No Man's Sky is currently on sale over on PSN. It's $24, and I purchased it hoping that, at a lower entry-point, I could look at it with a little less cynicism. I get all the updates since its launch, and I'm sure they improved quite a lot of issues.

First of all, I think the game looks great, and the feeling of adventure and exploration is the games best asset. I started in a ravine on a lush planet and after exploring around my ship, started climbing out of the ravine to explore the world in its entirety.

Holy shit guys. When you first get that glimpse of the planet you're on, and see the inhabitants, the flora -- everything is exciting. I don't know if I have had that "wow" feeling since exiting the vault in Fallout 3. Just an amazing feeling of depth.

Then the game play hits you like a brick wall. The first quest you get is "fix your spaceship" and to do so, you'll be running around this planet looking for resources. I may have missed something, but I had to trek so far away from my ship to find the required resources that I had gotten completely lost. It took me like 20 minutes to return to my ship, and THAT'S where you realize how boring planets really are.

Everything starts feeling the same. The structures, creatures, minerals, plants. There's a LOT to see around you but very little of it is actually interesting. You can scan to your hearts content but what is the point? 200 "credits" is nothing in the grand scheme of things and finding something "first" is hardly special this far into the game's launch (was it ever?)

Fixing the ship and flying to another planet is the only other thing this game has going for it. The travel between planets is exciting, and I haven't really had that experience in any other game.

Then you land on another planet, and do exactly what you did on the last one. Explore, get bored, find resources, say "oh that's a nice creature variation" and then fly off.

Is this game worth $24? Sure, probably. I mean I'm not hating the game, it has its moments and boy is it just the most relaxing experience ever, but the gameplay is so mind-numbing and tedious.

How about you duders, what did you ultimately think?

I wasn't disappointed when I bought it at launch. Glad Hello did some more work on it.

The atmosphere is top notch.

24 bucks seems like a more then fine price to pay. I payed full price and had quite a few hours of enjoyment, even if I was mostly disappointed in the end. I still really wanna like the game and plan to go back after another two major content updates, then start fresh and hope it changes the feel of the game from the get go. But I'm not sure if how I'd want them to change it will/can actually be changed, since like you said, boy those planets are BORING as soon as you understand the lack of depth past the surface area.

We'll see how they end up supporting it! But none the less, 24 bucks seems like a fine price to see the game. I probably wouldn't go higher though.

I'd say $20 is the sweet spot of the amount of money I'd be comfortable with paying for that game if I didn't already own it. But if it's something you want to play, you can easily get more than $24 worth of entertainment out of it before it gets stale (which it inevitably does)

I payed full price at launch, and for me it was worth it, while not being a perfect game. "Worth it" is of course wildly different for different people, both in terms of money ($24 for someone is their monthly allowance and for someone else it may be 10 minutes of work), and in terms of expectations on the game. But for me, $24 for NMS with all the improvement since launch is a great value proposition!

I agree. Even with the stuff they added, as a game the core gameplay is still so shallow that most people will be bored quite fast with it.

What if they added a Battlegrounds-like survive mode, but then solar system wide? ;)

$24 sure is better than $60 but as someone who got themselves a refund on Steam after a couple play sessions I would only pay $20 for it

Not for me, but this game was never something I cared about as someone who prefers quality over quantity. I look at the planets and see a bunch of bland assets tossed about with no care for design or aesthetic, which makes me not want to explore any of it, which kills the core of the game.

That cover art is super nice, though. I wish the game looked like that.

$20 still seems high for a very bland, hollow game... but it's better than the $60 I paid for it. :-/ I'm much more wary now whenever the game-press waxes philosophic about an indie game title.

*rereads original post* $24 you say? Nope. The game had 3.5 Gigabytes of art assets, and it showed. Land on planet, look around... all the planet will look the same as this spot you just landed on. There's no geographic variation, no different biomes, or any of that jazz. It's like landing in the Mojave Desert, going "oh, neat... I wonder what else is on this planet," and then finding out the WHOLE PLANET is one big Mojave Desert. So, you visit a bunch of space trailers, gather enough resources, and fly to the next world to be wowed for thirty seconds until you've seen it all. Rinse and repeat until you're burned out. Took me five hours.

On the plus side... the memes and internet scoffing were great.

I actually give it a hard pass now. Perhaps it's just me, but since the first major update (Foundation) when they change how their algorithm generates the galaxy, I've found it difficult to find specific resources or buildings I want.

The rate at which you can get new ships and especially multitools is slow. They severely reduced crashed ship spawns, multitool spawns, backpack upgrades, and sources of technology.

There's no structure or system to find something specific, you just have to wander and meander randomly. It really left me with a unsatisfied feeling every time I played it. I could set myself a goal to get or find something and feel as though I did not make any discernible progress towards it.

Maybe I'm just complaining now that they made their game harder, but I would say in some ways the update made their game feel worse than it did at launch.

I'd probably try it for 3 quid. Legit.

I paid $30 and resold it after two weeks (I almost never resell games, even the ones I don't like). The first 3 or 4 hours are great, and then... yeah. I tried so hard to like it, but I just couldn't. Doesn't help that I hate crafting games, so once the novelty of planet exploration died, my interest plummeted.

I bought it at launch and enjoyed it, stopped playing to let some patches get added and just haven't gone back to it yet. It wasn't what I was hoping for, but is still fun and worth 24 dollars.

Actually 3.5GB of art assets is a huge amount in capable hands. However, Sean Murray himself says that 300MB is all that went to what you see in the game.

(He says it somewhere after 13:03)

I think you can safely wait on this one for another year or two until it's $5.

You can buy many much better games with 24

Yeah it'll be 10 or less next fall.

