Now I guess I’m not really getting into No Man’s Sky completely blind, as you’d be hard pressed to not have heard quite a bit about the game since its fateful launch last year. The thought of a single player space sim where you can fly from planet to space to another planet and collect resources and what have you sounds pretty cool to me, but from the negative press I gathered that there might not be enough meat on that bone for me to bite at the asking price of $60. Now that the game has had several large updates, the most recent which has added more story content, I decided to pick up the game finally. It didn’t hurt that it was 60% off also.

I lightly browsed through some reactions about the update and most of them ranged from “they added a bunch of stuff, people should check it out now” to “hey they changed something, fuck this”. I figured I’d give my initial impression as someone who is checking out the game for the first time, because that may be a bit more helpful for those who are wondering if they should also finally jump in.

Starting the game, I chose the normal mode and landed on my planet. I remember watching a demo on Colbert where he would name every planet he landed on and every living thing, but when I jumped in everything had a seemingly randomly generated name. No big deal really, but it’s the first thing I noticed. Beyond that, I decided to figure out the UI and controls. As a new player, I didn’t have too much trouble getting acquainted, but things such as clicking on a box and needed to remove rust from it was a bit troublesome. For one, I just didn’t know what they wanted me to do at first, and secondly, I had to remember the different button assignments for selecting/transferring to inventory/canceling/etc.

There was a decent amount of life on the planet I started on, and I was thinking in the back of my head that I’d explore a large chunk of it. As it turns out, the game had other ideas. I mean, I probably could have explored all of the planet before leaving it I really wanted to, but the path of least resistance was to leave a bit prematurely for my tastes. This is because you are fairly limited in how far you can venture from your space ship at first. If you don’t happen to have the right resources around to harvest, you’ll find yourself running out of suit power and the like. I didn’t really want to wrestle with that for too long so I hurried my way off my starting planet. I was also fairly eager to follow the storyline. I figured I’d follow the story until I had a few upgrades and felt sturdier, then I could venture off onto my own for a while.

The visuals in the game didn’t astound me when I looked at things up close. (For the record, I’m playing at 1440p with every relevant setting maxed.) The game does make you stop and just stare at the scenery sometimes though, because it’s the vistas and ever changing back drops that do absolutely look great (I’ve included a few throughout this article). As I continued my journey, I found that the game had more interaction that I had anticipated. Even though the planets themselves felt very uninhabited and sparse of intelligent life, I found myself talking with NPCs fairly frequently. The game has a great atmosphere, and the dialogue with the NPCs reinforces that immersion in a great way. Even though you barely know what most of the NPCs are saying, the dialogue still paints a picture that makes the universe seem more interesting. An example would be that sometimes when you interact with an alien NPC, based upon the interaction, the dialogue will tell you that they are emitting a scent that can either smell good and make your character feel happy, or vice versa.

This also ties into something that I found lacking in the game though. The game will paint a great visual picture for you in text about what is happening right in front of you, but you won’t actually see it in front of you. One time I found an alien and he was described as being bloody and pretty ragged looking or something to that effect. When I inspected his character model though, nothing about the description was represented for me in actual pixels. I decided to continue to follow the story missions because I didn’t feel like my character had much stronger than he was when I started. I’m sure I could look up a guide for how to pimp myself out quickly, but I’d rather just go through the game normally. I did find a suit upgrade or two randomly on planets, but it was always seemingly random. I was kind of disappointed in that, since I’m not a huge fan of managing suit resources to explore planets thoroughly looking for more upgrades. I also wished that there was some sort of objective based system that I could follow to find further enhancements. Then I would have an alternative to the story missions that I could dip into when I felt like it. As of this writing though, (I’ve got about 15 hours played so far) the suit enhancements seem entirely random still.

The story definitely had me going places and really pushed me to keep jumping to new systems, which I found odd since you could really spend a long time in one system if you wanted, but it would keep reminding me that I should jump to a new one before I even explored all the planets in my current one. With the story, I feel like it walks on a really thin line. The messages you receive through the storyline missions are very vague. On one side, this could draw you in and make you really curious about what is going on behind the scenes and about the characters involved. On the other side, it could come across as just being a very flimsy story that lacks any actual substance and is just being vague because it is doing the bare necessity for stringing you along. I wish it was the former, and maybe it is and I just don’t know it yet, but it currently very much feels like the latter.

To be a bit more positive though, my favorite part of the game is definitely the flying. I thought it’d be one of those things where I’d end up saying to myself, “well you technically can fly from one planet to the other, but not really”, and there’d be some shortcuts or trade-offs the game would make that would take something out of that experience, but no, it totally lets you just fly wherever you’d like. Well, within reason at least. You need to warp to new systems, but space in reality is pretty big, so it’s understandable. But being able to nimbly fly around a planet to flying into space towards another world I see and then entering that new atmosphere and making a dramatic landing on the new world is pretty damn cool. The landing is a little hand-holdy since you just hit a button and it does it for you, but it helps to make the experience fluid and fun.

The fighting is something that grew on me. At first I thought it was cool that I could get into a dogfight with other ships and I randomly started a fight with some ships that were flying overhead. About 45 seconds later my ship was blown up and I found myself looking for my corpse to retrieve my goods in shame. Pirates randomly come at you and they also kicked my ass and killed me. I figured fighting just isn’t possible until you get an actually fighter type space ship, but then I took on a pirate in my shitty cargo ship and actually managed to blow him up as I was left with just a sliver of health. It was a great moment, and I totally look forward to trying out more fights after I get a sturdier ship. Speaking of which, I was happy to see that there were several methods to upgrade your ship. I found two crashed ships and exchanged mine for them both times, leaving me with just a slight upgrade each time. You can also talk to other people whose ships are parked and buy theirs, although I’ve yet to try that since my funds are a bit lacking.

I’m really not sure how much deeper the game will get and how much playtime I can squeeze out of it. I feel like the gameplay loop reveals itself fairly early and the story isn’t striking me with a lot of confidence about it opening up more later on. I get the sense it’ll be more likely to just fizzle out eventually. With that said, with the 15 hours I’ve played so far I’d say it’s quite worth the 25 or so dollars I spent on it. People are right when they say that it’s a game you can relax and enjoy. Even though the gameplay seems a bit thin, I always find myself playing for several hours at a time, because the universe is a joy to be in. In summary, I’d say that the game exceeded my expectations when it comes to actually being able to move about and be in this universe in a fun and seamless way. The story content has underwhelmed me a bit, but I hope it presents more substance later on. I ended up on a large freighter ship recently and one of the NPCs mentioned something about being able to buy it and have my own crew and keep ships there.

For a new player, I think that’s plenty carrot to keep me going until they put new content in. And even if I get all the upgrades available, I’m pretty sure I’ll find myself coming back to the game just to explore around and see new vistas and just spend time in it, so it has that value. I haven’t bothered with the multiplayer aspect at all since it seems pretty limited. Also, a big part of the relaxation factor that the game provides is because you are wandering this huge universe by yourself. I’ll continue to do just that, and I’d definitely recommend anyone who hasn’t bothered with the game to give it a shot if they enjoy open world single player experiences as well.