no man’s sky just wants you to walk and i am ok with this
How the internet loves putting things on a pedestal only to kick the pedestal and watch them fall. The internet’s latest pedestal-kicking victim: No Man’s Sky. A game I wrote about last week, when I felt a complete lack of ability to say anything that hadn’t already been said about it. Well guess what losers, Pip’s back this week with a HOT NEW TAKE on NO MAN’S SKY that has probably already been said and written about and discussed and pondered about so much that these words will take on a new meaning of useless oh no-
No Man’s Sky, at it’s core, just wants you to walk around it’s planets, say “oooh” and head off. It wants to simulate the feeling of finding something unknown, something mysterious and understanding it a tiny bit. It wants to let you jump into a sci-fi novel’s cover and not come back.
What it doesn’t want you to do is become the most badass space-hulk, flying around in order to turn into “ULTIMATE MAN: MAN OF ULTIMATE POWER”. Instead, No Man’s Sky’s curve is so gentle, so obviously pushing you in the direction of “existing slightly better than you did before” instead of “upgrading until you can’t upgrade no-more, congratulations you rule over man, sky, and weird little crab creatures, you have won the game.”
I mean, sure, you can try doing that, and it is possible to get a Very Good Ship™, but this is not the way No Mans Sky wants you to play, despite the triple-A nature of the marketing.
No Man’s Sky, just wants you to walk.
It wants you to fly down into a planet, and stare wide eyed at it. Go down into the caves, up onto weird rock formations and mountains, submerge yourself in lakes full of fauna. It just wants you to walk.
What frustrates me is the endless stream of people moaning and complaining about how “No Man’s Sky doesn’t do x or y”, “Sean Murray lied to us”, “Hello Games are the devil incarnate”. The stream of people rejoicing when, for some reason, games distributors began to accept refunds on a game despite you playing >2hours of it. The entitlement dripping from these players, the ones that drop 10 hours on No Man’s Sky (TEN HOURS OF THEIR LIFE) before declaring “that was rubbish” and expecting their money back. That’s like buying a bar of Galaxy Salted Caramel (the best flavour — Pip), eating a third of it and then trying to return it.
The vocal majority of the gaming community at the moment are all trying to be a poor-man’s Jim Sterling or Yahtzee Croshaw — two critics that mainly get views from (mostly justified) criticism of games. Yet the extremity has been blown out of proportion. As many internet-marketeers have realised, people like a shock, people like reasons to be angry, to shout (queue click-baity titles saturating every facebook/twitter newsfeed). Positivity seems to have taken a break whilst negativity reigns.
It is so. easy. to be negative about something. To pick apart the flaws of someone, something, to say “I don’t like this.” What is harder, is the ability to say why something is bad, to justify your reasoning, and to balance it with positivity. This is why sites such as Game Maker’s Toolkit, Cool Ghosts and Eurogamer are such breaths of fresh air. These sites take the time to think about what makes a game work, to sit down and take them apart before spewing criticism all over them, like a vomit-filled hand dryer.
No Man’s Sky is a game about walking and exploring. Accept it, and before writing your next angry comment explore what it is, instead of what it isn’t. Hello Games only ever wanted to give you a sense of wonder, a sense of scale and let you have a relaxing time exploring beautifully generated procedural planets. What it didn’t want is the internet to go into a hissy fit, because its toy isn’t everything it could be. So, breathe, evaluate, and come to your own opinion, instead of screaming “NO MAN’S LIE” every time you see No Man’s Sky.
