Fun fact: The
first time I tried to replay No Man’s Sky
on my computer after my inevitable refund, the game took literally forty-five
minutes to load and, once I finally was able to start a new game, nothing
appeared on the screen. It was solid black. So, I got another refund and
flipped Hello Games the bird.
HOWEVER!
Just recently, I learned about No Man’s
Sky: Next. I’d always wanted a game like No Man’s Sky with more to offer than horrible, uninteresting
creatures, mono-biome planets and a nonexistent story. Many people recommended Elite: Dangerous to me, completely
unaware that I actually wanted to have fun and explore planets in a game rather
than sit in a spaceship doing math and pretending to have a job. Finding a game
like No Man’s Sky was going to be
impossible, simply because no other game even attempted to do what No Man’s Sky did. Most who tried were either
crappy 1990s polygon fests or crappy bleep-bloop pixel roguelike garbage where
your imagination did three quarters of the work. And they all had mixed reviews
on Steam for some reason.
So,
I re-purchased No Man’s Sky, waited
forty-five minutes for the shaders to load, and was greeted with actual
VISUALS! Already my experience was looking up, and it only got better from
there.
STORY
I’m
not even going to attempt to recount the story…not because it’s so infinite and
vast, but because I spent so much time trying to
complete the story missions that I ended up forgetting the plot points. I
remember having to craft something called a “mind arc” for a wounded traveler
named Artemis (who I would consider my love interest if this game believed in
pronouns), and it required three items to craft: Chromatic Metal, a
Microprocessor, and Living Glass. Now, chromatic metal and microprocessors aren’t
too difficult to come by, but you have to cross galaxies to find the materials needed for living glass. In order to
make living glass, you have to have one thing of lubricant and five pieces of
glass. One piece of glass can only be made by combining FIFTY frost crystals,
which can only be found as a secondary resource from certain seaweed on some ice planets. Lubricant is an
entirely different beast, too! It requires fifty pieces of coprite (collected
in chunks of five to ten after finding and feeding an animal, a quest in
itself), and FOUR-HUNDRED UNITS OF GAMMA ROOT. And gamma root is only harvested
as a secondary resource of certain plants on irradiated planets. So, if you’re
not in a system that has both an ice planet and a radiation planet, then you’ll
have to warp across the universe until you find one. THEN, you’ll have to
scavenge for the right materials, hoping that you’ll actually be able to find
an animal and that you won’t run out of inventory space or get within five
hundred thousand MILLION meters of a sentinel.
Oh,
yeah…sentinels. Remember those guys
from the original game? Well, they’re WORSE now! Guess what? Once you attack a
sentinel, they will literally never stop coming. Seriously. Unless you run away,
sentinels will keep on spawning, increasing their numbers. It doesn’t help
that, once you die, the game is insistent on giving you a smarmy quote from
some scientist you’ve never heard of about how lame it is that you died. But their
constant, murderous rampage isn’t the worst thing about the sentinels. The
worst thing is the fact that, if they find you mining resources or killing
animals, they’ll slowly linger in your face, scanning you and seeing if you’ll
continue to keep mining resources so they know whether or not to attack you. I’ve
waited what felt like over three minutes for some sentinels to get out of range
of me so I could do the only thing that this game tells me to do. Sentinels are
almost as annoying as dog enemies in JRPGs. They’re almost as annoying as dogs
in Dark Souls 3, the worst game ever
made. But we’ll get to that some other
time! :D
Here’s
the thing, though: It’s hinted that the story of the game is to eliminate the
sentinels forever. The sentinels are controlled by this technological deity called
the Atlas (the absolute coolest name for an antagonist ever), and our duty as
travelers is to take Atlas down. This is a great way to establish Atlas as a
threat: Make his minions the only part of the game that actively take away any
enjoyment in playing it! Granted, this tactic might make people stop playing
the game because it makes the game not fun, but let’s not think about that.
The
story this time around is actually pretty intriguing. Again, I can’t remember
the specific plot points, but the updates the game has had has given the game
some very interesting world building. The writing’s actually pretty heavy at
certain points, too. I’m looking forward to how this plays out.
CHARACTERS
(note the visual cues of my dwindling artistic motivation)
Artemis: The First Traveler
 |
| My Version / In-Game Version |
I’d like to assume that Artemis is a chick. That’d be nice wouldn’t it? Gosh, this game could’ve done with some pronouns. With all “their” (meaning Artemis’s) talk of feeling alone and feeble and fragile and physically small and scaaaareddd :3, you'd think that Artemis would be a fully-fledged female. But "they" isn’t. Well, screw it. “They” is in my headcanon.
