Man’s Sky. It encourages the player to do “everything”. There’s an implicit reading of urgency there. With the quintillion planet wide universe and the relative sameness of the planetary generation, this only results in pattern recognition as the player sees the seams of the algorithm.
That’s what leads to frustration. Because trying to run on a tightrope only makes everything fall.
There is a completely wrong way to play this game for most players. Compulsively demanding more and consuming every new horizon like candy only diminishes the whole.
The games mechanics encourage this in their own way, simplifying everything. Spaceship and combat controls don’t encourage you to engage in either, as soft lock on systems make them generic and almost trite. The boosting system is essential to space travel, which suggests to the player that everything they do should be fast paced and all at once. The inventory system is limited and demands you constantly adapt and manage your resources, only gathering small quantities of anything you need. You have to keep your essential resources, your plutonium, your carbon. Can’t pick yup
These are all flaws. The demand for urgency and motion they create negatively affects the game. Can’t be denied. Regardless of what else is or isn’t in the game, these systems end up letting it down.
This is a shame.
Playing No Man’s Sky in relaxed bursts however? Much better idea. Just placing one foot in front of the other and taking your time. Letting yourself just be engulfed by the game and enjoying the minor variations that make each creature or world unique is what makes this game special.
My absolute favourite moments so far have been the times that the game has just left me to explore and wonder about what is going on.
Finding an abandoned observatory, solving the logic puzzle in the computer there, then being rewarded with a distress signal in another star system.
After five minutes of finding some resources to allow me to move on, I warp in, and in the time it takes me to get my bearings, a whole fleet of freighters have warped in around me, filling the void in a blaze of light and a cacophony of engines.
I make my way to the source of the distress signal. It’s a crashed ship on a toxic world, somehow thriving with life. I land, and survey the damage, considering whether to take the time to repair it.
I turn to survey the landscape for materials to make the job easier. What I see is a beautiful sunrise over the coast in the distance, with gigantic sky snakes flying around and forming darting silhouettes.
Honestly, it sometimes feels more like Proteus or it’s kin, a walking simulator where you just enjoy the sheer act of existing in a space. That’s how I feel this game should be treated. An occasional adventure, exploring planets and ambling around. Take the tightrope slow. Enjoy the view up there.
For a game that desperately tries to ape seventies Sci-fi covers, those wonderful images of far flung stars, I actually mostly found myself thinking of Blade Runner. The Tannhauser gate scene specifically.
In one speech, a whole universe of moments is conjured up beyond the audience’s understanding filled with mystery and excitement. That’s how I feel when I try and talk about my enjoyment of No Man’s Sky. At times, this game is incredible. At times, this game is infuriating.
But if you’re willing to take your time, respect the slow pace of the tightrope walk and push through this game with its awkwardly implemented systems, this game conveys an entire universe of astounding moments.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zeXUoUZpII&w=560&h=315]