"No Man's Sky" is procedural sci-fi exploration, and *purdy*.

demagogue on 19/8/2016 at 04:11

Criticism aside, it appears they did pretty much get away with it for the opening week, so their strategy technically worked.

I think they cashed in just making a game type lots of people want but they were the first one in town. I see lots of clones coming in the next few years that I bet will be better, but they won't get that boost for being first.

Pyrian on 19/8/2016 at 04:49

I'll bet we'll see a lot of clones that aren't even as good. ;)

henke on 19/8/2016 at 05:34

Quote Posted by Brethren

It's been interesting following this game's release. Seems like a deeply flawed title

I haven't bought it either, but it's been interesting following, yes. I wouldn't call it "deeply flawed" though. It's pretty clear that it functions as intended, and most of the deviations from earlier trailers are due to technical limitations(getting a thing like this running smoothly on one system is tricky enough, launching it on both PC and PS4 in the same week is a bold move for a small indie team) or are just gameplay design decisions. I don't like how casual the flight model is, with your ship automatically hovering a certain distance above the terrain without being able to go lower, unlike in the first trailers where it could fly really close, but I realize that this isn't because the devs somehow messed up. It's pretty clear they made it like that to make the game more accessible to gamers who aren't into flight sims. As nicked described it a while back, it's a "casual space game". A niche well worth filling, it turns out.

Starker on 19/8/2016 at 05:56

I'd take deeply flawed but interesting over a little flawed but boring any day. Alpha Protocol, Deadly Premonition, a David Cage game... as long as it's entertaining I have no regrets.

Thirith on 19/8/2016 at 07:19

For me it's a case-by-case thing. Having played Heavy Rain, I don't need to play another Dabid Cage game any time soon... but I'm glad there are people who fill these niches and who try out things. They could've handled NMS's pre-launch phase better, but I consider gaming richer for covering a wide range and allowing for ambition and experiments, even when some of the latter fail. I prefer an industry that produces iffy outliers like Molyneux to one where everything falls within a much narrower spectrum.

EvaUnit02 on 23/8/2016 at 06:10

Quote Posted by Starker

Also, despite that clickbait video title, the game is actually nothing like Aliens: Colonial Marines. For all its flaws, it actually is a coherent game that mostly works and approximately corresponds to what a small indie team would be capable of. It just falls short of expectations, some of which were inferred from vague statements or completely made up.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTTPlqK8AnY) Ahem. "For all its flaws, it actually is a coherent game that mostly works" could used to describe A:CM not too long after launch as well. You come off like a Kool Aid drinking shill.

nicked on 23/8/2016 at 06:39

New patch today. Not sure what's fixed this time, but it's not crashed once for me since the 1.04 patch.

Still loving the game. I can also highly recommend it as a social game - had a few great evenings recently of just getting a bunch of friends round the one TV, passing the controller round, and coming up with hilarious animal names by committee. You can't really permanently fuck up or lose any progress (barring bugs), so it's not like you lose anything having loads of people playing it.

Sulphur on 23/8/2016 at 07:03

The only time I can stand procedural generation is when the gameplay mechanics are strong enough that it doesn't matter whether you're playing with something algorithmically generated (Minecraft, and maybe FTL), or there's a generous mix of authorial intervention with the random crap (XCOM). A toybox is only as good as the toys in it.

Janky survivalist games set in environments decided by a random seed? Blergh.

Starker on 23/8/2016 at 07:56

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

And you come off as an edgy teenager whose opinion is based on clickbait youtube videos. If you had read my review in this thread, you would have seen that I was highly critical of the game, but I guess reading is too difficult for kids these days. The fact is that the game mostly does what it's supposed to, terrible PC launch notwithstanding. It's not as exciting as people expected, but it's not an unmitigated disaster that some people would have you believe.

There are actually more balanced reactions out there beside the circlejerk whipped up frenzies:

[video=youtube;_g2FmxIN1Ns]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g2FmxIN1Ns[/video]

Oh, and I went to look at the big lie list that a lot of the outrage videos are based on and it turns out that some of the missing features actually are in the game. For example, different ships behaving differently: (https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4yz8eg/psa_your_ship_looks_affect_its_survivability_in/)

henke on 23/8/2016 at 11:48

Look at that, someone made (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/08/23/no-mans-sky-low-flight-mod/#more-392187) a mod that lets you fly closer to the ground! I was thinking I'd probably get this for PS4 when I eventually pick it up in a sale, but if the PC community keeps making more mods like this I might change my tune.