No Man's Sky Disappointment

CritialGaming

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Well the first users are starting to get their opinions out about the now infamous No Man's Sky, and predictably, the results are very "meh". There is nothing obscenely wrong with the game, it's functional and has an interesting premise. However the game has somehow built such a huge tidal wave of hype, there was literally no way that people wouldn't realize the wave was littered with whale spunk.

The general consensus, seems to be that the game is repetitive, and while enormous, doesn't fill that huge space with anything of value. Within the first couple of hours you will have seen the gameplay loop that is supposed to fill your endless hours. Needless to say, this has left people bummed. It's basically a survival game, gathering resources and doing the same objectives over and over again with slightly different scenery.

Nothing is broken about the game, it all works, it just isn't as interesting as it was all made out to be.

So Escapists, what do you think? Have you seen the gameplay? Played the game? What do you think? Could No Man's sky ever have lived up to the hype train it rode in on?
 

freaper

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Apr 3, 2010
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It could never have lived up to the hype; procedural generation is by design repeatable and predictable, which means the core gameplay mechanic, i.e. exploration, will wear thin very quickly.
 

stroopwafel

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Jul 16, 2013
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Game never looked that good to me and I have always been surprised by the hype. Perhaps the 'novelty' of a procedurally generated universe made people's imaginations run wild? In any way this game could never deliver to such expectations. Just a mediocre game that can guise its blandness and boring gameplay loop by near infinitely mixing the same textures. Though I guess the game is still impressive on some technical level.
 

mad825

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Mar 28, 2010
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You know what, it kinda reminds me of the old old review...


I suppose the MMO aspect may make things a little better than it.
 

Einspanner

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stroopwafel said:
Game never looked that good to me and I have always been surprised by the hype. Perhaps the 'novelty' of a procedurally generated universe made people's imaginations run wild? In any way this game could never deliver to such expectations. Just a mediocre game that can guise its blandness and boring gameplay loop by near infinitely mixing the same textures. Though I guess the game is still impressive on some technical level.
The problem at the core, is that people are much better at noticing patterns and subtle variations on those patterns, than computers currently are at creating them. There is also the cold, empty space element, which seems... pointless. Pointless seems to epitomize the experience, and IMO that was clear over the last few month, becoming much MUCH clearer in the last few weeks.

Still, some people invest parts of themselves in these things, and lack the critical insight to undo that process.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Jun 5, 2013
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mad825 said:
You know what, it kinda reminds me of the old old review...


I suppose the MMO aspect may make things a little better than it.
I was about to say that! Looks an awful lot like Spore.
 

Neverhoodian

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Honestly, I think folks set their expectations too high. You'd think the gaming public would have caught on by now not to give in to the hype machine.

All I was hoping for was an aesthetically pleasing setting to pop in and explore for a bit after a long day's work. A bit of cosmic "what's over the next hill" to scratch that Star Trek itch. Based on what I've seen of the finished product, the game still looks poised to deliver for me.
 

DeadProxy

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I kept my expectations low and didn't follow any of the news for the game, so I think I entered in with pretty understandable expectations, and I think that the game is pretty decent. Playing on PS4 by the way.

I've only spent maybe 3 or 4 hours on it now, and haven't left my first planet yet, although I can. I was probably one of the unlucky ones that didn't start on a nice, warm planet, and instead was greeted with my ship in a hole in the middle of a cave system that I got lost in a bit while struggling with -50c temps. So my first little bit was spent running back to my ship every couple minutes to "warm up."

I like that I have a personal goal though, which is, "I want to know." I just want to explore and learn stuff, and I get that with the couple of alien artifact things and random computer terminals. Monoliths are cool. Had a weird thing were a monolith thing had a bird on it with it's head twisted speaking in ancient tongues, and I had the option to shoot it or not, and when I did, the monolith "rewarded" me. Cool stuff I say, reminds me of Mass Effect 1.

As for flaws, the early game resource limit is really rough to deal with, but I stumbled across some Drop pod type thing that upgraded my backpack, so that's helped slightly. There's also that "phase in" loading texture thing that I don't really like because it's very obvious and can really mess up how the surface looks when flying across the sky.
 

Laughing Man

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I watched Jim Sterlings Jimpression of the game, 22 minutes later I cancelled my pre order for the game. In those 22 minutes I got the basis of the game, I saw no progression between go here, mine resource, manage resource, craft, fly somewhere and trade resource, rinse and repeat but what convinced me to hold fire on this game was that during that 22 minutes at no point did it sound like Mr Sterling was actually having any fun. It just seemed more functional than actually fun.
 

