My First Day with No Man’s Sky

After a five year development cycle and three years of pretty constant hype, No Man’s Sky has finally arrived for PS4. While many people are chiming in with reviews, both good and bad, I wanted to give my perspective as both a game developer and a science fiction fanatic. I am not much of a writer, but I will do my best to keep it short while touching on the areas I feel are most important. So without further ado, lets begin.

The Universe

The scale of the universe is huge. 18 quintillian planets huge. Our own sun would burn out in the time it would take for a player to spend just one second on each planet. In fact, 99.9% of the planets will never even be discovered. This is the perfect example of space exploration — vast, dark, cold and lonely.

Enter you.

When you awaken on your first planet, No Man’s Sky doesn’t hold your hand. You get very little in the way of direction and even less that can be considered a tutorial of how to play. I can see how some players might be wary of this kind of introduction, but I think it provides you with a feeling that you don’t get in games these days — being utterly and completely on your own. It’s you against the universe and it doesn’t exactly play fair.

Gameplay

No Man’s Sky borrows some of its mechanics from popular survival games. During your travels you will mine resources, find upgrades, craft items, and fight (or run). As a first person game it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but it does most things pretty well. The movement feels a little clunky sometimes and some of the controls aren’t in typical FPS fashion, but after a few minutes most gamers should be able to adjust to the changes. The physics are less arcade-y than some of the new FPS titles which results in slower overall movement speed, but I do feel that this makes the planets feel a little more vast.

The games interface is my chief complaint. The idea of using a thumb stick as a mouse cursor seems to be catching on as a new trend and I’m not a big fan. While I’m sure this makes porting the game to other platforms easier, it makes traversing the interface a slow process which can be frustrating when you need to charge an item quickly or do some quick inventory management.

The inventory itself is a bit of a practice in patience. You start with a very limited number of slots and, while upgradable, you will find yourself constantly throwing valuable items away for less valuable things you need in the moment. The inventory icons are big and modern and make finding what you’re looking for easy in most cases. My only complaint here is that your list of upgrades and other craftable components follow this same pattern and makes managing a large selection of items difficult. The easy fix here is to use a list to manage these components, as is done with the buy/sell interface. As the UI for this has already been coded it would be a pretty easy fix in a future update.

The player movement on planets might be realistic, but this is not the case with ship flight. On planets, your ship hovers a safe distance from the ground and landing is an automated process. In space, your ship movement is loose and forgiving. While I don’t think the realism should be on par with something like Elite:Dangerous, it feels almost like an afterthought.

This game clearly has more of a focus on planetary exploration and space itself is just the path from one planet to the next. I think a lot can be done here to improve the in-space experience, but navigation in a local solar system has to be the first priority. I’m really looking forward to seeing updates in this area of the game.

Environment(s)

While my review up to this point has been hyper-critical of certain gameplay elements, the procedural environments is where this game really shines. Each planet has its own story to tell. From hot barren planets with no signs of life to vast jungles with unique plants and animals, each planet is it’s own game. As a developer, I am truly impressed with the procedural generation of each planet. I have spent more than a few hours on a single planet spelunking caves for valuable resources, watching animals interact with each other, and jumping from points of interest looking for tech upgrades and alien lifeforms.

While some planets feel empty (mostly because they are), most are warm and inviting — hinting at secrets yet to be discovered. I’m constantly torn between leaving one planet behind to discover more and spending hours on a single planet trying to squeeze out every little piece of tech and lore. I find myself personally attached to each planet I spend more than a few minutes on and when I am ready to move on to the next system I find it hard to say goodbye. It gives me the same feelings of wonder and anxiety I get from reading old science fiction novels when it was less about the science and more about human evolution through exploration. It’s a humbling experience and makes it hard to stop playing. While the variety in the game is not always unique, it’s different enough to keep me wanting to land on each planet I find if only for a little while and I think the uniqueness of each planet will only grow as we receive more updates from the developers.

The Lore

No Man’s Sky is not an exercise in reading text. You won’t be button mashing your way through dialog in the vein of traditional role playing games. Rather, the game hints at a story through small blurbs of text. Dealing with the various alien races can be tricky at first, but as you advance you will slowly learn bits and pieces of a language that allow for the slightest bit of communication. While I haven’t advanced far in the story arc, each bit and piece I gleam answers a question and leaves two more. Instead of being well-fed on a steady diet of lore, I am always hungry for more. I believe this was an excellent design decision and gives you a purpose — adding to the overall feeling of curiosity and confusion.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a multiplayer space sim, this is not for you. If you’re looking for a first person shooter with perfectly balanced mechanics, it’s not going to be your cup of tea. If you’re looking for AAA quality graphics and meticulously crafted environments, I feel sorry for you and this is not your game. However, if you’re looking for a game that puts you inside a science fiction novel reminiscent of the works of Andre Norton and Isaac Asimov, humbles you in the presence of a vast and dangerous universe, and requires a combination of wits, strategy, luck, and curiosity — I highly recommend you give it a shot. You will have to look past a few clunky mechanics, but the experience far outweighs the cost.