Yep. Sounds like Tom’s still waiting for Star Citizen.
Minecraft is a great example of a procedural generated world. The thing is, the world is just the foundation of the game, not the game unto itself, which is what no mans sky seems to be. In NMS never build and it would be akin to playing minecraft by just walking in generally one direction only stopping briefly to gather local resources. It would be an entirely different game and a very dull one.
I didn’t buy NMS because I thought it would be pretty much what it turned out to be. I am still curious about it. It is my hope that in a years time or so it will have gotten a lot of patches to put in a real game and perhaps the price will have dropped to like $10 and then Ill check it out. However, in its current state I do not think its even worth $10. A grindy crafting game with a tiny inventory space does not sound fun.
Tonight I fired up NMS. I’m at a station and there is an alien who is engaging me with the conversation where I have to give him some Izotopes and he will respond depending on which they are. Problem is I don’t have enough on me so I back out of the conversation and go for a wander. There is a big patch of plutonium near a cave which I end up entering as the scan is indicating some neutrals which are often valuable in caves. As i’m moving deeper in to the cave a question mark appears with a 2min ETA. So I keep heading into the cave until I hit a dead end at the 20 sec point. I fire my grenades at the wall and eventually see sky. Clambering through i’m face to face with a downed ship that hadn’t shown up on the scanner previously. A downed ship with 31slots and an expanded warp drive. Who says exploring doesn’t lead to finding things? ;)
I’ve no idea whether I’ll pick up No Man’s Sky because I’ve honestly no idea whether I’ll enjoy it.
@LutherBlissett’s comments seem to closely align with my tastes – thanks for your thoughts btw, they make a refreshing change! And it’s nice to hear someone mention Noctis too – but at the same time the inventory management and, as @AntediluvianArk says, ‘half-baked survival’, sound really grim. Inventory management grinds my gears at the best of times.
I have my concerns over the possible repetition of the procgen but @rhamorim’s comments leave me with some hope, not to mention, I’ve played Proteus a number of times and I always fall under its spell, despite having seen most of the procgen components in different configurations. I adore Proteus though :-)
So yeah, I’ve no idea. Oh yeah, and @Enidigm, I appreciated some of your recent comments in the other NMS thread too.
The concept of game reviews is so quaint given you can view the game first hand for yourselves and make your own judgement.
That doesn’t make any sense at all. The same logic would apply to books, films, appliances, art, cars, etc. Of course critical reviews are useful and interesting. Besides, you can skip them if you don’t find them interesting.
Why yes, you most certainly could, at least as it pertains to anything you can view first hand for yourself and the judgement is subjective.
The concept of game reviews is so quaint given you can view the game first hand for yourselves and make your own judgement.
I wouldn’t call saving me $60 “quaint.”
Anyone knows this is a fools errand. Just put it in the back of your mind until 2021 when it finally comes out.
Let me translate the post you were replying to: “I paid sixty bucks for this game and yet another reviewer says that it sucks and it makes me sad.”
If all you’re looking for in a review is a consumer buying guide, then anything beyond a thumbs up or down and a spec sheet is superfluous. People don’t really read or watch reviews for that. They’re looking for the opinion of the reviewer and how that person experienced the game.
Lots of people don’t even realize they’re going to the review for that, which is why they do foolish things like ask for “objective reviews” or “fairness” when they criticize a review. They don’t really want either of those things, though. What they’re asking for is a review that agrees with their perception of the item being reviewed.
The other, (and I’d argue more important job of a review) is to educate the reader. Not in a condescending holier-than-thou way, but by expressing how the reviewer’s opinion relates to genre/media practices. Take this paragraph from Tom’s review:
[quote]
One of the earliest discoveries in No Man’s Sky is that you’re playing a game about inventory management, made by developers whose familiarity with inventory management seems to have stopped somewhere around the first Diablo. 20 years ago, in case you’re wondering. You have to constantly dump resources to make room for other resources. You’re constantly cut off from the information you need about whether you should dump those resources. There’s not an MMO alive that would dream of saddling its player with these tasks using this interface. Yet here is No Man’s Sky, supposedly shepherded along its development by people at Sony who should know what they’re doing, forcing me to play as if I was someone in Fallout who had put a single point into strength. I’m shuffling through screens, I’m counting, I’m deciding what to throw away, I’m wondering whether I dare equip an upgrade because upgrades always take up inventory slots. The better you are, the less you can carry.[/quote]
I probably would’ve written that as “Inventory management is a pain in the ass because the given space is always too small and the crafting system gives no convenient way to assess resource hierarchy.” Tom didn’t write that because he’s a much better writer than me. Tom took the time to explain why the inventory system sucks and how that compares to other games that have inventories and even dipped into telling the reader where to go for a better example.