Look,
Hello Games: If ya want to convince me to cross galaxies picking up pieces of
garbage for fetch quests, the smart
thing to do would be to give Artemis some chromosomes. Specifically, two of the
same chromosomes. Sex chromosomes. XX. Make it a girl, you nazis. Most gamers
are dudes. Most dudes want to save women from the big, bad, scary universe with
our mighty biceps and jar-opening skills. LET ME OPEN ARTEMIS’S JAR, HELLO GAMES! NO, I WON’T REPHRASE THAT!
Gek: Every Gek
 |
| meep |
My…favorite
species? They remind me of my chinchilla, but otherwise I can’t say there’s
anything intriguing or unique about them. Well, they do fart a lot and want to rule over the universe with an iron fist,
but…meh.
Space Orcs: Space Orcs
 |
| (this is actually the color scheme from my reference...bleck) |
Guess
what? They’re space orcs. They’re technically called the “Vy’keen,” but…they’re
just orcs. An interesting tidbit about these guys is that they actually believe
that they’re the only species in the galaxy that should be allowed to have
weapons. They also want to destroy all sentinels. Very interesting. The rest of
their lore is boring and predictable.
Robots: Freakin’….
 | |
| Get it? 'Cuz they're a hive mind?...I demand that you laugh. |
The
Korvax are the Geth without the human element. In other words, completely and
utterly boring. Boooooo!
GAMEPLAY
They
added in bases and made the combat and flight not suck so hard. The bases are
actually more in-depth and interesting than I thought they were going to be. Hello Games hasn’t been doing nothing
since the Great Refund of 2016, oh no! So many little fixes that make the game
so much more enjoyable to play. So many, in fact, that listing them all would
take quite a significant amount of time (*cracks knuckles and puts feet up on
desk*). So, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’ll talk about the good and the
bad with Next.
Good:
Story
and Characters
It’s
so wonderful to see more than one npc in the space stations. THERE’RE SO MANY
NOW! Couple that with the fact that there are actual characters in this game?! The only thing I didn’t like about No Man’s Sky back in 2016 was the fact
that I had literally no story or characters to drive me to explore, but now
there must be some freakin’ introspection
going down in the writers’ rooms because this game is just one long existential
crisis after another. The addition of a story and the fleshing out of the antagonist
gave me just that much of a push to continue playing. Excellent work on this
front, Hello Games.
Bad:
Online play, HORRIFIC performance, and the least interesting aliens in the
universe.
Can
you believe that I was playing my game, minding my own business, when some retard
just walked up to me and did an “emote” like he was my freakin’ friend? I was
trying to repair my ship and escape the planet and then this digital pile of all
that’s wrong with the world kept following me! Until I repaired my ship! Then I left him alone on the
planet to DIE. I HATE him. Luckily for me, there’s an option to turn off online
play in the menu. I’ve never understood the appeal of immersive, self-driven
story-based games having multiplayer. Like how people taut Journey for its multiplayer when the multiplayer is literally the
only thing wrong with it. “Yeah, I’m totally the last bastion of life on this
desert planet, right? The eventual result of generations of interpersonal conflict.
Oh, but there’s this other guy here too who looks exactly like me. We’re both
the last bastion of life in this world. That makes it so much more poetic.”
The
one thing I despise about this game is its solid 18 frames per second. What. On.
Earth, Hello Games? My computer ain’t
a piece of crap, Sean Murray! Maybe if the game didn’t have so many FREAKIN’ SHADERS
it wouldn’t lag so much! It isn’t as gosh awful to experience as Nier: Automata was on my computer, but
that was less than one frame per second and no game should ever look like that
to begin with.
