Nadie ha calificado este análisis como útil todavía
Recomendado
0.0 h las últimas dos semanas / 268.6 h registradas (48.2 h cuando escribió la reseña)
Publicada el 30 SEP 2018 a las 5:06 p. m.
Actualizada el 27 MAR a las 8:32 p. m.

Update March 2024: It's been my intention to update this review for nigh-on two years now. When I first wrote this review back in 2018 the NEXT update had dropped which compelled me to pick up NMS and needless to say I was disappointed and put off by the grind and the simplistic gameplay loop.

However, since then I have gone back to NMS a handful of times and found myself enjoying it far more thanks to the years of non-stop major updates by Hello Games and their expeditions which eliminate much of the grind (most of the time).

While each content update has varied in quality and depth, the cumulative effect has been to give NMS the variety it so desperately needed. Now with yet another major update I am finally updating this review. I am keeping the original below for reference but I cannot, in good conscience, leave my negative review unchanged. No Man's Sky is truly a labor of love for Hello Games and they deserve nothing but praise for remaining steadfast in their support of this game.

NMS may never unseat your personal favorite space trading sim, but it is a technical and artistic achievement that brings thousands of players together to play and explore this ginormous universe that HG has created. It's not the deepest space sim, nor does it aim for realism, but it's fun and, in the end, isn't that why we play games?

______________________________________________________________

No Man's Sky is the first game in a decade or more of gaming that I truly regret purchasing. I have always had a soft spot for space exploration / trading / combat games - Elite on DOS was one of the first games I ever played on PC - and No Man's Sky, despite its very rough launch (and overblown promises) has been on my radar. My intrigue piqued with the NEXT update and I decide to jump in with both feet only to find myself falling into a pit of quicksand.

The game is beautiful, and no doubt countless screenshots from the developers and community are great at evoking the wonder and sense of scale that NMS gives you very early on. But then as you play, the curtain is slowly pulled back to reveal a very shallow and unsatisfying gaming experience.

Firstly, let me just say of all the open world, survival games on the market that I've played, NMS has got to have one of the WORST introductions of any game in its class. Unlike Minecraft or 7 Days to Die (or many others), where you are dropped in a relatively safe area and encouraged to collect resources in order to craft the necessary tools to open up the rest of the game to you, NMS literally throws you to the wolves. You're dropped on an environmentally hostile planet with limited oxygen and life support which need O2 and sodium to recharge, you also need basic metal to repair your tools and your ship (until then you're essentially grounded), which you're told to mine with your mining laser.

Oh okay, simple enough. Except if you mine for more than 30 seconds, uh oh, here comes an insidious sentinel robot (which inhabit every planet you're on), which almost immediately begins to attack you if you mine too much. Naturally your first instinct is to fight back, doing so will reward you with two more robots bearing down on your position. Fighting them unleashes another wave of robots, this time three and so forth. So basically the lesson to be gleamed from all this is: don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight. Run.

So you run. And you run. And you run (♫♪so far away♪♫). and then you hide, and then you mine, and then you run some more until you've fixed your ship. But your running isn't over yet because then you're treated with a never-ending breadcrumb trail of quests and hints on unveiling the inner mysteries of the game, something to do with ancient aliens called Anomaly (or something like that) and getting to the galactic center.

So you travel from one planet to another, you upgrade your ship, you engage in some space combat, but after a dozen hours or more it all starts to feel the same. Almost every planet is inhabited by procedurally generated animals (along with aforementioned sentinels). Space is peppered with conveniently (if unrealistically) placed asteroid fields which you will eventually mine, but the mining isn't for making money not really, it's just another means for producing things for the carrot-on-the-stick you're chasing.

This grind - and yes, NMS is extremely grindy for what is essentially a single-player game - wouldn't be so bad if the other aspects of the game were at least interesting. But trading in the game is relatively pointless. Mining is an extremely tedious test of your patience. Space combat is a joke, as even tough enemies seem to just seem to flight in tight circles while taking grazing shots at you. Character interaction is almost nil in the early-to-mid game because you have to learn each alien species' language, so any exchanges with them are purely guessing games of "pick the right response."

And for a space game NMS has one of the worst navigational systems I've ever seen in the genre, as it is almost non-existent; the system that is there becomes awash in numerous, sometimes dozens, of floating markers that you need to somehow hover over and tag and fly toward. The Discovery tab they have for naming/uploading systems to the discovery service is useless for navigation. So if you want to see how many planets are in a particular system their names and what is on those planets -- well good luck with that buddy -- because you literally have to spin in space and look at each planet manually and then fly there.

Ultimately, NMS' gameplay loop of mine/crafting/exploration is fundamentally flawed. Dozens of hours in other open world / survival / crafting games makes you feel like you've accomplished something; you might have a fort or home to be proud of, perhaps a working resource farm of some sort, you have amassed some nice weapons that help you fight off enemies.

I get none of this from NMS. I have 20-30 hours in the game now and I feel like I'm still chasing the next clue while wandering through another random system whose importance is meaningless in the vast sea of stars that make up NMS' galaxy. Part of me just wants to uninstall now and hope a future update fixes this. Part of me wants to go back to see if I can finally unlock one piece of the puzzle but the interminable grinding makes it feel more like a chore than an adventure.