09philj

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It's a very, perhaps overly, ambitious very niche game that has been inexplicably been marketed to a much larger audience. The question is whether it has enough to stand out within that niche.
 

pilouuuu

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Aug 18, 2009
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I think procedural generation can work very well when it's balanced with hand-made and scripted stuff. Developers interestingly enough still fail to figure that out.

Hopefully the game is still an interesting and fun enough experience, and future patches and additions make it even better.
 

totheendofsin

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Jul 31, 2009
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I'm actually really enjoying it, granted I was someone who was skeptical of the hype from day one. There was no possible way it could have lived up to the hype it got.

That said it is exactly what I was expecting, a space survival game.
 

Caedite Eos

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totheendofsin said:
I'm actually really enjoying it, granted I was someone who was skeptical of the hype from day one. There was no possible way it could have lived up to the hype it got.

That said it is exactly what I was expecting, a space survival game.
Is there any significant impediment to that survival, after the first hour say? Or is this like Rust, HZ1, and the rest of that type, but without other players to worry about?
 

totheendofsin

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Caedite Eos said:
totheendofsin said:
I'm actually really enjoying it, granted I was someone who was skeptical of the hype from day one. There was no possible way it could have lived up to the hype it got.

That said it is exactly what I was expecting, a space survival game.
Is there any significant impediment to that survival, after the first hour say? Or is this like Rust, HZ1, and the rest of that type, but without other players to worry about?
I think it depends on the planets you find, I haven't found any that I've had a hard time surviving on, but I imagine if I found a planet with large aggressive creatures that would make things more difficult I imagine
 

Fappy

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To be honest, I got major Spore vibes from the very beginning. Turns out my instincts were right.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Stop. Hyping. Just. Stop. It's the same old cycle. Press and public do the hype work, no matter what the dev says, then game comes out and the various publics find a place to rant and lament how their greatest dreams have not been fulfilled like they expected. I'm starting to think the mere activity of complaining is the only catharsis these people have, which is not the greatest trait to take from the British, that is only because we live in perpetual omnipresent misery. It's great for character building and art, if you like silver linings. Can we learn? To break this cycle?
 

CritialGaming

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Stop. Hyping. Just. Stop. It's the same old cycle. Press and public do the hype work, no matter what the dev says, then game comes out and the various publics find a place to rant and lament how their greatest dreams have not been fulfilled like they expected. I'm starting to think the mere activity of complaining is the only catharsis these people have, which is not the greatest trait to take from the British, that is only because we live in perpetual omnipresent misery. It's great for character building and art, if you like silver linings. Can we learn? To break this cycle?
The crazy shit is that people sent the devs death threats for delaying the release. The game was never ever gonna be as good as the hype made it out to be, and now people are probably going to rage that they didn't get the game that was hyped to them.

People are freaking dumb. This whole pre-order culture is a pile of farse and nothing ever changes about it. Developers continue to hype mediocre bullshit that generates a bunch of pre-orders only to disappoint people upon release.

Just stop pre-ordering people. Wait for shit to come out so you can at least see how it smells.
 

sXeth

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totheendofsin said:
Caedite Eos said:
totheendofsin said:
I'm actually really enjoying it, granted I was someone who was skeptical of the hype from day one. There was no possible way it could have lived up to the hype it got.

That said it is exactly what I was expecting, a space survival game.
Is there any significant impediment to that survival, after the first hour say? Or is this like Rust, HZ1, and the rest of that type, but without other players to worry about?
I think it depends on the planets you find, I haven't found any that I've had a hard time surviving on, but I imagine if I found a planet with large aggressive creatures that would make things more difficult I imagine

Are there aggressive creatures? I've run across six across 4 planets (only one of which was a group), and befriended 2, 2 just flew overhead, and another one just ran like crazy.

Sentinels on the other hand, just like to dive into your mining laser it seems, and are attracted to doors being opened with a tenacity to rival Destiny's aliens.

Also, it seems like its drastically in need of weather FX. I honestly can't see a difference between the ice planet or volcanic planet I was on, other then the lakes and the thermometer number.
 

CritialGaming

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mad825 said:
I suppose the MMO aspect may make things a little better than it.
There is no MMO aspect though, besides I guess people seeing what others have named stuff. The game would be way better if it was an actual MMO.
 

Poetic Nova

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Jan 24, 2012
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It is just another overhyped game. Although the overhyping is rather comign from the media rather than the devs.

Cant get into it myself, the FOV alone makes it unplayable.