No Mans Sky (PS4) is a game which scale is inconceivably large to me. Beyond the concept of quintillions of planets the scale of the planets themselves is spectacular. Early on I set about walking from my spaceship and wandered for a good hour or so, I then found myself and hours walk to return to my ship, its hard to tell how far I could of walked by the distance on the planet alone seemed vast. The feeling I get whenever I play it is that i'm an insignificant blip, alone in the galaxy, before the game was released I expected that I would encounter worlds and creatures discovered by other players (and given humorous names no doubt) but this hasn't happened once for me, the places I'm visiting and sometimes bizarre creatures i'm seeing I can only assume will be exclusive to my game. This concept of scale and loneliness is at the same time everything I like and dislike about the game. I love the idea of being insignificant in a massive environment but would also like the chance to say to other players "here's a cool planet or creature I've seen check it out" I don't need to have them drop into my game, but some sort of coordinates or map would just make the countless hours i'm spending renaming flowers more worthwhile. The other problem with the game, is that just below the massive galaxy of worlds unrivalled by any game i've ever played is the fact its still a video game and in concept a lot like a lot of other games. The nature of it being a game, and to become playable through the formulas that create it is that every planet needs the right amount of resources to get off it. So every planet I've visited, while atheistically sometimes drastically different has been the same. I completely understand the reasoning for this, if it had been a game where I could conceivably land on a desolate planet with little or no chance of escape it would break and probably end my game. I'm sure I'm not in the majority but I wouldn't mind being completely stranded, if there was some sort of risk system where I was told the chances of landing on a planet and getting off it I'd be cool with that. Instead I know whatever planet I land on they'll be enough carbon, plutonium or whatever I need to get off it.
Whats exciting about the game though is the feeling of discovery, the planet I started on was perfectly crazy, in fact the first thing I saw was a stupid T Rex looking creature sat by a tree inanimate and glum, I snuck by him looking for resources there was little point as by some quirk of the game he'd become moulded into the environment. The rest of the planet was teaming with life, all kinds of weird animals darting about the place mocking the giant beast stuck in a rock looking at a tree. The next few planets I visited had little or no life at all, I questioned if I should have left that first planet at all. Eventually I found a planet almost completely covered in oceans, with small rock formations every once in a while just big enough to land my ship, this planet was also filled with crazed robot police ready to attack me whenever I attempted to gather resources, or as I found out defended myself from ravenous fish that filled the sea. This planet was harsh and unforgiving but also filled with jewels which are worth a high price when trading, gathering these was an arduous task, involving diving to the bottom of the ocean, fighting off attacking fish, picking up as many of the jewels that my limited storage would allow then hightailing it back to my ship with the mad robot police gunning me down. These are the worlds where the game shines, too often is the planet I land on either baron of any interest or just a variation on colour from another i've visited.
Space flight itself feels more like a loading screen between planets rather than a tuned element of the game. In that I never felt too far from a planet and could easily ramp up the speed of my ship to get to far off world with a tap of a button(s). It never really delivers on the idea of piloting a ship between worlds, although I guess the mechanic of piloting a spaceship through an endless void is a hard thing to make interesting. When combat is initiated in space (guaranteed to happen when I've got any valuable cargo) its more of a grind than something I enjoy, and the risks of loosing are non existent as I just return to the point of my death to gather my lost cargo.
The story in the game is all fairly basic stuff so far (i'm not rushing through it though so maybe more will happen) and the species of characters have interacted with to trade and converse are interesting, the learning of languages through exploration is a neat mechanic.
After saying quite a bit of negative stuff about the game I actually like it much more than I thought I would, I was convinced it wouldn't live up to the sheer scale of game that was muted in all the publicity. It's hard not to look in wonder at massive planets which sprawl on for miles and would take countless hours to traverse. Assuming that the game is updated as the months go by as promised I'll be really interested to see where it ends up, it's got a lot going for it.