The
biggest nitpick I have with this game, however, is the fact that the aliens are
beyond boring. They’re just horrible. All of the Vy’keen and Korvax could die
off and the game wouldn’t feel any different. It’s so easy to write interesting
alien species! Just make ‘em slightly
different than humans and don’t recycle old material! Look at the Mass Effect series. I cared about every
single solitary species in that game (except for the humans). All you have to
do is give ‘em a couple unique character traits. The Asari are blue lesbians
who live for hundreds of years and wield space magic. Boom. Easy. The Krogan
are violent and immature because they were introduced to intelligent alien life
before they were intellectually evolved. Out of the box thinking! The Quarians
are a species who were driven away from their home planet by the fear of their
own creations, the Geth. As a result of living separated from germs and
bacteria, they’ve become highly sensitive to disease and can’t leave their
suits. GENIUS! Pure genius! Never would’ve thought of that myself. Let’s give ‘em
a round of applause! The Salarians are space nerds….eh, we can ignore the
Salarians. THE POINT IS: There’s so
much you can do to make aliens interesting. The key is…to give them one relatable human element. What do the
Gek do? Well, they communicate through smell, have a bizarre obsession with
mercantilism, and want to enslave the entire universe. Not incredibly relatable…or interesting. Look at the Turians from Mass Effect (I promise I’ll stop talking
about Mass Effect soon, it’s just
SUCH A GOOD SERIES): They’re basically
just humans with more of a military focus and awesome reptilian mandibles.
Seriously, they just look cool. That’s another thing this game could’ve focused
more on: Making the aliens look cool as opposed to…well, goofy.
OH
WAIT, I forgot about the real biggest
offender!
PRONOUNS
THEY/THEM
IS PLURAL, HELLO GAMES. THIS AIN’T A
POLITICAL STATEMENT. WE DON’T LIKE TO GET POLITICAL HERE (see: every time I talk about women on this website). IT JUST GETS
CONFUSING WHEN I’M TALKIN’ TO A LITTLE LIZARDY CHINCHILLA GUY AND THE DIALOGUE
BOX REFERS TO ‘IM AS A “THEY.” EITHER CALL ‘EM “IT” OR JUST GIVE ‘EM SOME
GENITALIA. IN MOST (IF NOT ALL) LANGUAGES ON EARTH, GENDER NEUTRAL TERMS REVERT
TO THE MASCULINE. GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER.
BEAR DENSITY
…there…kind
of are bears in this game…
SOUNDTRACK
It
definitely existed and was sci-fi themed. I’m sure Destiny had a soundtrack,
too. Ahh, that’s too harsh. Sometimes, while listening to the soundtrack of No Man’s Sky, I was reminded of songs
from the Mass Effect trilogy, which
has the best sci-fi soundtracks in the world. So, that’s good.
GRAPHICS
IT’S
NOT PIXELLATED BLEEP-BLOOP GARBAGE OR POLYGONAL 90s CRAP! WOOOOHOOOOO!
Can
you believe that I found mods online that desaturate the game’s visuals? What
on EARTH?! The game looks absolutely gorgeous as it is! It’s a fine, stylized
game with visuals that both serve their purpose and elevate it above the
average. They’re really, really good graphics, people. They’re not “realistic”
or polished to the point of being spherical, but they are still very good. The character design is
intriguing and unmistakably Hello Games’s,
the environments have incredible range outside of biomes, and the game decided
to think out of the box and make solar systems the color of their stars! So
many other games just have boring blackness for space, but this game keeps crappy,
unexciting realism out of it. If I wanted uninspired, realistic depictions of
space for forty-five hours, I’d watch 2001:
A Space Odyssey again.
CONCLUSION
Ladies
and gentlemen, I heavily encourage you to buy this game. Not for fifty bucks. It
ain’t polished and fast-paced enough to warrant a fifty-dollar price tag, but a
ton of care went into it and it
shows. It’s creative, immersive, and it provides a kind of experience that no other
game has even attempted yet on this scale. Some of the lore is boring and
absolutely none of the species are even remotely interesting, but the gameplay
is solid, and you can pretty much ignore the aliens for the most part. Well
done!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
Characters: +1
Artemis jarrrrrr
Story: +1
ArTemis jarrrrrrrrrrr
Gameplay: +2
ArtemissssssSSsss jjjJAarrrrRrrr
Soundtrack: 0 Tiiiiiime pooooooooole
Graphics: +1
Arrrrrrrrrtttttttaaaaaaaallllllllbogggg
Bear Density: +2.5
Final Score: 7.5/10
No
Man’s Sky is an incredibly unique game with some thoroughly uninteresting
aliens, annoying antagonists, and mind-numbingly confusing pronoun gymnastics
that actively take away from the experience. Also, there’s too much crafting,
but I’d still recommend it to anybody who wants to feel like a space explorer!
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