This is pretty much exactly what I like about No Man's Sky. Everyone is complaining about the inventory system but it's the stress of having to deal w/ the limited space creates situations you wouldn't have got into otherwise. If you could just have stocked up a giant amount of plutonium on a previous planet, you never would have had to make this kind of a trek. I personally have had some pretty tense moments after deciding to jettison some of the basic survival elements to collect more valuable minerals only to find myself stuck in storm minutes away from my ship w/ nothing to repair my suit and no inventory space. Sometimes, it's the mundane challenges that lead to the most rewarding moments.
I guess given that it's a single player game, there'd be no harm in Hello Games making an easy mode for people who just want to explore the universe unencumbered.
I agree w/ basically everything in the review but would probably give it 9/10. There are problems for sure but I think the main issue people are having is they saw the graphics and they imagined what kind of game they'd want to play w/ those kind of graphics and are now getting upset it's not whatever kind of game they imagined. It is an exploration game set in a giant procedural generated universe. Of course it's grueling. Of course it's repetitive. Of course it's a chore to manage your inventory. You are out alone in unfamiliar space, a lone pilot in a small ship. I don't think Hello Games made any secrets about what kind of game this was; I just think a lot of people got excited for something No Man's Sky had never promised to be.
Gaming laptops are pretty good these days. You pay more for the same performance than a desktop, of course, but $800 gets you solid performance on current gen titles and you can easily take it anywhere. Since getting mine, I think I've used it more than my desktop. I guess if you are one of those people who getting bleeding eyeball syndrome from running games on mid settings, you should probably avoid them unless you are rich but I think most people who are not hardware enthusiasts will be happy w/ a pretty moderately priced system.
I wish I had realized these were coming out today. Needed something to play a couple days ago and got Donkey Kong Country when I really wanted Super Metroid. Never played DKC as a kid so absent any sort of nostalgia, I am finding it to be a pretty mediocre platformer so far. Controls don't feel as tight as, say, Mario games and the challenge seems to all be in fiddly timing. Still a very pretty game though.
You have to take into account these walking sim sort of things are a special case as far as let's play videos. You are getting much closer to the full game experience than you will with most genres of games and when you see things like very low sales and yet high play counts on videos, it is hard to not feel like that's unfair to the developers. It doesn't matter if you like these games or not, the developers have produced a piece of art. People are consuming that art and the developers are not getting paid for it. That is a bad situation in any media, games included.
Also, I think That Dragon, Cancer is a special case among special cases as it seemed like it got a lot more attention from non-gaming media than a lot of these sort of things, which are really sort of a niche market in gaming at this point. (I mean, I don't recall Dear Esther being in The Guardian and The New Yorker but maybe my memory fails me...) It could be in this case, the let's play numbers were skewed by people who don't play games attracted by mainstream media attention. I don't really think the let's players are doing anything wrong. They were let's playing same as they always do and it remains a cool and positive part of gaming culture. I still think the developers deserve compensation for this sort of thing but I'm not sure how that works out in reality. I'm thinking devs could possibly work w/ the best let's players to co-promote/share revenue, etc.
I always felt like Nintendo was leaving money on the table not bringing these games over. Glad to see they finally are. Going to buy Earthbound as soon as I finish the endless slog that is Xenoblade Chronicles 3D.
I kinda thought Braid was overrated--too many puzzles that you'd figure out but then not be able to complete due to fiddly timing issues--but I am still really excited about this one. I am hoping this one smooths the edges somewhat and we wind up w/ a game that is not only interesting but enjoyable to play.
logicalfrank's comments