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We Got No Man’s Sky and…

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Graev and I picked up No Man's Sky yesterday. I was completely against getting the game. I had no plans to get it because of all the bad things I'd heard over the last year. Graev called me up randomly and said, "I got No Man's Sky on sale for $29. You should get it too!" Since Graev and I really enjoy playing together, and hadn't had a game to play together in a while, I thought it was worth the risk.

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You know what? No Man's Sky is actually a lot of fun.

We're a little over 2 hours into the game. Let me tell you a little bit about our adventure so far and some of the things we've seen and done.

We started off on a snowy planet with a damaged ship and very loose communications from some unknown entity to search for a way to repair it. When I say "we" I do mean we quite literally started within a 2 minute run of each other. The in-game interface facilitated our joining with ease.

Starting off you get a tool that extracts resources from various nodes. It's like a laser beam thing. We gathered ores and carbons, hydrogens, and other various materials to construct components needed to repair our ships.

Along the way we had to try and survive the elements. On this cold planet it was easy to drain our life support from traveling too much or allowing ourselves to get too cold and drain the protection in our suits from the cold.

Once we finally repaired our ships we launched them! Flying out of the atmosphere and engaging thruster to go faster, then engaging the hyperdrive felt really freaking cool.

On our way to the next planet we needed to find for the initial story, we stopped off at a space station. Landing was really cool because we got to watch each other not only fly up to the thing but also dock. 

After leaving the space station (where we altered our appearances to our liking), we flew to the next planet and began to progress through gaining access to things like blueprint analyzers (to unlock new tech) and refineries to process our materials. 

This cool thing is like a Stargate! We can connect it to a space station or to another gate and then teleport between them. We haven't built a second one yet, but when we do I'm excited to see how it works.

We ended our evening by building a small shelter to survive the firestorms on this planet. This new planet really taxes the life support when you move due to heat exhaustion. 

I'm very pleasantly surprised by how flawless this has been to play together. I feel like we have a universe to explore, and for the foreseeable future a plethora of tools, machines, and gadgets to explore. This is exactly the type of game we wanted to play together. 

If you previously judged No Man's Sky without playing it -- like me -- and if this description of our evening has piqued your curiosity at all, I recommend you check it out. You might just find you enjoy it a lot like we do!

  • I don’t know man, 2 hours playtime is way too short to judge anything no man sky related. You literally haven’t had the time to come across any of the negatives of the game. And a game has to be pretty dogshite to not be able to stay interesting for at least 2 hours.

    • I wouldn’t say it’s too short to judge ‘anything’. From what I read about the original release of NMS, what I experienced in the first 2 hours seems to be quite a fix.

      The game may very well be a short-lived adventure, but that’s also why I’m trying to narrate the experience for you. That way if we reach 4 hours and hate it, the entire experience was documented.

  • I played it at launch, and recently started playing it again as well. It is a completely different game from what it was at launch. They have had massive updated since then (the most recent being the one in July which allows true multiplayer and a bunch of stuff).

    When it came out there was no base building, no stargates, no multiplayer. Basically just flying around, gathering materials in a much less robust crafting system that didn’t need any kind of refineries or anything. And doing the story. That was it. No freighters, no frigate missions, no bases, nothing.

    Anyone who didn’t return it should definitely give it another chance. It’s actually a decent game now.

    • Sounds like it was the complete opposite of what it is now. That’s great for those playing now! Glad I held out.

  • I also have just returned to NMS and have been enjoying it much more than before. It still has the neverending treadmill feel about it but the addition of base building really helps me feel more invested. I have built one small base from which to start exploring but will wait for a really good system and planet before I truly lay down roots and go all in on a base.

    One thing I have noticed and do not care for is the way scanning is working now. Previously I was able to locate POI from the ground with my scanner and jump in a ship and fly to them but for some reason when I find a POI now and get in my ship they are not visible… really makes game play tough.

    • We’ve been using the visor to mark POIs or things we want to explore, then we either run or hop into our ship to go to one at a time. The scan seems meant for more of a local on-foot in the moment type reveal.

  • I played after launch for about 30 hours before I got bored. A friend said that I needed to check out the Next update. Seems a lot better so far. If only those darn Sentinels would get off me arse.