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Arguably the most awaited game of summer ’16, No Man's Sky finally landed on our PCs and consoles this week. With its immense, unique worlds it brings to the table a new perspective to open-world games, game design… and to life itself.

The game's most likely feature to catch one’s attention is its immensity. This game is not merely open world but open universe. Boasting over 18 quintillion (1.8×10^19) life-sized planets teeming with their own fauna and flora, you can explore each and every one to your liking. Your only limiting factor is the range of the hyperspace jump engines of your current spacecraft and how much fuel the craft presently carries. No Man's Sky is so immense that Hello Games estimated that more than 99.9% of the planets would never be explored by players, The developers managed this feat by procedurally generating almost all elements of the game, allowing mathematical formula to create an exponential set of unique features rather than having the rather small developer team designing them individually. Following in the tracks of Minecraft, the game offers a paradigm shift regarding the possibilities in open-world games.

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However it wasn’t all roses for them. From the game’s secretive development debut, initial tension among the Hello Games team, losing most of their equipments in a flood, delaying the release date, death threats and day-one updates, they've had a lot to deal with. One might also wonder about the point in making a game so immense if all you'll experience is less than 1% of the whole game. But hey, it’s an indie game that offers an AAA experience. We have to appreciate that at the very least!

Moreover, their fundamentally different approach to game design challenges the conventional ways. “The physics of every other game—it’s faked,” the chief architect Sean Murray explained to The Atlantic. Their game on the other hand offers something else. Every star that you see in the sky is an actual place that you can go to and explore. And your exploration is even credited for being the first to discover a planet and other types of information. Within 24 hours of the game's official launch, Hello Games reported that more than 10 million distinct species were registered by players, exceeding the estimated 8.7 million species believed to exist on Earth. “It’s our universe, so we get to be Gods in a sense,” said Murray in the same article.

Speaking about Gods, over on YouTube Mike Rugnetta asks a simple yet pressing question: "If we are able to simulate universes of massive, life-like complexity within our universe, should we wonder or worry if our own is simulated?” No Man’s Sky might not emulate life as we know it but how far are we from creating such an emulation ourselves, how far are we from being our own Gods? Even prominent figures are leaning towards a simulated “reality”. Elon Musk recently fuelled this thought by stating that “the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions”. When confronted to the question, Sean Murray's answered that "even if it is a simulation, it’s a good simulation, so we shouldn’t question it.”

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So what do you all make of it? Should future open-world games be procedurally generated to allow for more randomness and exploration in games? How big is too big? And lastly, what does that signify about our own existence? Are we in a simulation or will we create one? Nevertheless, cogito ergo sum... right?

GBAtemp No Man's Sky Review

 

[Xzi]

Bought it on steam, saw it was 2.6GB, saw the reviews and refunded it immediately.

I know size isn't everything when it comes to gaming (and other things har har), but a file size that low is just fucking insulting. There is no way you can fit so many promises of a game so supposedly vast in such a small package. It is impossible. And it supposedly runs like crap too. I will just put this game on my shelf with rise of the robots and watchdogs and never bother playing it ever.

It does fit that vastness into 2.6GB. You could sink your entire life and never see every planet in it. That's probably it's greatest accomplishment, however, as it does indeed run like crap (even on a GTX 1070). I'll rebuy it once it's cheaper and has some patches out the door. Seems like fun if you're into exploration games, especially since you get a jetpack right off the bat.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

It does fit that vastness into 2.6GB. You could sink your entire life and never see every planet in it. That's probably it's greatest accomplishment, however, as it does indeed run like crap (even on a GTX 1070). I'll rebuy it once it's cheaper and has some patches out the door.

Have you personally tried it? I have a 1070 and I'm running max settings with absolutely no problems at all. What kind of CPU do you have?

 

[Xzi]

Have you personally tried it? I have a 1070 and I'm running max settings with absolutely no problems at all. What kind of CPU do you have?

Yeah it capped out at 30FPS even when I set it to 60, and often dipped to around 15. You're apparently one of the lucky ones, as reports of bad performance are everywhere. TotalBiscuit called it, "Arkham Knight level of bad." My CPU is an i5-4690K, not that it really matters, since I can max out other games at 4K resolution with no dips below 60FPS.

It was probably built with the PS4 as the native platform, so it's just a bad port that will take some time to fix.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

Yeah it capped out at 30FPS even when I set it to 60, and often dipped to around 15. You're apparently one of the lucky ones, as reports of bad performance are everywhere. TotalBiscuit called it, "Arkham Knight level of bad." My CPU is an i5-4690K, not that it really matters, since I can max out other games at 4K with no dips below 60FPS.

Ah, you're running it at 4k. I'm running 1080p so my performance isn't really relevant to you. Oh well.

 

[Xzi]

Ah, you're running it at 4k. I'm running 1080p so my performance isn't really relevant to you. Oh well.

