No Man's Sky is a highly ambitious and unique game, whose particular claim to fame is a titanically huge universe – quintillions of planets to explore, generated procedurally in a manner that ensures that every planet will be different and that individual players will be discovering things unique to their own personal interaction with the game.
I have something of an advantage in approaching the game for review: I heard very little other than this about the game, and so I had relatively little preconception about it. My expectations were that it would be big, that it would be mysterious, and that was pretty much it.
So far, No Man's Sky has delivered and then some on these simple expectations. To an extent, I've still been surprised; given that it was known that you would start on your own world and begin exploring from there, I'd assumed some sort of scenario where you were the first, or one of the first, starship travelers from your own planet, and you would have that homeworld as a base from which to explore.
Instead, No Man's Sky starts you out in media res – you effectively awaken on an alien world with a crashed starship you have to figure out how to repair. There are no other humans (or whatever race you are supposed to be; I assume human because, well, that's what I am) to be seen on your starter world, and in fact there's no guarantee that you can survive without protection on your starter world. Mine was pretty damn cold, ranging from about -40C (or F, -40 being identical in both scales) in the daytime down to -90C at night.
However, all is not utterly bleak. You start with an exosuit capable of protecting you, and of including other capabilities such as a scanning visor, and a multitool that will serve as both a mining and repair device and as a weapon. The combination allows you to search out the materials you need to repair your vessel and refuel it and your various energy-hungry devices.
The first thing that struck me about No Man's Sky – after the fact that it has one of the longest, if very pretty, "wait while I prepare to actually let you play the game" screens – was that it was beautiful. So far all of the planets I have visited, from iceworlds to fiery hells and even tropical paradises, have had various sights that made me just pause and admire them. The fact that I am the first person in the world – even including the game designers – to see these worlds certainly adds a little cherry on top.
The second was "boy, your tutorial's a minimalist bastard". Admittedly, in a game of this nature, you do want to avoid too much handholding, but there were a few times I had to stop and do a quick web search to figure out what I was supposed to do.
As exploration and discovery are the primary theme/focus of No Man's Sky, it's gratifying to find that your discoveries earn you in-game money or "units" to purchase things from various traders; at first I thought the only way to earn money was by selling stuff I mined, and given the restrictions on storage (see later) this was something of a pain in the butt.
When No Man's Sky tells you that each planet is Very Very Big, they are not kidding. You have a spaceship that can operate as an aircraft, with a fairly high top atmospheric speed. Despite this, it is not infrequent that I found there were destinations on the planet that were more easily reached by leaving the planet and taking what amounted to a sub-orbital hop across the planet, cutting transit times of half an hour or more at maximum atmospheric speed to minutes.
Terrain on the worlds varies noticeably even on a given planet, let alone between different planets. Similarly the various creatures and plants come in many varieties – though it's clear that to some extent they are being constructed from a relatively small number of components.
The major limitation a player encounters is that there are only so many slots available on one's ship (about 15), exosuit, and multitool. As the slots on the ship and suit are used both for systems/enhancements and for cargo, this means that there's a lot of competition for those slots – especially as a given slot can only have one thing, or one type of thing (i.e., iron, carbon, etc.) in it and you often need multiple different materials and items to make or repair various systems.
Exploration doesn't just allow you to find and harvest/mine materials you need, however. It also gives you the opportunity to discover new plants and animals and claim them as your personal discoveries, and to find alien installations. Some of these are ancient relics which may give you unique information or tips that I presume help you on your way along the main plot. Others are operating installations for various types of creatures that you can slowly learn to communicate and trade with.
No Man's Sky is not a safe world. Not only can you freeze or boil to death if you don't watch out for your exosuit's condition, but also you can discover lifeforms that are very hostile indeed. Fortunately, death is not permanent. You'll recover at your last save point and, if you go visit your new grave, you'll be able to grab back the stuff you lost when killed.
Nonetheless, death is something you want to avoid. It's a pain in the butt, especially if it happens when you haven't saved in a while! I admit to being not very good in the combat area; I'm not sure I've even managed to kill any of the animals that have come after me, and I'm really leery of the first time that I encounter hostile aliens. I suspect "death" will happen swiftly.
I haven't traveled very far down the plot path; the fact is that you can spend many hours just exploring even one planet, let alone several – and solar systems may have several planets each worth exploring.
I would hope, of course, that more interaction with NPCs, if not with other players, becomes feasible eventually; something like that makes the universe feel more "alive".
If I have one current gripe, it's probably to do with the limited slots. When you need sometimes three or four different materials to repair or manufacture some vital device, and you may have to repair or manufacture several, and you will also have to keep everything charged and running, the limited number of slots really becomes a pain. It is such a pain in the butt, in fact, that I have several times passed up on salvaging another ship because it simply isn't worth the effort unless it had something truly astonishing to offer (such as a new and really effective technology, or three or more extra slots over my current ship).
It would help if one could transfer systems, as well as materials, from ship to ship. Thus, if I find a derelict vessel whose FTL drive is damaged, I could transfer my working FTL drive to that vessel in order to get it running and make it worth salvaging.
Still, at the moment these are minor gripes. It's a beautiful, gigantic game with a lot of fun things to see and do, and we'll see if it can keep my attention for another few months!
You will find many tutorials online, but your comment about passing up ships made me say this.
Don’t pass them up. I did too until a friend clued me in. The game will only provide wrecked ships with one more slot than the one you already have. Or less slots, don’t take those obviously.
So the only way to get ahead with wrecked ships is to take that one slot upgrade, fix it up a little and repeat.
You can disassemble components to get rare stuff from your old ship before you switch. And don’t waste warp cores, only load one when you want to jump.
Well, bugger. I was hoping that there was at least some random variation in how many slots were available that would make it possible to encounter two or three extra slot ships.
Breaking down the components is going to be marginally useful, but given how few storage slots you’re going to have, only marginally.