Why i HATE No Man's Sky

Hello and welcome back to a new video game

review. So recently I've been playing No

Man's Sky, which is quite an old game. I

think it first came out in 2016, but

recently it's available to play for free

on Xbox Gaming Pass, so I thought I'd give

it a try since it's not going to cost me

anything. And even though I'm an avid fan

of sci-fi and space exploration games, I

was sorely disappointed with this game.

So when this game first came out all those

many years ago, I actually didn't play the

game because I didn't really want to spend

all that money. After hearing of the

negative critiques and feedback the game

got when it first was launched, I decided

to give it a skip and miss it. Well, fast

forward 6 years later and it seems like

there's been a lot of changes to the game.

I've heard a lot of good things about all

of the recent updates and improvements to

the game, and apparently the game right

now in its current state of version is a

lot closer to what the devs intended it to

be compared to when it first came out. So

I thought I'd finally give it a try and

see if it's any good. Unfortunately, I

can't say that it is very good, and I

found the gameplay to be rather lacking in

lustre. So the main concept of this game

is you're in space and you can go onto

different planets and you can explore them

and harvest the materials and resources

and build stuff. And you've got a

spaceship and you can fly around in space

and basically go to any planets you can

see. The entire map is this huge,

massive galaxy which is procedurally

generated, which I didn't even know what

that meant before this game first came

out. Basically, it means randomly

generated using some kind of in-game AI

thing that can create planets and

different landscapes randomly without

really needing any kind of personal human

input. And you only really get a taste of

how huge and gigantic this game is when

you get into your spaceship and you fly

and leave your planet and then fly into

space. So the really cool thing about this

game is you can go straight from the

ground straight into orbit and then into

space. But when you press the galaxy map,

you'll see why this game has this randomly

procedurally generated system put in

place, because the size of this game is

just absolutely insane. There's no way

they could have made this game this big

without using this procedurally generated

thing. So you go into the galaxy map and

you can see your solar system where you

are, and you can see all the planets and

the planets you've explored and where your

home base is and stuff like that. But when

you look around, you can see these lights

which are other stars, and you think, oh,

that's pretty, it's just like a visual

effect. But then you can actually select

every one of these stars and go to

basically every single one of these stars

you can see flying past here. You can

visit them, and it's a solar system. Each

one of these lights is a star and has its

own solar system and planets going around

it, and you can literally go to every

single one of them and visit basically

every single planet that's in the solar

system. Now, it would be very difficult

and time-consuming to do that because it

requires quite a lot of resources to keep

your spaceship fueled and keep your

hyperdrive thing fueled up with warp fuel

or whatever it's called, and you need

quite an advanced hyperdrive and a nice

advanced ship to be able to get far— that

far. From your home base, but I think in

theory you could actually go to almost any

one of these that you picked and explore

the planets in that system. But the

problem is, even though there's probably

an infinite amount of these solar systems

and planets that you can explore, once you

get to a planet, you start to realize that

all of these planets are extremely boring

and dull, and you can really see that

they've been automatically procedurally

randomly generated because every single

one of these planets basically looks the

same. Every single planet in this game

just feels so bland and empty and void of

life. There's like this weird, lonely,

depressing feeling on almost every single

planet. And even though they try their

best to randomly spawn alien creatures to

make it seem like it's full of life and

full of wildlife, it still doesn't really

help that much. So for example, here's a

few planets in my solar system, and you

use the pulse engine to be able to travel

longer distances, but it still takes

nearly a minute in some cases to arrive at

certain planets. So you got to sit there

on autopilot with the pulse engine

activated and just got to wait until you

approach the planet. So you arrive at the

planet and then you have to enter its

atmosphere and you fly down to the ground.

And as you can see, the planets look

really boring, I guess. I don't really

know what I expect from a planet. I mean,

I guess this is what planets look like in

general if you went out into the real

real-life space and you went to different

planets, I guess they would all look kind

of barren and dull and boring and just

like a load of rocks and mountains because

that's what planets are. But still, for a

video game, it's just not really that fun

flying around a big ball of rock that has

basically nothing on it apart from

materials and resources. So we'll try

going to a different planet and see if

things are any different there. So we

enter the atmosphere, we fly down, and

yep, it's pretty much the same thing,

just mountains and stuff. Nothing really

interesting. Most of these planets are

uninhabited, Some have little settlements

on it which are just inhabited with robots

or maybe random alien researchers. So the

entire point of going to different planets

is basically just to get resources.

