So after long last No Man's Sky has finally released. I personally am not too excited for it and will probably skip it. I am however very curious on what everyone thinks of the game now that it is available to the public. So what are your guy's early impressions so far?

Not my opinion because I'll probably not play this, but average user reviews on Metacritic are currently exactly at 5.0/10.

@beachthunder: With the super defense force and the angry mob armed with pitchforks this game has produced, it's going to be a while before you can really trust some mass user aggregated score.

Well, everyone's views are forever going to be tinted by expectation, but it's at least indicative of how polarising the game is (it's also currently at 250 reviews). I suppose the real test is the PC version though.

@adequatelyprepared: correction: you can never trust user scores. people only vote either 10 or 0, and its usually driven by emotion rather than any real opinion of quality

@beachthunder: ah yes, and as per usual metacritc's user scores are very reliable.

Here's a nice one:

"Nu-Male's Sky is the perfect game for Reddit/Bernie supporters, which means it's a bad game for everyone else. By all means, if you have a beard, thick-rim glasses, and love being cucked, then this game is for you."

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this person actually played the game.

All I can say is that I watched the quick look and my already low enthousiasme for the game has hit rock bottom. I would never spend full price for something like this. Maybe I will try it when it's in the bargain bin.

@beachthunder: Do you think Metacritic user reviews actually mean anything? I've always just treated them as white noise.

It does this thing that I absolutely hate in games where objects clip into the game world in a really archaic and ugly way. Only watched the Quick Look but man I dunno. I also opened up several YouTube streams and for such wild variety, it all kind of looked very similar. Even the caves looked similar in all streams I've seen. I think this is going to be a pass on my end. Mankind Divided is out in two weeks and I have Grow Up on pre-order for next week so I'm good for now. Maybe I'll pick this up sometime in the future on a sale when they've added a whole bunch of features to it which make the whole gameplay loop a bit more interesting.

Watching the quick look I went from not super excited to pretty damn excited. Although I totally would understand if the general public weren't super hot on it since most people dont like these super open ended games that require one to sort of make there own fun.

@ashandes: Not as specific individual reviews, but it usually gives a general ballpark of public opinion.

It looks fine to me, but it's definitely not a buy for now.

Metacritic user scores don't really become useful until some time has passed and you start to get input from people who have played the game enough to form an opinion, rather than people just posting memes.

Personally, anything I've seen so far hasn't yet cleared up my concerns with the game, it just doesn't seem that fun. The joy of exploration comes from the possibility of finding something unexpected, but randomly generated world is essentially completely unexpected, hence nothing really stands out. As a practical example, you have a farm with 1000 chickens, they're normal earth chickens and you have expectation of what they look like. But if one chicken turns out to have blue feathers, that's a cool discovery. However, if chicken feather color was completely random, a "blue chicken" wouldn't really be unexpected and therefore not as interesting.

@beachthunder: Naw it really isn't, it's the general reflection of reddit users usually

I picked it up because Sean Murray is the realest dude and crybabies tears are delicious.

It's a ridiculously ambitious game made by a super small indie team. My priority is to support projects like that, despite their flaws.

That said, I only had a chance to play for about ten minutes last night before I went to bed and barely scratched the surface. It's pretty and relaxing so far.

Got up at midnight to play it when it unlocked, been loving it. The planets have a wide range of "oh this desolate rock sucks" and "wow this planet is pretty and full of life". The space controls are super simple, which is what I wanted (couldn't do Elite), the music is fantastic, and the scale is anxiety inducing. When I first opened the galactic map I kinda just sat there for a few minutes feeling...weird.

It's such a chill exploration game. It's pretty much gonna be my "minecraft" in that I'll always be able to come back and mess around for whatever length of time I have and be happy.

I've taken a peek at a few YouTube videos and streams. To be honest, the game seems to be pretty much what I expected. I'm in no hurry to start playing it, I just started slogging through Metro 2033 Redux yesterday and already have Doom installed on my PC waiting for a new GPU.

But for around 40 bucks towards the end of the year? Yeah, why not.

I'll wait to see how the PC version looks. I cannot really tolerate how narrow the FOV is on PS4 currently.

Yeah, Metacritics scores aren't useful. Steam reviews are better because they show how long the person has actually played the game.

went from interested to meh after watching the QL and Bretts stream.

Think the metascore will sit at 82

I'm planted on the fence...I'll watch the QL and decide. I guess I could wait a little while then get it, but it would be nice to be listening to all the podcast chat about it having actually played the game myself.

