No Man's Sky I - 18,446,744,073,709,551,616

[Asmodean_]

Since we don't seem to have a thread about it already. For those wondering, 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 is the number of planets that exist in No Man's Sky.

F'ly A'd Qs:

What is No Man's Sky?
No Man's Sky is an exploration-survival-action game in SPACE. It's technically multiplayer but since there are so many planets the chances of running into another player are astronomically* small. In the game, you explore different planets, logging flora and fauna information for upload to The Atlas. You can also gather blueprints and materials to upgrade your ships.

When can I get it?
PS4 (USA): 9 August
PS4 (Europe): 10 August
PC (Worldwide): 12 August.

How are there 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets?
18,446,744,073,709,551,616, or 18e18, is 2⁶⁴, which is the total number of values that can be stored in a long (8 bytes) unsigned (only positive numbers) integer. Each number is a seed for a random number generator (you'll get a random sequence of numbers but for a constant seed the numbers will always stay those numbers) that determines the planet's size, temperature, distance from star, etc.

Insert speculation/reviews/gameplay/reactions/theories/overanalysis/etc. here.

*Pun always intended.

[Flickerdart]

How does this compare to Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen?

[Eldan]

According to first reviews... not necessarily well.

The strengths of No Man's Sky:
Huge. As some have said, every person on Earth has more planets to themselves than there are people on Earth.
No loading times. At least, so they promise (it seems flight times between systems are large enough that they might as well be loading times.) You go seamlessly from underwater to land, to caves, to surface to atmospheric flight to space flight to interstellar flight.
Creature variation: creatures are randomly generated, so should theoretically be different everywhere. So are space stations, planets, biomes, plants, etc.

The weaknesses, from first reviews tickling in:
It feels empty. There's just not enough to do and a lot of it is very static. You can upgrade your ship and weapons, but they still feel samey. NPCs just stand around and stay where they are, the landscape doesn't have physics (there's a few examples of people shooting out the bottom of the hill and the top continuing to float, like in worms) and after a while, most people seem to get the feeling that they've seen it all.
It doesn't look as pretty as people thought. Long-distance graphics look pretty jagged on a lot of systems and there's a lot of pop-ups. And textures are pretty low-quality, so a lot of things look either muddy or flat.
The combat isn't any good.

It's decent for walking around and looking at things, but maybe not for long-term play.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2016...eview-10-hours

There's also this review. It seems to mirror a few thoughts I had, after first hearing about this game ages ago, then seeing the latest trailer after more or less forgetting about it for a long game. I was hoping for exploration, we're getting survival.

[Sajiri]

I think there are a lot of people out there that expect something from NMS that it was just never intended to be. It's an exploration game. Although the patch that came out for launch seemed to address a lot of the complaints people that got leaked early copies had, and the next update is meant to be adding base building and the ability to add large freighter ships, so this gives me hope that HG will continue to add features in that people want so long as they dont fundamentally change the vision they had for their game.

As for me, I'm super excited for this, because I've really just been wanting an open world (universe?) game that I can just relax with on my couch. My PS4's been getting a bit dusty lately. I preordered mine that was the cheapest deal for ps4 in aus but it only does delivery, so I will hopefully be getting it today. It's meant to be on an overnight courier but it was picked up from it's location at 11.30 last night so...we'll see how that goes.

[Eldan]

Am I the only one who wouldn't want base building in this game? Base building keeps you in one place. That seems antithetical to an exploration game. Spaceship building, maybe. I remember modding that into Starbound. (I built a space ship with a green house and collected plants from every planet I visited.)

[Narkis]

Am I the only one who wouldn't want base building in this game? Base building keeps you in one place. That seems antithetical to an exploration game. Spaceship building, maybe. I remember modding that into Starbound. (I built a space ship with a green house and collected plants from every planet I visited.)

Nope, I agree completely. Only way I could see base-building working well with the game would be with something like a mothership that would move with you. A fixed base really does go against the spirit of the game.

[Sajiri]

I think as an option it would be nice. Considering the point of the game, I can't see it becoming a necessity or what it will involve. Hopefully it'll be something that if you arent interested in base building, you dont have to do it, but for those that do want it they'll get something out of it. Or maybe it just has the same features as the freighter, the difference being people who find planets they really like can settle there

[factotum]

I think there are a lot of people out there that expect something from NMS that it was just never intended to be. It's an exploration game.

The review linked to in Eldan's post says entirely the opposite? He says he was *expecting* it to be an exploration game, but it turns out to be more of a survival one where you have to do lots of busywork to keep your ship fuelled, your suit hazard protection active, etc. That might well be the case for a large number of the people voicing negative opinions about the game--they were expecting a super-huge Journey and got Don't Starve in space instead.

[Sajiri]

The review linked to in Eldan's post says entirely the opposite? He says he was *expecting* it to be an exploration game, but it turns out to be more of a survival one where you have to do lots of busywork to keep your ship fuelled, your suit hazard protection active, etc. That might well be the case for a large number of the people voicing negative opinions about the game--they were expecting a super-huge Journey and got Don't Starve in space instead.