I tried running it at different resolutions and I didn't find anything that was really acceptable performance-wise to me. 1080p doesn't work fullscreen.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

I tried running it at different resolutions and I didn't find anything that was really acceptable performance-wise to me. 1080p doesn't work fullscreen.

That's another problem I don't seem to have. I'm curious as to why you have worse performance than me, seeing as how we have the same video card and my CPU isn't significantly better than yours (6600k).

 

[Xzi]

That's another problem I don't seem to have. I'm curious as to why you have worse performance than me, seeing as how we have the same video card and my CPU isn't significantly better than yours (6600k).

1080p not wanting to fullscreen is because of my 4K TV, probably something I could find a solution to in Nvidia settings somewhere, but I haven't really bothered to because I hadn't run into a game that couldn't be played at higher resolutions with perfect performance.

EDIT: Messed around with the settings in a GOG copy of the game and I was able to get 1080p working in borderless fullscreen. V-Sync also seems broken, always syncs to 30 FPS instead of 60. With V-Sync off and 1080p, I was getting 50FPS with frequent dips to around 40. I'd at least ask for 1080p to get 60FPS steady on a machine like mine before I purchase it again.

 

[DJ-Yoshiman]

This is my experience and everyone elses who is honest and not a blind fanboy who is operating under massive confirmation bias.

Thanks for calling me dishonest because I find the game fun and find uniqueness in each aspect personally. I'm not under any bias, never got into the hype and didn't follow promotional material to the nth degree. I just picked up the game when it came out and am still enjoying it.

I understand your stance and can see why you hate it, and no single person or group can stray you away from it. But please don't assume things about people because their opinion is different than yours.

 

[GamerzHell9137]

That's another problem I don't seem to have. I'm curious as to why you have worse performance than me, seeing as how we have the same video card and my CPU isn't significantly better than yours (6600k).

He can't 60 FPS? I'm on 960 and an Intel Pentium G630 and run the game at 40FPS 1080p max settings (disabled AA)

 

[Burlsol]

This point I agree with, and I feel that will be remedied in an update. Though I have gotten the "You already know this" message several times, I am still getting new ones too. The only problem is the more you know, the less chance you have of learning something new as the game seems to always pick from the same pool of rewards. Still, a simple fix in a future update hopefully, and certainly not something that turns me off of the game altogether.

Based on what I can tell, research sources seem to be tiered in such a way that more basic researches will be more common the further away from the center you are (early game). You can still obtain higher tier researches far from the center, but it is less common and may require intentionally fighting and destroying the larger sentinel enemies (walkers, large space ships).

It's still a mostly disappointing mechanic since once you have a good number of things already known it will become much more difficult to find anything new, and the effort spent will stop feeling worthwhile since you get nothing in consolation. But something like this could probably be patched in.

 

[Deleted User]

An overhyped overpriced Indie game that is a let down like all the others. It's a crater that is 1 mile long but 1 inch deep. No substance

 

[Abcdfv]

How would you do that with a Steam game? Would you have to run the Steam client in WINE too?

It's also on GOG DRM free.

* cough cough codex torrent cough cough *, Honestly if everyone's so unhappy with it just download it from there...

Why do that when you can just play the DRM free copy instead?

 

[Pedeadstrian]

Why do that when you can just play the DRM free copy instead?

Duh, that'd cost money.

 

[mashers]

@mashers it's out for PC and PS4

... neither of which I own. Apple and Nintendo only in my house.

 

[Sicklyboy]

I've put about an hour into it on PC and I'm enjoying it so far

 

[Abcdfv]

Duh, that'd cost money.

About as much money as torrenting any other game, yeah

 

[Sicklyboy]

Well, I guess I'll pick up a discounted copy over winter break then. I wonder if it'll appeal to Minecraft fans that like the resource management and exploration most?

That's what I like most about Minecraft. The cancerous community full of 12 year olds who take it way too seriously, plus the fact that i ran a server, ruined it for me. I'm hoping that since this is considerably less multiplayer i will get more enjoyment out of it.

 

[Xzi]

An overhyped overpriced Indie game that is a let down like all the others.

All the others? The majority of indie games are reasonably priced and often offer a much better price:quality ratio than AAA games.

 

[LoganK93]

All the others? The majority of indie games are reasonably priced and often offer a much better price:quality ratio than AAA games.

Agreed. I've enjoyed many indie games more than AAA releases lately. Gaming got too big and now the big game companies are practically the same as Hollywood: shallow game play with an emphasis on visuals. And God dammit if every game has to have online multiplayer (but no splitscreen, because fuck people with families or -gasp- real life friends).

 

[DJ-Yoshiman]

And God dammit if every game has to have online multiplayer (but no splitscreen, because fuck people with families or -gasp- real life friends).

Absolutely. It's so difficult to play games with my girlfriend when we find a multiplayer game, and then oh wait - online only. Ugh.