It’s Lonely
Hello Games put together a truly beautiful game in No Man’s Sky. Sometimes, even technical masterpieces aren’t games that everyone should run out and play right away. There are certainly plenty of people who love this game, but there are plenty others who wish they had never wasted their time with it.
One of the big reasons certain players are going to want to avoid playing this game is because of how isolated you will be once you start spanning the universe. Destiny has likely ruined it for the rest of space battle and space exploration games that rely on large servers. You aren’t going to run across the millions of people who are playing this game while you travel.
There was even one story of two players who were on the same planet and in the same location, and they couldn’t see each other. There was a time Hello Games claimed No Man’s Sky was going to be a multiplayer game, but even then, warned it would be hard to see other players. The universe was just too big. Now that the game is out, Sean Murray and company have backtracked on claims No Man’s Sky has any multiplayer functionality at all.
Crafting Isn’t For Everyone
A very big part of what makes No Man’s Sky work is the ability for players to gather elements and craft their way off the planet, to better tools and suits and to their fortune. If you are not a fan of survival games that rely on building and crafting, then Hello Games’ latest is certainly not the title for you.
It’s almost as though the developers knew players were going to want to just fly back and forth through the universe and needed a way to slow them down. Without many other people to interact with, the only real way to make sure players aren’t just constantly landing, spending a few minutes on a planet and taking off, is to make it, so they have to gather things to keep their ship, suit, or tool fueled.
This has become the major point of the game, and that’s going to turn off people who are looking to have a bit more to do than find the right element at the right time. Instead of real action, players have to blast plants and rocks to collect these items. That gets pretty old after a while.
The Combat Is Unimpressive
This is yet another aspect where Destiny might have ruined things for No Man’s Sky. The two games have a few things in common, and Destiny has become the gold standard when it comes to space exploration and games that have tons of people going online. Where does Bungie win big in the comparison between the two? Combat.
While there are pirates that can pop up and try and raid your ship, and that gameplay’s decent, most of the combat No Man’s Sky players are going to find is against tiny floating drones on a planet’s surface. There isn’t a great deal of suspense when it comes to these battles. The drones will simply come up and attack you if they don’t like you gathering elements.
As a general rule, they aren’t particularly hard to fight off, and when you do lose, it’s more annoying than anything else. Clearly, the game’s developers wanted the focus to be something other than space battles, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have added something more in that area. It would almost certainly make No Man’s Sky more appealing to a wider audience. It doesn’t seem like it would have been a huge tweak to have an alien or two to fight off, rather than just learn their language.
The Alien Interactions Are Lacking
While players in No Man’s Sky fan feel quite alone a good portion of the time the characters aren’t ever completely alone in the universe. Every now and then you will run across one kind of alien or another. Some of the time these aliens will give you a special gift, or work out a trade with you (even if you haven’t figure out their language).
All of the time, the interactions leave quite a bit to be desired. It’s a bit like talking to a robot once you actually enter into a conversation with one. Almost exclusively, the aliens will sit or stand completely still while you cycle through the various choices for your “conversation.”
While the rest of the game seems to be pretty good about treading new ground and taking advantage of the power of the current generation of technology, these interactions are reminiscent of a much older computer game. Even if this was some kind of homage to older science fiction titles, it falls flat largely because it’s really the only interactions with anything you’ll have in the entire game.
Talking to a stock-still android isn’t remotely entertaining and is certainly a reason you might want to avoid No Man’s Sky altogether.
Doing Anything And Everything Takes Too Long
If you happen to be someone who can get impatient, this game is not a game you need to spend your time on. Traveling around the planets, even if you’re flying around in your ship, takes some time. It takes even more time if you first have to go around and gather up the elements in order to get your ship off the ground.
There is also the need to stop along the way to refuel your tool and your suit. All of this takes time. The map in No Man’s Sky is not your friend when traveling the surface. Yes, you can find your ship fairly easily, but if you want to go back to a particular spot, you’re going to have to stumble around looking for it.
Even in space, travel can take longer than seems reasonable for a game like this. It’s clear Hello Games was trying to give players a somewhat realistic feel of what it would be like to go from planet to planet and star system to star system. Engaging hyperdrive should then allow you to bypass that time. It can still take far too long to jump from one system to another and that can get very boring, especially if you don’t have a ton of time to sit down and play No Man’s Sky.
About the author