5/10 -- wait for a sale if you really must play No Man's Sky but otherwise skip it until the developers fix its fundamental flaws.
¿Te ha sido útil esta reseña? No Divertida Premio
45 comentarios
Rex Bellator 29 AGO a las 1:50 p. m. 
Thank you for the kind words Sophnaza :8bitheart:
76561199763973621 29 AGO a las 11:52 a. m. 
Just wanna say, your review rocks! It's so full of insights and cool stuff. You really nailed it
AgitatedLifeform 31 OCT 2018 a las 6:08 a. m. 
@Rex Bellator I completely agree with your review. While there are parts of NMS I do enjoy mostly base buidling and such the game lacks an overall "fun" feeling. Take subnautica for example (It also has some issues mostly bugs). With subnautica you always have a purpose to go to a new area and explore. There is always something driving you whether it be the story, resources, or cool unique creatures/biomes to discover. That is something NMS severely lacks.

So far I have seen the same exact creatures in nearly every system. Adding wings to an otherwise clone of another creature doesn't make it exciting suddenly. Also the solar sytems to me just feel so empty. Devoid of any real activity.

Overall I like some of the things being added, but if the core elements don't get overhauled then NMS will always be a game I wish I could enjoy.
Homiccus 31 OCT 2018 a las 12:23 a. m. 
I'm gonna play the troll here and use the uninformed "So you say" routine.
@Taren: Sooo... you're saying that going through three layers of menu to change the view perspective from 1st ro 3rd person is better than just pushing a single button? Re-mappable, convenient keystroke?
Oh wait, I remember now. "Any game that requires more controls than fit on a standard gamepad is crap".

I support Rex Bellator's point of view wholeheartedly. Literally everything in NMS is stretched out to waste my time as a player. Even "late-game" content like Frigates. Do I really need to land on each and every f@#!ing damaged ship I own and walk 500 miles to the damaged component to manually repair it? What's the angle here?
Tarenn 31 OCT 2018 a las 12:08 a. m. 
Also for anyone who stumbles upon this, havent experienced his issue with waypoints, and menus are fine with patience to learn them and the muscle memory
Tarenn 31 OCT 2018 a las 12:04 a. m. 
Alright you didnt comment to try to enoy the game or give criticism, you just came to hate because you felt wronged for a weird reason. Was very clear after the first sentence, dont need to read more. Do us a favor and leave your review as is.
Rex Bellator 30 OCT 2018 a las 10:11 p. m. 
Been getting a lot of defensive NMS fans in these comments. Again, I am not calling NMS garbage. I gave it a middling score because that's exactly what it deserves based on its problems and design flaws, which even fans should be willing to acknowledge.

It's an extremely ambitious game and I applaud Hello Games for continuing to expand it, but that doesn't mitigate NMS' issues. That's why I give it a a "Not Recommended," especially at a $59.99 price point. I could not in good conscience give this game a 'Recommended' review in its current state, at least since the NEXT update, I have not tried Abyss (Abyss looks like it has nice additions but it appears it does not touch on my problems with NMS).
Rex Bellator 30 OCT 2018 a las 10:00 p. m. 
Taren, let's just assume for a moment that what you propose is true: even if I approached the game the wrong way (whatever that means), that still leaves a number of unpolished gameplay elements in the game.

The fact that you're forced to be in space to just look at a galactic map is nonsensical. Or having to walk/drive to markers on planets because those markers disappear when you get into your ship. Or having to rotate in space in order to select the quest marker you want to tag (especially painful when you have dozens of markers onscreen at once). This is all done in order to make the experience "intuitive" but it has the complete opposite effect. A game as big as NMS shouldn't have such a terrible system. This is the mark of a game's lack of polish.

Then of course there are the terrible PC controls. Why do I need to go through a menu to turn on my flashlight or switch camera modes? Unpolished.
Rex Bellator 30 OCT 2018 a las 10:00 p. m. 
Same for the grinding, having to grind hours and hours to mine copper for chromatic metal for instance, is just a shallow gameplay loop in order to pad the game's sparse content. Same for the persistent and annoying sentinels that serve no purpose but to annoy you and slow you down. All these design decisions were made to mask NMS's flaws, which are: lack of content and lack of an overall design structure. Because - wait for it - it's unpolished. These points are the smoking gun to NMS' design flaws. It has nothing to do with *how* one plays.

If you're willing to stomach these problems, that's great, good for you! Some people drink their own urine but that doesn't mean those who prefer not to don't know how to drink liquid.

At least have enough self-awareness to understand that your tolerance for this game's flaws are an acquired taste. NMS is hardly some arcane work of art that requires intense study to appreciate.
Tarenn 30 OCT 2018 a las 9:16 p. m. 
Honestly, I think you took the wrong approach to the game if you wanted the survival experience. your best play is probably to explore for a little bit, find a nice planet with some good resources, looks nice and all, find a little spot you like and set up shop. keep in mind im only replying to see if i can get you to enjoy the game, 60 dollars gone sucks, i just feel like based on your response you couldve truly enjoyed the game, but you played it based on what the game seemed like you were meant to do.