First off, I've posted way too much on politics, and honestly want to actually talk about games lol.
So the much anticipated and hyped No Man's Sky is out and the wrath of the hype is approaching. Now that being said, I went ahead and picked up a copy of the game as I figured that it looked interesting enough (especially the technology in it). I've played it a bit and I have some mixed thoughts. The first thing that popped out at me is that it's very obviously an Indie game in terms of aesthetics. The technical procedural aspects are certainly jaw dropping, but I have yet to play a lot so maybe I'm wrong there. All in all, it's interesting and fun but I feel that ultimately it would get a bit repetitive, unless the procedural stuff can really surprise me. It's not something along the lines of X3 Terran conflict, or Minecraft, which could be good or bad.\
Your thoughts?
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No Man's Sky
I just watched gameplay videos ( as I am still with Intel P530 until custom 1060 or RX480 is out ) and couldn't agree more about it screaming " I am repetitive " . After visiting basic types of planets doubt it will really matter if you first discovered planet asfhasjdh2183618263sab anymore
After playing E:D ive become quite wary of these games that fall into the "mile wide, skin deep" problem. What i've seen of no mans sky is it also falls into this trap.
Boring/repetitive etc. X3:AP is basically the perfect space sim when modded (especially with Litcube's Universe), hopefully X4 can find a way to top that, but I doubt it. I'm just hoping they don't try to go ahead and waste time on Multiplayer.
There's a game called "Shores Of Hazeron" I bring up any time no man's sky is mentioned, because it's pretty much the exact same game with hundreds of times more content (as in, things to do AND universe size), and does all the things No Man's Sky does, but better. The only downside is that it's been in development for the better part of 20 years and the graphics have never had an update.
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X3: TC/ X3: AP are the perfect space sims because they have just the right amount of procedural and scripted to really make for some great emergent gameplay. With mods thrown into the mix, the game gets even bigger. I recently picked up X3:TC and although there is a good amount of grind, I'm pretty hooked because of the real sense of progression/multitude of things one can do in that game.
No Man's Sky so far is an interesting technical achievement but I have yet to see a lot of the procedural generation really change up the game. What I'm bothered by is the lack of anything to do other than explore/survive. What's really lacking is that there's nothing more to the game other than that. The game dev did say that he was going to add in base building at some point tho.
the problem i see with these types of games is that the developers are always promising vast awesome deep content that is in the next update. This however goes against the theory that 90% of the work is in the last 10%. A linear increase in content depth just isn't realistic, you'll be waiting forever.
I feel like the developers did a really poor job of managing expectations. For example, every time multiplayer came up, they were always really cagey on it, trying to fallback on the fact that statistically it was unlikely that two players would ever meet. It happened on the day the game launched. And guess what? They can't physically interact with one another, or see one another. They should've just said, "Hey, it's not multiplayer, you will not be able to interact with another player, you will however be able to see other people's named discoveries" They could even have hedged that with a, "At launch, there will be no way to interact or see other players, in later patches we may revisit this" or whatever.
The lead dev kind of reminds me of Peter Molyneux in that fashion.
They were also really unclear on gameplay details, I don't know if it was to try to make sure a wide as possible audience would be interested, but if they had mentioned the survival and crafting elements more prominently, people would've had a better idea of what to expect.
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I've played a lot more of it, and I've come to the following conclusions:
At the end of the day, this is and always will be an Indie game that people hyped up way too much to make it something it isn't. The game devs didn't help with that either. The game is fun if you like exploration and encountering new and strange worlds. It's pretty nifty to land on a planet and encounter some really interesting creatures in an interesting biosphere. The simulation is technically impressive (I'd hope it is all they said it is and not someone pulling a huge blind on everyone).
The problem is that there's no way to interact with the game other than exploration, hence the lack of depth part. It's good for what they said it will be, as a world explorer, but that's all there is to it. Again, this is where the indie part comes in. I think that the devs had always intended for the game to be something like Journey, only on a gigantic scale. There's probably some philosophy in there somewhere, along with a need for imagination imo.
They did mention adding in features later (that would be free) and I would hope that they take a page or two from X3/Minecraft. There was talk of base building, which could be interesting imo.
I was reading this review
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/13/no-mans-sky-review
And it wasn't so positive... I watched the first 15 mins of the game and it looked exciting at first, but quickly turned boring. A lot of shooting at plants and walking around. hmm
I read a review that put me off, saying that the constant pressure to engage in activities related to survival mean you don't really get to relax and enjoy the exploration.
This is always the procedural problem. The way I am blown away by content is always linked to the effort one knows must have been expended in creating it. When one knows you can grow an entire random planet from a single numeric seed, how many examples of such a planet are actually of interest to witness?
Technically great but probably not a good structure for a fun game. I shan't be spending money on the PC version.
This is always the procedural problem. The way I am blown away by content is always linked to the effort one knows must have been expended in creating it. When one knows you can grow an entire random planet from a single numeric seed, how many examples of such a planet are actually of interest to witness?
Technically great but probably not a good structure for a fun game. I shan't be spending money on the PC version.
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