Just look at the YouTube videos of him playing the game. There’s a marked difference between him silently showing you how the inventory sucks and telling you why it sucks.
I love that Tom and the other reviewers of QT3 use their own experience and interests to review things. I feel like I already know what they will like and won’t like and that is okay! It means they have taste and aren’t just cranking out paid reviews to get access to content or for ad revenue.
I often play a game or watch a movie and wonder… what would the QT3 crew think of this? It’s a sense of community for me and even though I don’t agree 100% of the time with their views (probably not even 50% of the time) I enjoy analyzing things and hearing other points of view.
There are times when I am grateful that my older computer can’t run these fancy pants new games so that I don’t squander my money on games that are “hollow and awful.” And this would appear to be one of those games. Speaking of pants, I just gotta say Tom’s writing cracks me up.
“If a No Man’s Sky planet got dressed in the morning, I’d ask, “You’re wearing that?” It has a plaid sports coat over a striped dress shirt. For some reason it put on an ascot. It’s belt doesn’t match its shoes. The shoes aren’t even a pair. It’s wearing a sombrero. It grins foolishly, pleased at its choices. “Duparhampiaca,” it announces by way of introduction.”
Looking at the front page I think it is really cool how all of the forum posts show up as comments there! A nice intelligent discussion from members of the QT3 community right there on the front page. I hope it also leads to attracting new members to the community.
This is a positive mark in favor of the move to Discourse. A huge thanks to the individuals who did the hard work to get this set up.
I thought the review was pretty spot-on… except I’m still kind of enjoying the game 10 days of playing.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe it’s a great game for most of the reasons that Tom cited. But it still sort of scratches an itch that I didn’t know was there. It’s doing the same thing for me that Minecraft, Terrerria, or even Euro Truck Sim did… provide a largely stress-free environment for climbing a crafting ladder. You’re not going to see anything mind-blowing (at least not after the first few hours), but the journey getting there is still oddly satisfying.
I don’t really mind the fact that there is no real challenge or danger. in fact, I get a little annoyed when some sentinel or inexplicably hostile creature disturbs my aimless quest for element-X.
That said, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll play. I’m not dissatisfied with the purchase; it’s a cool tech-demo and I’m glad I’ve seen it.
This statement couldn’t be more incorrect as far as I’m concerned. I don’t give a damn whether a reviewer likes it. I need to know if I will like it, and you can’t get that from a thumbs up. This is why most reviews these days suck.
Okay, but the reviewer doesn’t know what you’d like or dislike. He can only tell you why he felt the way he did about the game and how got there.
Then it sounds like you aren’t looking for criticism - you are looking for fortunetelling. If what you want is for someone to tell you personally whether you will like something, that is something perhaps a clairvoyant might help you with. It is not, however, the job for a reviewer to read the minds of thousands of readers, and fashion a review for each of them.
Welcome to the board to you, too.
I’m not asking for a review to be written personally for me or for a reviewer to read my mind. I’m looking for the thing Telefrog insists I’m not, objective information that will allow me to make a purchasing decision.
Granted, objectivity is a relative term. A completely objective review probably wouldn’t be all that interesting. But a breakdown of perceived high points and low points can be rather useful. Frequently, what one person considers a positive can be a negative for me or vice versa.
That makes sense in the context of something like a piece of cookware or a computer component, where there are objective standards to apply. For a creative medium like videogames, all that can possibly be conveyed is a reviewer’s subjective experience. Certainly they should go into enough detail to give you some sense of whether you would have similar objections or delights, but they’re never going to be objective. It simply isn’t possible.