(Note that these opinions aren’t from me buying the game, but watching a Youtuber play it)
\n2015 (to me) started the video game space race (even though games like Mass Effect already had a really early lead in it). Back then, Elite Dangerous was a thing in its infancy.<\/p>\n
As most gamers know, No Man’s Sky has finally been released last week for $60 USD. Back last year, I saw the teaser trailer of it and it was pretty cool. And this was comparing it to Elite Dangerous, that (in that game) you can only land on airless moons. In No Man’s Sky, you can come up on planets with breathable life that’s made to that planet. Even meet alien creatures that look like they’re straight out of Spore.
\nWell… that was back in 2015. With the game released, hopes have been broken and the raging\/refund requesting is commencing.<\/p>\n
So what happened to it? What made this potential awesome game for 2016, turn into a mess? Some say it was because of a small development team. Others say that players’ hype was so extreme and literally collapsed into a black hole of rage, feeding off of it. Sure, you can encounter waypoints and maybe a few things left over by highly-advanced aliens. But really, you’re still mining to get to them. It’s an endless loop, of mining. But mining being the core game mechanic is the least of the game’s problems. The colors alone, remind me so..so much of Spore. I believe the devs were intrigued of Spore’s Space Stage so much that they decided to use most of the colors from it. And the crafting GUI, it’s a mess. It doesn’t feel clean. It feels like the work of 5-10 minutes of coding. And what’s with all of the camera moving when interacting with things? Just so much stuff that could had been scrapped from the game.<\/p>\n And so, that’s my thoughts of No Man’s Sky. I don’t recommend buying it. The devs might fix most if not (hopefully) all of these problems and make it a -proper- space simulator that could even rival Elite Dangerous. But I have my doubts of that ever happening. ED, and NMS are in their own leagues. But this game needs some serious work on it. Hell, I would even go as far as them refunding everyone’s purchase price, removing the game from Steam and working on it for another year.<\/p>\n NMS is…such a bad game. It needs a lot<\/strong> of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Note that these opinions aren’t from me buying the game, but watching a Youtuber play it) 2015 (to me) started the video game space race (even though games like Mass Effect already had a really early lead in it). Back … Continue reading
\nBut I, and Dan say<\/a> (I agree with the guy), that the developers failed to understand the purpose of making gameplay not get stuck in an infinite loop in the core.
\nWhat I’m trying to explain, is basically crafting-based games as a whole (being the core gameplay). But with NMS, mining becomes the core mechanic. Because it requires you to mine pretty much everything<\/em> in the game. There’s no real progression from one mechanic to the next. And what’s so bad about this being the core mechanic, is you’re mining the same old things. They didn’t even add a progression on mining levels (such as “this requires a Level X laser to mine”).
\nFor example, the start. The player is tasked to repair their crashed starship. They’re given a blaster-type of weapon, and it’s used to harvest everything they can.
\nAll of this time, you’re mining objects for fuel and other resources — constantly having to ‘repair’ items with.. yep, mining.
\nEverything, is pointing to Mining being the core aspect of the game. That’s all you really do. You mine. You harvest for resources.<\/p>\n
\nAnd when you finally fix your ship and are able to leave the planet.. guess what? You are running out of fuel. Which requires…? Yep! MINING! Get the pattern? I thought so. That’s the problem.
\nAnd if you don’t<\/em> see it, well.. here’s another gem. Space stations. You can talk to locals there and do some trading. But if you don’t have what they require? Ha ha. Back to the MINE with you!<\/p>\n
\nAnd then there’s the problem with the way the ship handles when traveling in planets. It has collision avoidance that cannot be turned off. So if you want to fuck around, the game says “NO FUN ALLOWED” to you. Even something like an arch, you cannot fly through it as it’s ‘not safe’.
\nThere’s also this thing. Say you’re flying around in your ship and you want to land. The ship will suddenly come to a dead stop and lands for you. There’s no requirement to slow down. No requirement to land by yourself. No risk of crashing. No freedom to experiment. Feels like way…WAY too much hand-holding. It’s ridiculous!!
\nThere’s also the AI voice in your Exosuit, which sounds somewhat like the computer from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n