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No Man's Sky
Started playing NMS this past weekend. I named my first planet Lichen which is a marshy wetland world. No hostile creatures and pleasant atmosphere. So far the experience has been very laid back and chill. Even the space drones are easily dealt with. Overall it feels like baby first space exploration game. Even still I'm enjoying the game. Video explains in better detail what this game is about. Also inventory management can be tedious at times. I wouldn't mind having the option of having the game auto charge and fuel my suit and ship so long as I have the resources. I'm about 7 hours in and have spent a lot of those hours just walking around Planet Lichen. And without really trying I've managed to get my FTL drive up and running. So I'm about ready to leave Terrible Danger star system but I still need one more planet in the system to explore before I head out.
Post edited by Josh Bytes on
Comments
Also feels kind of weird to be showing up on various planets that clearly already have occupants, names, and histories, then just going "Well, it's now planet fartsniffer, god rest all who land upon her." A little too old-world colonial for my taste, but maybe the game is making a commentary on it that I haven't figured out yet, who knows.
But, on the whole, still quite enjoyable! Just right for those times you want to just kind of sit back, take in something relaxing, chill out a bit. Walk around some planets, take some photos of wierd creatures, shoot laser beams at rocks.
I don't know why, but I sort of have this experience with elite dangerous too where like I just get so much anxiety flying through space. I think it's because I find it hard to orient myself wherever I am and I'm very intimidated by coming out of hyper drive and just seeing a giant planet there. I know I'm not gonna crash but I still feel that anxiey of "oh god I'm gonna crash!" This is actually pretty accurate. If proteus also had some light combat and mining elements.
Plus, a lot of fuel scooping helped. Get close! Not too close! Not too long! No no, closer! Oh shit overheating! Hard comparison, and I don't think it's a fair one. ED is a far more mature game, developed by a much larger team, for a longer period. They're both similar at their base(enormous game universe, exploration, trading, spaceflight, etc) but they've got a very different focus - NMS, space is a place you travel through to get between the planets you visit, in Elite, Planets are places you go that are in the space you travel in, if that makes sense.
Plus, in terms of gameplay - NMS is a first-person walking-around-looking-around game with spaceflight, and ED is a straight up Space sim, so they've got very different styles to consider. Even the Planet-bound SRV is much more "piloting a ship with wheels" than "walking around."
A lot of ED's underlying systems are much more polished and developed - but again, more mature game, with far more time to polish all that stuff, NMS is barely out a week, if that.
If I had to boil it down to a line, I'd say that Elite is 90% of the game NMS aspires to be, and NMS is basically a stand-alone demo for the features Elite aspires to include eventually.
From what I'm seeing in No Man's Sky, well, none of that is really part of it? It's just a lot of planets? Meh. I was assuming it would at least have, if not accurately scaled at least somewhat accurate looking solar systems where each planet has a stellar host or two you can visit, and maybe some gas giants and other cool stuff you can go visit. I'd love to skim a gas giant for resources or hang out on a moon orbiting a big ass planet with rings and shit. But from watching about 10 minutes of gameplay in NMS I don't think what's actually in the game is what I'm after.
Actually, tonight's Steven Universe episode is kindof a perfectly timed commentary on NMS.
Tangentially, in ED you can fuel scoop without moving, if you want to. I.e. park your ship right inside the fuel scoop zone and stop. No heats. I still like flying around because I'm piloting a spaceship dammit, not trying to minmax my risk per exploration point or something.
My own impressions, I find it relaxing. It reminds me of the planetary exploration in the first Mass Effect, only with proper scale. My laptop has a shitty video card from 2011, so it runs poorly, but it's made me want to rebuild my desktop into something that can play modern games.
I didn't have high expectations for the game, but then I never got into Minecraft. So it's sort of scratching that itch for me.