(Blog)No Mans Sky; or, how I learned to scam the customers and get them to defend my lies

     With the release of No Mans Sky, I've found myself particularly irritable in the way that the final product came out as. With so much games trying to capitalize off the procedural generation world that Minecraft had launched in it's time (though to be frank, procedural generation existed before that) No Mans Sky looked like it was about to take the next step forward from there. Instead, it took twenty steps backwards.

Starbound which is like Terraria, made an interesting step in how it could take it's procedural generation. Albeit on the Two Dimension. A massive galaxy to explore, massive procedural content with context to go with it. (And actual content that can entwine with the Procedural Generated content.) 

No Mans Sky, upon first announcement and teaser, looked to be rather interesting. It had a neat concept and it looked like it would succeed and push the boundaries of procedural generation, with the inclusion of multiplayer (which said before, would be a rarity) new discoveries, wonders, planets to explore and study during your trip to the center of the galaxy... which was previously said to take about 300 hours to reach.

No Mans Sky had the promise of something greater, and it even looked great too! But then details started to surface from the creators. Sean Murry, the head developer of the game, listed the upcoming features that the game would show, and even added the details on the website. There was to be 3 different types of ship classes. (of course they can't be any bigger than a standard fighter looking vessel.) Each planet was going to be something truly unique and different from one another. Epic dogfighting and the promise to joining pirate factions or traders. Explore, fight, trade, survival, the four prime qualities that this game promises.



How in the hell did they fuck it up so badly?

The creators promised something that would change the industry. It sure as hell changed the industry alright. Hype up a game and scam the customers out of their cash and expect them to defend the lies you promised in the game.

Lets start simple and from the ground up. The visuals, the planets and the animals... in fact anything with aesthetics: I've visited about twenty different planets during the course of my three day play-through and I've noticed a rather peculiar pattern. Remember how in the old E3 a year or two back they've showed such luscious, lavishing beautiful caves, wide open flat field, small hills and great forests? Remember seeing titanic dinosaur looking animals that looked... well... alien? Remember how 3 Dimensional interacting with the environment was? I did. 

And here is how it looked now.

You'll notice the lack of vibrant colors, the beauty, and also the pristine look that the game has. You'll even noticed the land animals in the game look lackluster, small in comparison to the last video.


As for my experience, it's pretty much cut and dry, much what you can expect. Each of the planet I visited looked absolutely dull, nearly static. The lack of vibrant colors and lighting differs from the previous version back in E3 2015.There wasn't much beautiful wonders to be shown. Each planet and its flora and fauna looked just about the same. Dog looking lizard, dinosaur looking bird faced mutants, giraffes with flowers or fungus for heads, it's about the same the last several planets. The only difference is their skin and texture but that's just about it. They aren't unique, they're not different from one another. And definitely not the flora for that matter. Oxides, Iodides and the such all stem from the same looking plants. They are found on almost every planet I went. Even on the near barren looking planets. (Which by the way, violates the premise that earth like planets would be an extreme rarity. Almost all the planets had some amounts of life on them.
There was also a distinct lack of variety in the terrain. Almost everywhere you go there's bound to be one tree or another. Everything consists of hills and plateaus. Flat surfaces often revolves around the outposts you come across. (Except there are some glitches where the bases are stuck between a plateau, and mid-air.

Next Multiplayer. There is none. It's almost strictly a single player game experience. Didn't we hear from them at one point that you can find other players and you can look at each other? They did say that the chances of that are slim to none but hearing from this reddit post recently, two friends decided they should meet together in the exact same star system in the exact same station. (I believe they were the only ones that close to each other. But details are sketchy.) They got to the exact same system. They got the system name right, and there's usually one station in a star system. Yet they can't even see each other despite being in the same station.

(For that matter, you don't get wingmen. No NPC, no multiplayer wingmen to play with you for that matter. Remember that E3 Demo? You can't get that.)

So we can already see the pile of lies keep piling up. It's hard to take seriously this game when the final product looks worse than the previous version. (which of course, probably wouldn't be as fun anyhow as this did.) Capital ships are not as versatile as the fighter ships are. They almost look the same. You can't trade with them either. And what they are supposed to be freighters right? How is it you can't dock on their ship and trade whatever exotic materials you can't have that they got? I don't know. And apparently there's no factions either. You just get the decision to help the pirates or the freighters. Pirates have no allegiances. Freighters are aligned with their respective civilization that you've encountered. And attacking freighters puts you in a bad spot with them.

But there's no option to open communications. You can't talk to either of the ships about joining a faction. Nor can you talk to the NPCs in the space stations to join a faction. (Cause you know, most space sims have that option when you are on stations.) You can't hire mercenaries, can't hire wingmen, can't join a faction and you sure as hell can't play with your friend online.

As for combat, well... there's hardly any combat aside from sentinels. Remember they promised dogfighting? The chances of that are rare. If you have valuable cargo, there's a slim chance pirates will come after you. If you are near freighters, there's a slim chance they'll appear to attack them. You can attack freighters but then it would be counter productive for you.

NPC interactions are lack luster. As for the survival features? What survival? Temperature, radiation and toxicity is all there is for you to protect yourself against. That and keeping your life support up to date. It's not hard to do though because the resources required to do so are scattered across the planet. Your only source of protection are outposts, or your own ship. You can't even make your own outpost for that matter.

Your only method of quick transportation across the planet is your ship. You can't build a vehicle and start roving around. Every time you use your ship, you're wasting fuel for your launch legs. The tension of survival is cut by a third, especially during combat since the sentinels are rather weak during your very first encounters. And it's easy to upgrade your tools and ship fast. For that matter, resources count as ammo. Can't craft yourself ammunition from it nope. Just slap in Plutonium and Carbon and bam! Instant universal ammunition. Didn't this game sell that crafting is also essential?

Somehow this game has a lot less content than what they told us from the start.

No Mans Sky is a scam of a game. They take this interesting idea, hook the players to that idea, and then pulled a bait and switch upon release. Whether or not they were unable to implement it or didn't put it in at all, they did say with their own mouths (this is gonna have these in it.) doesn't matter. It still amounts to a lie and it was a promise they couldn't owe up to. On the Peter Molyneux scale of false promises, I think this game broke the scale.

The sad part about this whole experience is just how thick those rose tinted glasses are. PS4 fans and indie complacent consumers are willing to shill the ever loving hell out of this unfinished product. It's hard to provide any source of constructive criticism when you are attacked by assblasted apologists who try to defend a lackluster overhyped game.

So for future consumers out there, think before you buy. Get a good look at lets plays to get a good idea on what the game is really about, and see just how far the game really is from what developers have promised.