Different planets have different kinds of

materials and minerals that you need to

mine so you can build stuff. Basically,

the whole game is just building stuff and

advancing down the tech tree so you can

unlock more buildings and gear and

decorations and furniture and technology

that you can unlock. And this all requires

loads and loads of minerals, copper,

metals, magnesium, gold, all that kind of

stuff you would expect from the elemental

table of elements. So for most of the

gameplay in this game, basically what

you'll be doing is mining materials and

resources so you can build yourself one of

these, a nice pretty house. So this is my

house. I built it all by myself up from

scratch, and you get a lot of selections

available to you such as walls and windows

and doors and stairs. You can make stuff

out of wood, timber, stone, metals. I

decided to go for wood because it looks

nice. So I built this decking and I built

this staircase up to the roof. It's got a

nice glass panoramic roof as well. And you

can see all the different kind of objects

you can build, different kind of

structures you can build to make your

house. You've just got these panels

basically, so you can choose from walls

and floors, and that's how you make

structures. Now to make all this stuff,

to make it so beautiful like my house is,

you see those big wide-open glass windows?

They look so great. And I made this little

bridge that goes to my landing pad for my

spaceship. So to be able to build all

this, you need loads and loads of

materials. And for most of the game, I

would say 80% of the game, you'll just be

standing around with your mining laser and

just mining stuff. So this is the mining

laser. For pretty much all of the game,

you'll be doing this. You'll be standing

there holding down your shoot button to

mine materials— carbon and this dust stuff

from rocks and sodium and that kind of

stuff— and just be standing there mining

everything. And it's just so boring as

gameplay. As a gameplay mechanic, this is

not fun. It feels tedious, it's laborious,

it's very boring. But that is basically

the entire game. If you want to get

anything done in the game, if you want to

unlock the nice stuff and build nice stuff

and improve your ship, you just have to

mine and mine and mine. And this is the

entire game. You stand there shooting your

laser at different objects. And sometimes

you could go and shoot some animals, or

you could go into space and do some space

battles, but they aren't really that fun.

Or you could go exploring around these

very barren, boring-looking planets. But

for the most part, you'll be shooting

rocks and collecting minerals, refining it

at your base so you can turn it into

different kinds of materials. And there's

quite a big tech tree. So you've got this

terminal at your home base, and the tech

tree is quite limited here, but you've got

quite a large selection that you can

unlock. And then if you summon this big

space station called Anomaly, which just

kind of appears out of nowhere, and you

can go onto it and there's other people on

there as well, makes the game feel like a

big MMO. And in there you've got even more

tech trees that you can unlock stuff. And

to unlock stuff, you need these data chip

cards, which are found buried. So you

would go all around the planet scavenging

these buried chips, data cards, so you can

unlock stuff in the tech tree, so you can

then make more stuff. And that's pretty

much the entire game. You go from planet

to planet, you harvest materials, you then

look for the data chips, the buried

technology stuff, and then you go and

unlock more stuff, and then you make

stuff, and then you make like a nice

building or a nice house. Basically, you

can make anything you want to. It is a bit

like Minecraft in the way that you've got

this unlimited amount of freedom. You even

have this mining laser which is actually

quite fun to use. So you can make tunnels

and you can dig into the ground, even

though it's kind of pointless. You can dig

these really deep tunnels and keep

tunneling down into the ground.

Eventually it does stop you. It's not like

Minecraft, there's no lava that you fall

into if you dig too deep. But it's

actually pretty fun just to mess around

with. So in conclusion, even though it's

pretty impressive with how huge the game

is and how much freedom you have to be

able to just leave a planet and fly off

into space and then land onto another

planet. And there's quite a lot of cool

things in the game like space stations you

can go and visit and do trading and see

other players on there, and there's loads

of things you can build. Apart from that,

the core gameplay of the game is pretty

boring and it's very dull. It's not really

exciting gameplay. If you think mining

rocks and mining materials is exciting,

maybe you would think this game's a lot of

fun. But once you've built everything you

wanted to build and you've unlocked

everything, I don't really see any reason

to keep playing this game because the core

gameplay is just not fun in itself. But I

guess for now I'll keep playing it, see

how far I can get into the game, see if it

gets any more challenging or any more

in-depth. Right now it feels a little bit

shallow, but we'll see.