REVIEW: No Man's Sky vividly realizes the meaningless emptiness of space

Games
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I can’t speak for other people, but I personally like to look around for great vistas. I’m always eager to see what small variation in color or composition will result in something I personally find remarkable. In many ways, I’m always looking for the next sci-fi book cover that only I will get to see (even if many are similar enough that most people won’t tell the difference), as if I’m some kind of photographer.

I also like to go around, trying to guess what will be around the corner, even if I know all the possible variations (pod, crashed ship, beacon, etc). I like to see a smoking pod in the ground, and right after landing, to be surprised by spoting a monolith in the distance. For me, it feels cool, sometimes even if it is the umpteenth time it happens.

I like the random nature of procedural generation, because sometimes you’ll find extremely cool things that are (ultimately) a product of chance. I enjoy that kind of thing in the same way (and I’m going to be a HUGE nerd now, so bear with me) Dr. Manhattan was awestruck when he found out who Silk Specter’s father was, and how unlikely that was. Because when things are created and crafted by humans, they’re imbued with meaning; but when you find something remarkable out of random chance, it’s a blank canvas where you can paint your own meaning (or lack thereof), and for a moment be awestruck by how chance can produce beauty - only to realize that you imprint beauty on that product of chance yourself, by witnessing that, by just… being there.

Those moments in No Man’s Sky (and similar games) are, to me, a bit like that single plastic bag flying around in the famous scene from American Beauty - the meaningless product of chance imbued with meaning. No Man’s Sky gives me that in spades - through procedural generation of terrain and features, by random chance uncovering alien words, by the vague excerpts of text when I interact with a monolith or an abandoned station. It gives me randomness so I can imprint meaning (or the lack thereof), and I love it for that.

Now, I can see how much better a game it could be. There’s a lot of potential to be uncovered there. There are also a lot of oversights, and a lot of compromises that hurt all aspects of the game in the end (most of which you mentioned in your review). But I like what’s there. It could be more, but for what I wanted and expected… it’s enough.

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Tom your review sums up perfectly what I think a lot of players think of No Man’s Sky.

From my experience this is a “game” is a loose sense of the word. It isn’t really story or objective based. There isn’t a lot of varying gameplay mechanics. You basically spend time wandering around strange generated environments. And yes they do repeat and some of them are no fun to be at. So you just leave! And find a better world to wander around!

Also being of an altered state of mind helps a lot.

I look forward to what they might add to the game to make it more interesting. Hopefully some kind of base building?

23

Just as I predicted pre-release. Procedurally generated games are boring as hell.

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Procedural generation is about the only thing the game has going for it. It’s the gameplay (or lack thereof) that’s the problem.

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With the half-baked survival gameplay they duct taped onto the procgen I would rather they extricate it altogether and turn the game into a touristy walking sim. Enjoy the sci-fi cover panoramas without needing to stand there spraying a beam into rocks ad naseum.

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I still fire up Minecraft and just wander around new worlds sometimes. I think it’s too soon to make any blanket statements about them. Plus exactly how much is procedurally generated will vary among games claiming that feature. No Man’s Sky feels like an amazing foundation for a game they didn’t finish making. Whether that’s actually the case and it improves with updates or whether Hello Games never really has the ability to improve it, I don’t think NMS is a strike against procedural generation in a meaningful way.

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People have been making procedurally generated games for over 30 years. I don’t think it’s too soon at all. There are games that have managed to layer enough interesting stuff over the procedural content generation to not suffer too badly from the intense dullness of said content (many roguelikes, for example; Dwarf Fortress; etc), but quite often that’s because there’s a ton of systems that interact in interesting ways. When you don’t have that (i.e. No Man’s Sky), well, the flaws with the method become especially glaring.

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You should look into 3030 Deathwar Redux, Naev and Endless Sky for starters.

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“3030 Deathwar Redux” is my new favorite game name.

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I am another one who likes NMS. I am getting close to 40 hours and it still fascinating to me. I am a snoop, I love exploring. I join Everquest when Kunark was released. I remember spending tons of times going where I shouldn’t. Taking a character from Freeport to Qeynos. Running through zones I had no business being in, just to see what was out there. Grinding experience doesn’t do anything for me. I still shake my head at WOW promoting getting a free max level character. I want the adventure of getting there and getting attached to a character.

NMS gives me the same sense of discovery, sure I wish there was more variety but it’s enough to keep me going. Just tonight I was wondering if there were any worlds that had at least half the world cover in “water” and sure enough after 30 something planets I found one. Found a different kind of space station where I got a different kind of stone, I have no idea what to do with it but that’s for later. Trying to save 10 million for a nice ship is another goal. Found a pretty good planet for resources but no where to sell and I have to make more choices. Do I fly to a space station to sell, do I keep exploring the planet. I can’t seem to find one of those orange beam things. I like that I know about 250 words and conversations are starting to make sense. I am starting to find worlds with the rare purples. Some of the storms get pretty wicked and instead of feeding my shields I look for cover. To me there is lots to do, it’s relaxing, pretty and enjoyable.

32

I remember playing Elite II: Frontier and just loving the ability to fly down to a planet, fly across it and land on it.
I never played the game properly - I cheated because the game itself was a grind - what I wanted was the experience however casual.
I used to play Flight Simulator X for similar reasons - just cruising around - landing here, taking off and head towards the horizon.
When Elite: Dangerous came out I was excited to try it - only to disappointedly bounce around space stations and explode all the time. It wasn’t fun and wasn’t what I was looking for.
Noctis IV was for me the perfect example of what I wanted and Proteus also was to a more limited (grounded) degree. Fly around, land, explore and move on. The low pixel counts and repetitive procedural content made it better in some ways as I had to fill in the cracks with imagination.
It would certainly be nice for NMS to have less repetition. No carbon copy buildings every couple of minutes. No endlessly repetitive flora and fauna. It also nerfs itself in a number of ways - most of which can be fixed with mods (low flying mode, more slots, optimised graphics settings for better performance etc…)
But I’ve honestly played nothing else since it came out and have not been interested in anything either.
It has me pondering the notion that I play open world games for the open world… not the game.
The Elder Scrolls and GTA series are good examples of games I rarely “play” so much as explore.

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It’s also a fantastic game with a really fun soundtrack.

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Yup, I had one of those earlier too. Also found a planet with a lot of floating sheets of rock that was pretty wacky.

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The star rating and cutting remark at the bottom of a review, aka the most important parts of the review, don’t make it to the forum posts. :(

I had to open the actual link (guh!) to find out it got 1-star and “Spore '16”. (Personally, from the text, I thought it might be a 2. Maybe you liked the first few worlds enough to justify that?)

As for the game: I didn’t play this as my computers too crap. I was looking forward to playing it when I buy a new one… I guess I won’t bother now.

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I can’t speak to the cutting remark, but I’m not sure the star rating is that important.

Tom’s review chimes with how most people seem to have reacted to the game. Which is sad. They could have done this so much better. It feels like yet another waste of great potential. I wonder what went wrong?

37

Ouch!.

I just have read the review.

Each word pours truth. I have played the game 100+ hours, and I can vouch that everything in the review is true.

I still feel 1 star is a bit tough.

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I mainly just meant in the forum, regardless of category.

39

Damn, what an intense review. Tom has such distinctive writing style, I love it. Shame the game didn’t have more…game, on its bones.

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But… Spelunky!! It’s one of my all time favorites and the procedural generation there is perfect.