At E3 2014, an independent software developer called Hello Games revealed a gameplay trailer for their new space exploration sim No Man's Sky. The trailer shows a first person view of an explorer emerging from a cave into a lush alien forest... butterflies float in the air, as some kind of grazing animal scampers nervously away. And suddenly you see them.... huge dinosaur like creatures emerge from the mist... striding through the forest, their feet shaking the ground with every step... an infectious techno soundtrack begins to swell as an enormous horned beast charges through the trees sending a herd of the grazing animals running for their lives. It's time for our adventurer to make a sharp exit. Jumping into his single-seater spacecraft we launch through the clouds and seemlessly arrive in space to be joined by several other similar craft as we fly together in formation through a fleet of massive space cruisers. We chase their fighter escort down into the clouds of another planet. The HD graphics are literally mind blowing. Together we chase the fleeing craft over deserts and mountains before soaring upwards and and jumping to lightspeed.
When I, like so many others, saw this trailer I knew that I was going to buy this game on the day it was released. Finally, a game to push the PS4 hardware to the limit!
Unfortunately, there is almost nothing from that trailer to be found in No Man's Sky. What you get instead is a mediocre space exploration game that looks like it should have come out on previous generation consoles.
Basically what you are expected to do in No Man's Sky is fly from planet to planet collecting resources, upgrading your ship, suit and gun and learning the language of the NPCs in the game one word at a time. You can also scan lifeforms and rename them to what you want. Apparently, anything you discover and rename will also be seen by other players if they ever visit that planet. This is supposed to be a big selling point of the game, but in practice it isn't very interesting at all. New discoveries and trading resources earns you credits that you can use to save up for a better ship or gun. There is a text-based narrative of sorts that you can choose to follow or ignore as you please. Combat is hardly worth mentioning as it is more of an irritation than anything.
There is some fun to be had here; it's not a terrible game per se. The problem is that it bears almost no resemblance to the E3 trailer that got everyone so excited. For what it is, it's ludicrously over-priced. It's also very repetitive, and ultimately you'll get pretty bored of aimlessly wandering, with nothing much to see or do. The living, breathing ecosystems of gigantic grazing dinosaurs and terrifying predators promised by the trailer are nowhere to be found. You'll see a few beasts occasionally wandering around - some large ones and some small ones, but none of them really interacting with each other. One might attack you, but they're very easy to avoid. Space craft only differ cosmetically and in the number of slots they have for cargo and upgrades, while the upgrades themselves are mainly graded versions of the same technologies. There's no need to think tactically about the kind of ship you want. That kind of depth is completely absent from this game, as is any sense of realism in the flight mechanics. You can't crash your ship in No Man's Sky, even if you try!
All in all, No Man's Sky is a disappointment. A triumph of marketing hype over substance. Eventually, you'll be able to pick this up for a few dollars on Steam... so if you want to know what all the fuss was about, I'd wait until then.