I wasnt necessarily referring to Eldan (sorry I realise now how the way I said it right after his post came off that way), I mean there were lots of people out there who expected it to be some mmo, AAA space simulation game when it wasnt. Yeah it's survival and exploration. That said my copy finally showed up and it didnt feel too bad with resources, other than I never seemed to be able to take off anytime I got in my ship. I dont know if it was just the planet I was on didn't have enough of that specific resource or not.

[Anteros]

I haven't played the game, and probably won't buy it. From what I've seen of watching other people play, it just doesn't look or feel very polished. I feel like I'm watching a game from the PS1/PS2 era. Sure it's enormous, but that's not enough when everything feels the same, and what content does exist has no depth.

[Eldan]

The review linked to in Eldan's post says entirely the opposite? He says he was *expecting* it to be an exploration game, but it turns out to be more of a survival one where you have to do lots of busywork to keep your ship fuelled, your suit hazard protection active, etc. That might well be the case for a large number of the people voicing negative opinions about the game--they were expecting a super-huge Journey and got Don't Starve in space instead.

Yeah, that. I used to like the idea of survival games (there's still some I love, Miasmata is one of the best games ever), but so many of them are just endlessly repeating busywork. I really hope NMS doesn't end up that way.

And yeah, I'd love an exploration mode. Something, like, say, your suit and ship batteries regenerate over time, resources are for trading and buying upgrades. That would make the game a lot more palatable instantly.

Not that I've played it. Pure conjecture so far.

[Lord Raziere]

According to first reviews... not necessarily well.

The strengths of No Man's Sky:
Huge. As some have said, every person on Earth has more planets to themselves than there are people on Earth.

That huge!? I mean I watched TFS play it and thought it was big, but so great that one could literally go an entire game without meeting a single person even if everyone on Earth played it? thats just freaking ridiculous.

and the fact that its so static and whatnot....hm...I guess its a good idea, but the execution still needs work. like making it a little smaller. and adding more things to do to make it feel like a more fleshed out world.

I mean sure I might see the appeal in going around naming various things and setting up a bunch of signatures and whatnot for other people to see if they ever get there, but when is that ever going to happen? It would take so long to pay off. as well as any attempt to find someone else or their little marks.

[Eldan]

Well, there would be places people congregate to. As most people will move towards the center of the galaxy, meeting other players there should be more likely. But yes, meeting another player will be a rare occurence indeed.

[darksolitaire]

You can't meet other players. Even if you are in the same place, you won't see them.

[Wookieetank]

So this is the first game in a long time that I've binge-played in one setting (almost 11.5 hours straight yesterday). It does have a bit of a slow start, but it works well I felt, what with the whole you crash landed and have to fix your ship bit. Once you've gotten some exploration under your belt, and managed to upgrade your mining-tool/laser gun, resource gathering becomes almost an after thought. I've run out of fuel more from forgetfulness than anything, and when I can just hop back out and find & mine fuel within a couple of minutes, its not a huge amount of effort for something that at least for me adds to the submersion. The only issue I've been running into is being torn between continuing exploring this planet I'm on for cool and unusual things, or going to a new planet to find cool and unusual things. Much as I'd like some sort of vehicle to travel faster on the surface, I almost wonder if it'd be detrimental to the feel of the game.

[MintyNinja]

I got about 5 hours out of it last night after work and I can agree with most people: It's amazingly huge, and somewhat empty. It's survival and exploration in complementary parts. Base-building would be nice, if only to create shelters for those following after you or near a dangerous cave system.

What rocked my world was the ability to change the landscape with plasma grenades.

Spoiler: A story...

Show

So I was cruising by this damn pretty planet and hopped out to investigate an abandoned building. There's no hazards in the air and the temperature is moderately comfortable, one of the first nice planets I've seen. There's an overabundance of Flora and Fauna and soon I'm glancing around the little landing spot. I find a small cave that pulls a U-turn a ways in and comes out the other side of my clearing. Well, that's not interesting, so I went to the bend in the cave and used my new plasma grenades to pop a hole in the wall. Lo and behold, there's a huge cave complex right there. I do what anyone would and hop in, intent on exploring. One of the prime elements I was pulling out of this rock was Aluminium which sells nicely, and so that's what I was doing. However, I found my very first instance of hostile creatures: a praying mantis looking creature of about small size. They've since been named Formantics, by the way. Either way, I shoot it down, scan the body and realize that yeah, these are hostile/volatile/wanna eat my face. Well, being the brave idiot I am, I continued exploring...

And then there were more of them, popping up out of the ground... in a cave system. I couldn't kill them all, or nearly any of them as I was still learning the controls of switching firing modes (it's Triangle). I ran as fast and as far as my wheezy little legs could get me and soon they were left behind. I was low on health and dead on shields, so I took my multi-tool and grenaded a gopher hole of my own right out to the surface. I was quite a bit further from my ship than I intended, but I got back to the safety of low orbit in one piece. Barely.

