First the bad news: you are stranded on a desolate planet with low oxygen reserves and a damaged space ship – death is imminent. You have to work fast to survive. Now the good news: you are able to take in the aesthetic beauty of pink and purple neon skies and psychedelic creatures, giant winged earthworms and lemon-yellow hippopotamus giraffe dinosaurs that call for you to gaze into the abyss of space and distract you from the perilous task at hand. You turn to your broken down ship with barely any functioning equipment left and begin this single-person survival/exploration game – No Man’s Sky.

When No Man’s Sky was first announced, like so m any others, I was ecstatic. Rumors and hype spread rapidly, making us all believe in the bounty of an open universe where my friends and I can conquer space together. Unfortunately, this game is far from that. Now No Man’s Sky does have its amazingly beautiful moments, but there’s an underlying tone of overhype. Players keep expecting more options, more possibilities, more excitement but in truth, there is only limited repetition of the same tasks: mine, fabricate, fly, explore, and fight (barely). This underlying tone destroyed the game for my friends and me. Where I thought there were luscious green planets, I found myself on gray, depressing planets with no alien species. The customizable character system I dreamed of was absent; instead, a faction system that’s confusing and severely lacking of any constructive intent is supplied. Finally, a half-completed space combat system leaves veteran gamers yawning and looking for something else to play. This game could’ve been better than it could have if the developers would have told their fans that it wasn’t multiplayer and wouldn’t have everything shown in the trailers. Leaving out these crucial details from the game has cost it hundreds of thousands of sales.  

On the other hand, the game and its developer do have good intentions, but they’ve fallen a bit short with bug fixes, patches, and other additions to the game. This can be easily changed by making more frequent updates and focusing on more important elements; for example, currently No Man’s Sky does have a slight problem with crashing. Recently the developer Hello Games has focused on trying to fix bugs and complications before adding any new features. One thing No Man’s Sky does do well in is the single player department which the game was made for. The game does have a feature which allows the player to rename any animal, plant, planet, or galaxy discovered. This game is a resource collector simulator through which the player is constantly managing his inventory. It becomes more a game about a frustrating mini-puzzle forcing the gamer to find a place for more stuff to cram into the inventory.

I do recommend this game if you have loads of free time to pour into, but for the casual gamer it’s complicated.

The developer Hello Games is fantastic, but No Man’s Sky could’ve been better. I’m sure that in the near future there’ll be an amazing patch that adds in all sorts of stuff, but currently this game is not quite complete. No Man’s Sky is a single player resource collector simulator with its fair share of bugs but with effort from the developers, it’s on the right path. I would rate No Man’s Sky an 7/10.