No Man's Sky

Man, I wanted to like this SO much and it was SUCH a letdown. I adore games with exploring, discovering, and collecting things, and I have a high tolerance for monotony, so I thought, "Yeah, everyone's saying it's a letdown, but I like stuff that everyone thinks is bad." Don't buy into it. There's nothing to discover. I'm SO grateful to the friend who let me play it so that I didn't spend $60 on this.. "Game."

If I had played this game at launch I might have a much different opinion but in 2021 this game is far better than just serviceable. I won't be dumping hundreds of hours into this game the way that some will but I finally feel like the promise of this game was delivered, even if it was too late for some.

one hour in: wtf what's with the hate this is amazing. three hours in: oh.

Never played the initial versions, but the current iteration works fine as something to play on mute while listening to podcasts

played a few diff updates, havent in a while. it was overwhelming to get through what i felt like was the necessary starting stuff. stuff got too annoying like grinding, generating, repairing (especially frigates). story woulda been good enough if it was after i'd got the starting stuff. exploring and naming planets, systems, and animals will hopefully entice me back one day and be fun. and multiplayer if my friends can skip the starting bs

NMS never fulfills what it sets out to do, even after all these years of constant updates.

It took me exactly 33 minutes to uninstall and never look back. What a boring mess.

lol

I stopped playing when I found a planet with massive gold deposits everywhere and spent hours mindlessly mining it all while wanting to kill myself. I then fell through the ground and the game crashed.

A textbook example of "scope creep". Too many promises made, not enough delivered on. Love the concept of the game, but the actual gameplay is largely dull and uninspiring.

Enjoyed the story. After a while, exploring vaguely similar planets gets repetitive.

played for 1.8 hours in VR before refunding thinking it would get better. all you do is walk it's incredibly dull and monotonous. there wasn't even anything interesting to look at

I got into this title after the 5.0 update, 8 years after its notoriously calamitous launch, so my experience is based on a purportedly much fuller and richer game world. And I do generally like sandbox games with exploration and crafting and all that. It just feels so grindy and toilsome, with most of the challenge being avoiding faceless hazards and reaching drab numeric milestones. Exploration is samey, and the creative element of the game isn't substantial or rewarding. Great UE though.

I mean, the fiasco that was launch aside, enough updates have been made that it's a perfectly serviceable mining simulator.

I don't care if it used to suck four or five years ago. The game is completely different now. It's everything it was promised to be and more.

Rating based on pre-2019 experiences with the game. I'll probably bump it up to my mid-tier if I play the "finished" version.

I was on that bandwagon upon the first reveal, I burnt that bandwagon after I played it. This game is BORING and doesn't deliver on some of its promises. The gameplay loop is incredibly superficial, the vast worlds you visit have almost no character, no reason to explore unless you want to just do jobs. I don't think Hello Games were the people to make this game. There's a great idea buried in here. But you know what isn't great? The shit at the center of the universe. Seriously? That's it?

As wide as an ocean but as shallow as a puddle. For some hours it could be a pretty good implementation of Geogaddi from Boards of Canada as a chill grinding game (Def. play it while listening to it!). I was obsessed for the first 20 hours, then suddenly the illusion collapsed, probably due to the repetitive gameplay loop, and the too repetitive variations (visuals, mechanics, etc). I'm pretty happy I experienced it. It really made me feel like a space explorer, specially in PSVR2. Almost great.

If it weren't for the terrible performance (mostly the constant stuttering), this would be my kind of game.