Unless you are totally excluded from today's social gaming world, all of you should know the long discussion taking place among the population in favor of No Man's Sky and the one against: between broken promises, wrong media campaign and many other small problems, the Civil War in August was precisely the struggle between those who have always thought that the game was innovative and those who did not. Let's open for a moment the various issues related to everything surrounding the title, and then go to review it: remember that, as the title says, this is the review of the game, not of its advertising campaign nor of price management. . A media storm is sweeping over Hello Games, No Man's Sky development studio, as according to many users, Sean Murray (CEO of the software house) has promised features of the game which then, at the time of release, have disappeared or , even worse, they have been masked. What is not clear to most of the users is that No Man's Sky is a game out of the ordinary: I would define it more as an experience, not given by an accurate level design or by a study of precise mechanics, but by the mathematical creativity of the procedural system that, as if by magic, assembles billions of planets that, from time to time, the players visit .
Of course, being told that it will be possible to meet other players (albeit in rare cases) and then seeing that instead the game is purely in single player leaves a bitter taste in the mouth: but No Man's Sky had this very big problem. It was shown as a triple A title, when it actually started out as an indie (later funded by Sony) by a 15-person development studio. So, while we will analyze some factors such as the selling price and the game features in the review, we will leave out every possible detail regarding the general hatred that the web is throwing up on the issue: we also hope that, by reading these lines, our users will be able to understand what he is getting into when buying the game, avoiding both unpleasant inconveniences and mass refunds (as is happening these days).
If you expect a title from No Man's Sky with outlined objectives, missions, sidequests and everything that modern video games have taught us, then forget it: the work of Hello Games is a hymn to exploration, an unexpected and endless journey where, armed only with a gun to collect materials, you can really choose what to do. Like an explorer who enters unknown areas, your character will start from an indefinite point in the universe and, from time to time, after completing an initial mini tutorial, will be able to move to a new system, where he can acquire materials to continue to move. However, a summary objective is present, that is to reach the center of the universe, but reducing this title to a simple walk towards point B starting from point A is senseless. The magic of No Man's Sky is realized when you meet alien races with a particular language, when you land on a planet and fortunately you will find a huge boulder of gold to be mined in order to sell at exorbitant amounts, when space pirates attack yours. ship loaded with sweaty booty. In fact, in every landing, the possibility that some detail will capture you, from the breathtaking view to the blood red flower you sample, is really high. The possibility of being able to give names to every planet, solar system and animal or vegetable is also really fun: of course the percentage of presence of these will vary, and you can find flora and fauna from the most original to the most similar to reality.
Of course, we're not talking about the perfect title: the game has many problems. It goes from a simple text pop-up speech and graphic bugs for the technical part, to conceptual problems of game design such as the limited speed of the character and some polygons that remain hovering in the air. As for gameplay, you will spend the first few hours in a continuous state of amazement, but after those hours you will begin to notice some repetitive patterns: the generation of worlds, objects, flora and fauna in a procedural way inevitably leads to repetitions which in some moments cause a little boredom. Another flaw from a conceptual point of view is the inventory management: inspired by that of Destiny, it puts the player in a constant situation of lack of free space, and only an upgrade found around the various planets or purchased from the merchant can help you. Too bad this situation will not allow you to have enough space to acquire the resources, causing you dead moments in which you will have to return to the spaceship, fly to the port of the relative solar system and sell items.
You may be wondering: No Man's Sky what is it? Is it worth it? The answer in its complexity is very easy: No Man's Sky is an indie video game that perfectly embodies the exploratory philosophy of Star Trek, launching you into a universe generated by a mathematics that tastes of artistic. The possibilities are endless but the features are few: this scheme, seen and reviewed in the many survival games playable on Steam in Early Access, is nothing extraordinary or deficient. An adequate marketing campaign (avoiding talking about unimplemented features), clear and crystalline it could at least have avoided unpleasant misunderstandings who are bringing the video game in question and Hello Games to the social network's scaffold. Most likely we will still hear about No Man's Sky, and with as many chances some future game will be able to take what is good and use it to evolve, from title to title, the game concept seen as a visual experience. suggestive.