About two hours in, mostly digging it. Wish you could adjust the controls a little, I keep clicking left stick to run and pressing up to pitch downward when flying. Otherwise, I'd never found the itch to play other games of this style, whether it be something as open as ARK or somewhat directed as Don't Starve. The concept is enough for me, and I can already tell I'll get at least several hours out of this as a vehicle to crush my podcast backlog. I also like that once you're in space you can technically be getting travel done while going to do something else if you'd like. I don't know what kind of legs the game has but I had enough simple fun trying to figure out where the elements I needed to fix my ship were while helping my girlfriend get ready for work.

Right now my only big issue with the game is that I want to just wander around the galaxy aimlessly but there are some unexpected critical path things. I declined this red orb that sounded like one of the three "story arcs" you can choose from in this game, not sure if I was supposed to see the other two at my initial crash zone. Got my ship up and into the solar system but I wanted to keep discovering locations on my base planet, only to realize that a lot of things require a key card I don't have in my inventory. I hit the pulse drive which really thrusts you (after about 45 seconds I was more than a half hour away from my starter planet at regular speed), got a little confused by the galaxy map and decided to check out the planet nearest me. Got distracted by a space station marker, spent ten minutes flying to it only to discover I needed that same damn keycard to open any doors once inside. Some other ships landed in the station but they were just decorative; I got some real butterflies when I thought I might randomly be running into a player considering everything they've said about not seeing other people haha.

So, yea, after I'm done typing this I suppose I'll get in my ship, activate the warp drive and visit another galaxy. Maybe then I can start freestyling. Ironically, I'm almost exclusively interested in games with scripted narratives or licensed sports games, and yet the one thing throwing me off with this game so far is how much I've seemed to be getting ahead of myself in just wanting to GO and DO.

edit: lastly, I understand why they couldn't use Latin, or English, for their name generator algorithm but man are the original names for almost everything total gibberish and a little distracting. I've been keeping the names for the plants and rocks but changing names for animals and plants almost immediately.

I was hyped, probably too hyped. The thing is, because there was little to no information about exactly no man's sky is or isn't I sort of thought up my personal perfect idea of what a space exploration game should be. No man's sky could never be that game of course, but I couldn't help but feel a bit letdown after watching the QL and Jeff's stream.

I need to see more of it but right now I am leaning more towards not buying it.

After watching 4-5 hours of videos from both GB and other outlets, I've gotta say my hopes have been pretty much dashed. It's a beautiful world with some gorgeous environments. It's got a Spore-ish charm to it that not many games have. But beyond that, it's.. empty. The premise seems to be exploring planets for resources, going to space, then finding another planet for resources ad infinitum. There's no hook. I'm not gunning to save the world, there's nothing at stake and no one to save. It's an intergalactic walk through a nice looking park. It's relaxing and it might be enjoyable for an hour or so, but eventually you just want the ride to stop.

I suppose that's my biggest issue with it. It's a walking simulator that doesn't have the drive or appeal that's attached to the genre. There's combat, sure and funny looking aliens. But what do you do?

Played for 4 hours. No idea if its any good or not.

I just ordered it for PC. I'm a fan of exploring and minecrafty type survival (and space!), so this is definitely in my wheelhouse. Both House of the Dying Sun and Elite Dangerous have really cool ideas that I gravitate towards, but I think I will get more enjoyment out of space hobo'ing it in NMS. But I can easily see how that's not for everyone. I'm the kind of guy who just wandered around Azeroth in vanilla WoW, just because it was pretty.

Yes. I've watched the entire QL and watched some streams and I already feel burned out on the way everything looks and the tedium of some of the survival-inspired mechanics. I'm sure there's a neat game hidden in there, but I don't have it in me to slog through however many hours it takes to get there.

Haven't played it but it looks like something I would get bored with after an hour.

Best purchasing logic I've ever heard.

@rvone: I don't know man, that is the game and you either love it or you don't. Some people love it, some people play Day Z until the cows come home, others are still doing daily runs of Spelunky or Don't Starve or most recently The Flame and the Flood. Awesome, nearly endless gameplay for people who love that stuff, but for those that don't boy is it a downer. It was a wonderful dream anyway, but I guess in the end I dreamed it all up myself.

Part of me really wants to get the game if even for a moment it could give the feeling that is appropriate to standing on an alien shoreline looking out across an alien ocean while the sky stretches on infinitely above.

Then I remember that Deus Ex is coming out this month, and that my situation is not one of money, but rather of how much time I actually have to dump into games in between work, study and exercise. Might make for a good holiday game.

Very addictive if you're a fan of space ex genres and the presentation is beautiful. I could see it getting repetitive but I really like it so far. I even overslept cause i was up all night poking at systems

I seem to be in the minority here, but the Quick Look and Jeff's live stream have actually re-ignited my interest in this game. I even went ahead and purchased it on the back of them.

Played for a couple hours and have loved it so far. Still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. It's odd though I'm noticing a lot of people saying they saw an atlas orb that offered to guide them at the very beginning and I never saw that, wondering if that's randomized or I just missed it somehow.

