No Man's Sky (2016)

Starships

The above three are starships I have owned, one bought and two salvaged. The shots below are of a ship I want. It appeared twice, after my first system jump, but at the time I was short on units to pay for it. Now that I have enough units, the bloody thing is nowhere to be found.

Update: found my fighter :-)

Sentinels

Not the friendliest AI. The little flying units (flying eyes) are on every world, monitoring resources and life. They are not fans of excessive tampering with the ecosystem. I have noticed that they don't really mind if you mine precious metals. I have mined for things like gold to my heart's content, and they leave me alone. But if I take too much plutonium, they lose their cool. They especially hate it is I extract carbon, because that comes from plant life. I suppose they are there to keep my ethics in check.

This little doglike sentinel below appears if you manage to aggravate the flying eyes enough. This usually happens if you stubbornly continue mining for materials while the eyes attack you. Eventually they get fed up and call the dog. The dog has a pretty nasty laser but if you have something as a basic as the first shield upgrade, the punch of their laser is lessened. Incidentally, two flying eyes and a dog will show up instantly if you collect certain rarer resources.

You see this pink little cactus? It is a jerk. If you get too close it extends poisonous barbs. They cause only a tiny amount of damage to your exosuit shield, but they are a nuisance. Worse than that, if you retaliate with a blaster shot, or collect their poisonous sacks for sale on the galactic market, your new problem will be three sentinels including the dog.

Stage four alert. So, if you manage to annoy the sentinels long enough, you meet the walker. I have to admit, it was tough to get this guy called out on me. I've upgraded my weapons and shields enough that I can quickly take out the flying eyes and dogs without breaking a sweat. So, to meet this guy I had to do something special. I started killing poisonous cacti, and collecting their sacks. I killed the sentinel dog, and left the two flying eyes alone while I harvested poison sacks. The effect of the flying eye's weapons were like tiny bee stings, and I ignored them. Until my friend below showed up.

This guy is mean. His laser hits hard. Really hard, and it knocks you for a loop. Direct hits on your shield cause massive damage, and knocks you back. It can be intense. Once the walker shows up, you need to move fast. Make sure the dog is dead, and make sure you have upgraded your multi-tool. I have several damage upgrades on my multi-tool thanks to my aimless wandering, so I was able to put up a fight. It was close...

...but I won. Here is a nice little victory shot. I just wish I could repurpose this thing and hop around the countryside in style.

I started my journey in No Man' Sky yesterday. I spent a fair amount of time exploring my first star system, Utopia. The above shot is from a drop pod landing site on a small plateau on Eden Prime, my starting planet in the system. I took this shot not long after repairing my crashed ship. Utopia contains four planets and one moon that orbits Eden Prime. Three of the planets are M class, with lush growth, decent water coverage and rich in flora, fauna and minerals. Below is an image of a friend I made on Eden Prime, after I gave him a bit of alien kibble. The smiley face above his head means he likes me! He rewarded my efforts to befriend him by digging up some rare and useful isotopes. The conditions of the primary M class planets in the system made my start a cushy one. While I found quite a bit of wildlife, very little of it wanted to kill me (except for the Murderous Spined Cave Roach on Eden Prime and Arcadia, aptly named for its appearance and desire to rip me to shreds). The atmosphere on Eden Prime and the other main planets allowed for easy travel, very little strain on my exosuit and safety while exploring. I have heard some have not been as fortunate.

The only mildly dangerous bodies in the system were one Class H desert planet, Nirvana, and one moon orbiting Eden Prime. Both were fairly cold with limited atmosphere, which resulted in an elevated strain on my exosuit's life support system. This was barely an issue given the abundance of isotopes available for powering life support. It was only once jumping to the next star system that I encountered an actively hazardous planet, one with acid rain that required that I add a toxicity filter to my exosuit.

Unquestionably, the thing I enjoy most about No Man's Sky is the exploration. I love the hunt for mysterious objects. Most of the time I skim the surface with my ship looking for objects, or pop into orbit to quickly travel to a different side of the planet. I also swapped my little system jumper for a cargo drop-ship. It is a beast of a bird but can hold a fair amount of cargo. This is helpful given the amount of raw materials I gather while hunting down mystery objects an structures, and a boon for my supply runs to the Vy'keen space station orbiting Arcadia.

The most mysterious objects that can be found are the monoliths, plaques and ruins. Above is one of the plaques found on Eden Prime's moon. Some simply provide linguistic data, others contain riddles and provide useful objects. The plaque pictured above taught me a new Vy'keen word. These monoliths and the like provide my favourite layer of exploration in the game. I don't think I could ever tire of searching for more. Along with the ruins, monoliths and plaques are language stones (for examples see the first two images in this post), which simply provide a new alien translation. I have reached roughly 80-85 Vy'keen words at this point, which makes some exchanges quite simple, while others remain a jumble of known and yet to be discovered words. The current system I have jumped to contains Gek outposts, and thus a new language to learn. I am very tempted to jump back to Utopia to study additional Vy'keen before I begin to learn Gek.

I suppose it goes without saying that I am enjoying myself. The game is not perfect, and it definitely could use some changes (which I believe are coming) but I enjoy the idea of being lonely and stranded in a alien part of the galaxy, with only the resources I can gather to help me make sense of where I am and and what I should do next. There is very little narrative in No Man's Sky. It is up to the player to craft their own story upon the elements provided. I enjoy this, I enjoy mapping my own story onto the game and I look forward to seeing where No Man's Sky will lead.

Sounds like the PC release of No Man's Sky is off to a rough start. From reading the steam reviews, it looks like it's a buggy mess, lots of crashes and huge performance issues. People are saying it's a terrible PS4 port, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Batman: Arkham Knight. Buyer beware, maybe wait to see if they can successfully patch it.

Reviews on GoG.com are all very negative too. Not that the game is bad, it just seems like this PC port needed a little longer in the oven.