I was very very disappointed in it, to the point I'm not sure I'd recommend someone play it even if it were free. It does the one thing a video game shouldn't do: be boring. The whole thing is a colossal waste of time.

Didn't they announce a plan to add a lot more content to the game? How far along are they with that? I feel like that would be an important factor in determining whether or not the value proposition is in your favor.

@charlie_victor_bravo: True, 3.5 GB can be a lot in capable hands. Based on all the in-game repetition though, I assumed they had a relatively small assortment of high-def textures that they repeated ad-nauseam. Hearing that only 300 MB of the game was textures is actually rather surprising. I guess they had a relatively small assortment of smaller file-size textures that were all very well done but just didn't exist in numbers large enough to stave off such said repetitiveness. *shrug*

Kudos to their small art team, but it doesn't really change my stance on the game overall. :-P

Edit addition: oh, as an addendum... I'd be careful trusting Sean Murray's word when it comes to anything related to No Man's Sky. I highly doubt we'll see proper factions or multiplayer any time soon, for instance. *drum roll* "Oversell and under-deliver," the maxim no rational businessperson would adhere to.

Knowing what the game is, that's the price I'm waiting for, provided that I'd be in the mood for aimless space exploration during the Steam summer sale.

(...Can someone just make a sequel to Freelancer already? Kickstarter to bring back Digital Anvil, maybe?)

Depends on whether the visuals and general ambience of a game matter to you more than horrible gameplay. Gunplay on planets: Horrible. Enemy AI: Horrible. Flight Mechanics: Hand-Holdy and bare bones. Space Combat: No sense of speed, feels like a turret sequence. Let's not forget the samey look/feel of new planets after a few hours. I've always been a gameplay over graphics guy, so imo No Man's Sky is a genuinely bad game.

I think I got the disc version at GameStop used for around 15 bucks. I would say that's the sweet spot. Played about 6 hours of it. Enjoyed what was there but there alhave been far too many games coming out to even considering making room for that one. I'll check in on it the next time I have time. On the plus side it's a great podcast game.

Same price on Humble Bundle store right now. I'm tempted. I could kind of go for a chill exploration game and having my expectations set low will surely help, right?

I've never really played a sandbox game and was also interested in trying out Subnautica, but spaceships interest me more than submarines. Does anyone want to make an argument for one over the other?

Since they are still updating it I would say yes. I bought it for $20 used and still havent played it yet. Probably will once NEXT comes out.

Still too much. I've mostly lost interest, but would probably pay $10 just out of curiosity.

No. I couldn't even enjoy the random space exploration parts cuz I kept running out of fuel and getting shot down by space pirates. Combat sucks ass, just flawed to hell

@sweetz: It is easily worth that.

I'm one of those weirdos who liked the launch version's vision of aimlessness and loneliness. So yeah.

It's worth $24 dollars at this point due to the added content. There hasn't been loads of extra content but it's fair to say that a game that was worth $20 on release is now worth $24.

Apparently their biggest update comes out soon. I'm interested in what that could be.

I was hugely disappointed in the game at release, but I still put dozens of hours into it.

I bought it for 30$ after playing The Witness, Volume and Until Dawn. I needed a game that would last me a lot of time and that I wouldn't despise by the end. I've now platinum'ed it after 130 hours of gameplay.

Absolutely. Unfortunately at launch I think a lot of peoples expectations were way overblown (not helped by Sony it as to be said). But in it's current state NMS is a fascinating experience like no other in my opinion. Yes it still as a few issues here and there but the developers have done a great job in updating it since launch and with the big summer update coming it's an easy recommendation for me.

I believe the NMS summer update will be free to existing owners so you'll still get it anyway.

Most definitely!

I bought it on the sale when the last big patch came out for $20. I "played" it for about 1.5 hours and then refunded it on Steam. There just isn't much enjoyable to do. I shot a robot and some rocks and plants. Then I flew around to check out some places in sandbox mode. The graphics are interesting, but the variety isn't there and there is much pop-in. Cool tech demo. I hope the coming update really ads some serious game play elements and some depth to the biological simulation.

As a follow up, I did buy the game and I'm getting around to playing it now. Put about 8 hours in it (and restarted once after about 2 hours in since I felt I made too many mistakes and wanted to start fresh), but I'm not sure I'm going to continue. I don't think I'm even close to getting to all the content they added post-release, which seems like late game stuff.

Two problems are killing the game for me:

1. The constant need to refill launch thrusters. For those who don't have the game, you need to gather a resource more or less to gas up your spaceship every 4 times you land and want to take off. So far this resource has been fairly plentiful, but it's still tedious because you need to constantly do it. It shouldn't cost anything to take off as it's severely limiting my desire to explore in a game that is almost entirely about exploration. I guess they did this to encourage walking around more instead of flying your ship everywhere, but it's a dumb choice in a game that's already seems like it's a huge grind without the need to gas up the spaceship every 4 stops. This, more than anything, is what will kill the game for me. However, I got the game for PC and I see there are mods to eliminate this, so I might keep playing if I can use one of those.

2. The lack of a "reliable" linear progression on ships/ship upgrades. For me, the carrot-on-stick that keeps me playing open world space games is upgrading my ship. That's pretty much *the* motivating factor in almost every sandbox space game I've played - being able to see and work towards getting the next best ship or gun. In NMS, there is no ship shop and the upgrade shop appears to be random. Ships are only obtained by finding random crashed ships or asking to buy random NPC ships that happen to land at a space station or trading post. Relying on a randomizer in order to have something to buy means I have nothing to "plan" for - no motive other than just earning more money towards the hope that RNG will deliver a ship I like.

Negative