I had zero expectations or hype for this game and after watching the quicklook I think it looks fantastic. I went ahead and bought it I just need to wait until midnight for it to unlock in the UK.

For all the bad reviews, just imagine how you're gonna review Proteus or Jazzpunk, probably 0/10 I guess.

I will admit I'm a bit scared to be bored. It just doesn't look like there's anything to it except for mining x amount of y, moving on and mining x2 amount of y2. Then again, hopefully the numbers do keep going up.
I probably am going to buy it though. Graphically it just looks so goddamn amazing (and then I'm talking style, the actual textures and poly's look quite meh tbh) and I kinda like the idea of a relaxing journey. I also admit that I'd rather buy it sooner than later, just cause I am expecting the community aspect to be fun. I just wished they hadn't wetted themselves over the 18 quintillion so much, just made in 18 million so that in stead of seeing no one ever, you'd see someone once a week. That's still be amazeballs and not annoy those who are looking for a solitary experience.

Was waiting for reviews to come through. Watched the Quick Look and suddenly had that feeling of 'I want to be the one playing this. Pass me the controller'. I want to be flying around and checking out planets.

The huge negativity and collective desire to see this game fail has been kinda sad to see.

@paulmako said:

Yeah, seems like everyone is coming out of the woodwork to say this game is outright bad. I don't really think that's possible for a passion project like this, it's probably just not what people were hoping for is all.

I am about 4 hours in and I love it so far. I am so glad. I bought into the hyped so I figured I was going to be let down. Right now I have been just going back and forth between 2 different planets and a space station because I keep on finding free stuff in abandoned settlements. It is a little annoying how big my bag is right now, but I guess I just need to upgrade. I think I might need to find a better space station. Need to take a break.

@paulmako: Same reaction here. Can't wait till Friday.

Also, I think that the vagueness of how this game was portrayed by the developers really hurt it. So many people are only just now realizing what it is that you get up to in it (even though that info was out there, you just had to look). And that is on the devs, because if you are tight-lipped about a game as big as this people are bound to throw some expectations onto it that will be dashed once the curtain is lifted.

For my part, this game is exactly what I expected and wanted it to be, and that's great because from the looks of it they'll only be adding more content. So from here on out it's all just icing. Presuming the PC version is up to snuff.

I was hoping to get it through gamefly, but it doesn't seem like it'll be shipping near release. Kinda bummed because after watching the quick look it seems cool as hell.

I got real chills down my spine with the first launch into space. Halfway through I 180'd the ship and put it in reverse as i was leaving the atmopshere just to watch the planet get smaller, then stalled it and sat there in low orbit and watched the sunrise over my starting snow planet. Just sat there. For half an hour.

I'm sure the 'gameplay loop' will be whatevs and has been so far, but for that experience alone it was worth the $60. Savour that first launch.

I've been totally engrossed with it. Lots of people will bounce off this game's fundamental loop, but there is a certain breed of person out there who will fall deeply into this game's infinite embrace.

I feel like, of the decisions made in the final vision of this game, the inventory management is the only obvious swing-and-miss.

It is what I expected it to be and thus I'm have a great time just chillin' out in space.

With a game like this I would expect a million patched and additions down the road. Maybe a good idea to pick it up in a year when it's half price and twice the content.

i always felt a bit of disconnect that you're supposedly discovering worlds for the first time that already have procedural gobbledygook names for them and an established omnipresent police force.

honestly though read the (new) impressions on kotaku and while there's a lot of resource hunting seemed like there was also a lot of mystery and weird discoveries which seemed cool, and also the presence of intelligent aliens is more prevalent than i first thought. i'll watch the quick look but it only seems a matter of when and not if i get this game.

I might be reading these comments wrong, but I feel that it`s kind of rude to say that "if you don`t agree with me you`re a hater". People have different opinions, different expectations and different likes and dislikes. If you are just interested in exploring space, then this game seems like it could be cool. Otherwise the survival/crafting parts of the game seem pretty thin. I have no interest in survival games anyway, but it seems like there are a bunch of 20$ games on steam that to the survival part a lot better (to me at least). For a 60$ game the mechanics just seem kind of slight.

Again, for some people this game is going to be awesome, but a lot of people also have legitimate reasons to dislike it other than "haters gonna hate".

The Quick Look and especially Austin's piece on Vice have gotten me re-excited about the game in a big way.

I never expected the game to be more than a cool, procedurally generated exploration game, and that seems to be exactly what it is. I'm excited to try to pick apart how the procedurally generated planets and soundtrack work, too.

Having only played for < 5 hours, I have already seen and interacted with a couple of discrete alien cultures and races. Two opposing cultures' capital ships were volleying death rays at each other above the atmosphere of my starting planet.