No Mans Sky Review (2016)
Oh No Mans sky… if this doesn’t set an example on why not to pre order games, I don’t know what will. This game was promised to be an epic space exploration game with endless possibilities.
No one person will ever have the same experience was the message hello games delivered to us, but in reality, everyone had the same barebones underwhelming experience.
The more I played the game, the more I struggled to understand what the hell is the point of any of it. Many games are fun without needing a purpose, but this game was boring almost instantly. The game had no story, no life, no actual ending and was a game packed full of broken promises from the developers.
The core foundations of what this game had seemed promising. Being a space explorer that gets to travel the galaxy across 1000s if not millions of planets seems exciting.
No one person will ever have the same experience was the message hello games delivered to us, but in reality, everyone had the same barebones underwhelming experience.
The more I played the game, the more I struggled to understand what the hell is the point of any of it. Many games are fun without needing a purpose, but this game was boring almost instantly. The game had no story, no life, no actual ending and was a game packed full of broken promises from the developers.
The core foundations of what this game had seemed promising. Being a space explorer that gets to travel the galaxy across 1000s if not millions of planets seems exciting.
The space exploration and the sheer amount of planets and solar systems you can travel to sounds staggering. That’s until you realise that everything you are experiencing is exactly the same as the last place you went to.
The tech behind the game is that the worlds are generated and created through mathematical algorithms, which is what is supposed to make way for infinite variations of environments to explore in.
That in its self sounds mind blowing, until you realise that in the reality of it, it’s really not. What actually happens is you will visit 100s of planets, and notice a very similar pattern. Each time the world will have a different colour palette. The terrain will be shaped differently, but that’s it. That’s all the difference is to each planet.
On top of that, every planet is lifeless with no meaning to it. Even the planets that do have “life” have no personality or depth. It’s just some weird dinosaur looking creature or some lone alien guy standing in a little room. Where are the alien civilisations and colonies? Where are the secret societies of races you can find?
I followed three space ships for 15 minutes. I was flying in a straight line directly behind them for 15 minutes. Nothing happened, we didn’t go anywhere. What’s worse is that the terrain didn’t change at all. Nothing changed. It just felt like I was looping around a tiny map over and over for 15 minutes.
The impression I got was the game constantly generates as you are flying but would hold onto the same statistical variant or number rules that kept the planet the same consistent colour and planet theme.
The tech behind the game is that the worlds are generated and created through mathematical algorithms, which is what is supposed to make way for infinite variations of environments to explore in.
That in its self sounds mind blowing, until you realise that in the reality of it, it’s really not. What actually happens is you will visit 100s of planets, and notice a very similar pattern. Each time the world will have a different colour palette. The terrain will be shaped differently, but that’s it. That’s all the difference is to each planet.
On top of that, every planet is lifeless with no meaning to it. Even the planets that do have “life” have no personality or depth. It’s just some weird dinosaur looking creature or some lone alien guy standing in a little room. Where are the alien civilisations and colonies? Where are the secret societies of races you can find?
I followed three space ships for 15 minutes. I was flying in a straight line directly behind them for 15 minutes. Nothing happened, we didn’t go anywhere. What’s worse is that the terrain didn’t change at all. Nothing changed. It just felt like I was looping around a tiny map over and over for 15 minutes.
The impression I got was the game constantly generates as you are flying but would hold onto the same statistical variant or number rules that kept the planet the same consistent colour and planet theme.
In a nutshell, every planet was the same but with different colours. Every planet had no actual life.
The game essentially is about collecting resources in a tedious boring way, to fuel your ship, so that you can travel to 100s of the exact same planet but with different colour pallets for no actual reason.
The latest patch removes this grind by giving us a creative mode where you have infinite resources. That’s great and all, but all that does is strip away a really boring obstacle that stands in your way, essentially allowing you to get to the other boring parts of the game quicker.
Look, the foundations are great, the idea of being able to explore this endless void of space with an endless supply of planets in such a free way like this game does, is a good idea. The space exploration part of the game is actually not bad and arriving to planets is an awesome feeling. It’s only until you actually expect something once you arrive, where the game doesn’t give anything back.
It’s almost like shouting in an empty wasteland of nothing expecting to hear a big group of people to shout back, only to not hear anything back apart from the echo of your voice in the huge space of emptiness. This game is empty.
They have the flying controls nailed, they have the core basics of the game that make it functional, and then everything else is just this completely empty packet that’s disguised as a packet full of sweets.
If hello games can actually hand craft some actual content into the game rather than having a computer generate the whole world in such a generic way, maybe this game could have potential in the future. As of now though, this is honestly one of the worst games I have played in years.
Conclusion
The only positive I can draw from this is that, the gameplay is functional and the first hour was cool Other than that, I don’t even know what this “game” is.
You could say that the art of this game is that the game doesn’t have to have a purpose it’s about the journey of exploration. What exploration? If exploration means travelling around the same open space that’s basically exactly the same as the last one, then ok I guess that’s the purpose of this “game”.
The game essentially is about collecting resources in a tedious boring way, to fuel your ship, so that you can travel to 100s of the exact same planet but with different colour pallets for no actual reason.
The latest patch removes this grind by giving us a creative mode where you have infinite resources. That’s great and all, but all that does is strip away a really boring obstacle that stands in your way, essentially allowing you to get to the other boring parts of the game quicker.
Look, the foundations are great, the idea of being able to explore this endless void of space with an endless supply of planets in such a free way like this game does, is a good idea. The space exploration part of the game is actually not bad and arriving to planets is an awesome feeling. It’s only until you actually expect something once you arrive, where the game doesn’t give anything back.
It’s almost like shouting in an empty wasteland of nothing expecting to hear a big group of people to shout back, only to not hear anything back apart from the echo of your voice in the huge space of emptiness. This game is empty.
They have the flying controls nailed, they have the core basics of the game that make it functional, and then everything else is just this completely empty packet that’s disguised as a packet full of sweets.
If hello games can actually hand craft some actual content into the game rather than having a computer generate the whole world in such a generic way, maybe this game could have potential in the future. As of now though, this is honestly one of the worst games I have played in years.
Conclusion
The only positive I can draw from this is that, the gameplay is functional and the first hour was cool Other than that, I don’t even know what this “game” is.
You could say that the art of this game is that the game doesn’t have to have a purpose it’s about the journey of exploration. What exploration? If exploration means travelling around the same open space that’s basically exactly the same as the last one, then ok I guess that’s the purpose of this “game”.
Pros:
Functional Gameplay |
Cons:
Empty game that’s disguised as a packed game No purpose to anything you are doing No story |