No Man's Sky Reviews
No game, film, book or otherwise has been more effectively in capturing what the experience of exploring the universe must be.
Hello Games has created an overhyped, overpriced, and overall bad game. They had so many opportunities to make it better and lie less while advertising it, yet they didn’t. No Man’s Sky is ambitious, but rubbish.
No Man’s Sky doesn’t beat you around the head with lore. It doesn’t have the veritable library of fluff that seems prevalent in most RPGs nowadays. It lets you discover its secrets for yourself and the result is that it’s a far more rewarding game for it
While it doesn’t quite live up to some people’s expectations No Man’s Sky is still a great game and some of the things it does are truly a great achievement.
No Man's Sky is a better technical demo than it is a full priced game. A randomly generated universe sounds like an impressive concept, but the underlying variety and most of the gameplay design could have used more depth.
No Man's Sky has been seen as a repetitive money grab, but it is a game more about reaching out to the stars, literally.
While No Man's Sky does suffer from some technical glitches that occasionally impact play, it's built on solid foundations, and it starts out feeling genuinely fresh and exciting. As it progresses, however, the experience peters out with the realisation that exploration is really all there is to do. Each piece of the journey only exists to further the journey itself, and there's no real reward except for additional opportunities for exploration, and any sense of personal achievement is wiped out. There's definitely something exciting about this infinite world, but infinity begins to look the same after a while.
No Mans Sky would've made an excellent tech demo of something greater yet to come, or as a $20 independent game from a studio trying to find its footing. It certainly doesn't live up to what was once a marquee title during one of Sony's E3 press conferences, and it doesn't come close to justifying its $60 asking price. No Man's Sky had so much potential in delivering a game that compelled and rewarded unbridled exploration. That it fails to do so only makes its shortcomings more striking, and it's disappointing when compared to how the game was described leading up to its release.
One player may find themselves having a vastly different experience from another, or even being entirely unaware of mechanics they've never chosen to engage with. While the Switch version isn't without its flaws, the core experience is excellently translated. And if I've learned anything from Hello Games over the last six years, I'm hopeful this version will only get better with time.
The largely solitary experience of No Man's Sky is monotonous, easily frustrating and loses its charm way too early. For a game with the promise of all the wonders of the universe, it delivers so little.
The experience won’t suit every temperament, but to give up on an entire universe for inspiring awe too infrequently or for not inspiring the specific awe you’d prefer would be like abandoning bird-watching after a single hour without an exciting specimen.
Beautiful, innovative, and empty, it’s an amazing achievement but a boring game, all breadth and no depth.
I guess the strongest thing I can say is: I’m struggling to want to play No Man’s Sky again, let alone contemplating getting to the centre of its universe. Its saving grace could well be post-launch support, however.
It's very hard to judge this game. On one hand, it has limitless potential, but on the other it's lacking in just about every area. It fails to deliver on the promises made by the marketing team, but I'm not sure to what extent I can blame the developers of the game in this regard. NMS doesn't feel like an attempt to squeeze money out of people's wallets, it's not one of those games that's sold unfinished, with gaps filled in with DLC. It's a genuine attempt at trying something new and innovative, in many ways it's a work of art, it simply grew in scale so much since inception that it grew far beyond the developer's capacity to complete. I sincerely hope that they complete to build upon the solid foundation they've created so far because NMS is a diamond in the rough - it deserves to be polished and enjoyed.
After two years' efforts, No Man's Sky has finally become a playable game, with a much more vivid universe, interesting missions and a multiplayer mode. Although there are some problems about the duplication of playing and bad optimization, it is still worth a try, especially for Sci-Fi fans.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
Truly infinite, boundless in its possibilities, and presenting its players with a universe of possibilities, No Man's Sky is a triumph in what it sets out to do.
While the procedurally generated universe of No Man's Sky is wonderfully ambitious, this isn't a journey everybody will want to make
With the proper expectations and the potential for some engaging future updates No Man's Sky is a fun experience to dig into for a few weeks or can be a secondary game to play while focusing on other games. Structurally, it lacks the foundation to be a core game experience, as it is lacking in enough diverse gameplay objectives.
There are wonders indeed to be found in the No Man's Sky universe, but not everybody will be willing to put in the time and effort needed to discover them. This game is a technical marvel that patient, detail-oriented gamers will love.
No Man’s Sky is a shallow package of undercooked ideas that will ultimately go forgotten in a year full of other, better releases.