[Sajiri]

I went back to my first planet because honest, I just found it really pretty and relaxing. I was happily scanning everything I came across, trying to feed some of these little alien critters that would run away from me, when I spotted what looked like a thorny vine over a rock and went over to scan it too. Then of course the thorny vine suddenly shoots upright and smacks me off the cliff I was walking along. I suddenly decided it was time for a new planet.

[factotum]

Wow. Jim Sterling put up a 5/10 review of the game, and his website has almost immediately been DDOSed. Apparently there are people out there for whom this game is so important that any dissenting comment must be shut down as quickly as possible...

[Forum Explorer]

You can't meet other players. Even if you are in the same place, you won't see them.

Well that's disappointing. And pointless. Why have it be online at all then?

Anyways, unless I can create a series of structures proclaiming my glory on every planet, I'm not all that interested. Maybe if I can get it for cheap off of Steam.

[Rodin]

As the reviews for this game come in, it's increasingly reminding me of Spore. A game where you start as a microbe and then go all the way up to conquering the galaxy? GREAT! Except...by spreading the scope so far, the substance on each individual level suffers to the point that the overall meal is unsatisfying.

No Man's Sky looks to be the same - they built a beautiful world, and that's truly a remarkable accomplishment. But by doing so, they made it impossible to actually fill that game world with enough stuff to do, and left the gameplay lacking.

I've been excited for the game, but once bitten twice shy, as they say. I'm definitely waiting for final reviews rather than these preliminary ones, but it's not looking good. "Beautiful but empty" didn't cut it for me with Spore, and I don't think it's going to do so here either.

[Anteros]

Well that's disappointing. And pointless. Why have it be online at all then?

Anyways, unless I can create a series of structures proclaiming my glory on every planet, I'm not all that interested. Maybe if I can get it for cheap off of Steam.

Yeah. It seems like the type of game I might drop a few dollars on to play around in, but it's not worth 60.00 to me.

[NichG]

It feels like it'd be a good time to step back and try to actually understand what the soul of 'exploration' is. I feel that games like Elite: Dangerous (and maybe NMS, though I'll have to play to know for sure since its clear a lot of the current discussion is shaped by very strong expectations) primarily try to be very big, and to have a lot of combinatoric variation. I don't think that's getting the point.

I feel like exploration rests on a couple of key points, that have to do with how I as the player engage with and understand the thing I'm exploring.

1) Where I choose to explore should matter. The north is icy, the south is hot, the east is war-torn, the west is the ancient cradle of civilization, etc. This has to do with feeling that travel is meaningful. If going to a new system just means another random roll of the dice, I'm not going to really notice or care about whether systems are nearby or far away. I might as well go next-door and save the time and fuel. So immediately the universe, however big it may technically be, collapses into only two objects: 'where I've been' and 'where I haven't been'.

2) What I find when I explore should relate to me/create a difference for me. If I go searching for a new planet in, say, Starbound, I might make connections like 'cool, it looks like deserts are easier to mine because when you mine gravel it flows, and that frees the ore automatically' and then 'cool, I found a new mineral that lets me build X thing' and even 'I found a desert with that mineral I want, so now when I want more I'll go here rather than other places'. When you run out of new ways to create a difference for the player, exploration and discovery becomes much less enticing. This doesn't have to be a material benefit, it can be knowledge. For example, when exploring somewhere gives me a lead to follow up on somewhere else, or teaches me something about the bigger picture that helps me narrow down my choices of where to explore. Knowledge is I think one of the big missed opportunities - so many games have something where you hit a button and it gives you a summary of all the details of an object that the game will ever give you. But you could have games where readings, vision modes, etc give systematic patterns of information about objects that the player has to actually learn to interpret - the more they explore, the better they get at interpreting the readings.

3) What I find when I explore should relate to itself. If I see a lot of disconnected things, I'll stop paying attention to the details of them because I'm being taught that the details don't contain any information about the bigger picture. So when things relate to each-other, there's a sense of a bigger pattern that can be learned and followed. Ideally, that pattern isn't just a set of facts, but its something causal which you can follow up to more and more significant causes. E.g. its not just that dwarf Bilm Brockendweller came to The Mooring of the Slanted Oats in 457 because the titan Oombeck killed his wife, its that Bilm's journal hints at a war between dwarves and titans and by retracing his footsteps you find the battlefield where it all happened, where you can find evidence that the war was caused when the titans were released from their prison, and so on.

Corrolary of 2,3) One of the very best kinds of exploration is when what I find creates a difference in the relationship between me and what I've already found. I've been seeing all these regular polyhedron shaped objects as I've been exploring, but in Gimbal's Reach I find something that suggests that those polyhedra are map markers for an ancient empire, so now I can go back and reinterpret those things with a new meaning. Or, there were these red plants that looked different than everything and I've been using them for medicine, but it turns out that using something I found elsewhere I can actually talk with them and encourage them to grow in distant locations before I travel there. This gives an impression of depth rather than just breadth - the idea that this thing you see might actually have more to it than you currently can know just by looking at it.

4) The eventual product of exploration should be agency and real change. Exploring a bunch of places to return home and nothing is different or being only able to use what I find for my character directly means that at some point I'll start to feel like the exploration doesn't matter. I might be finding power-ups and getting better at navigation, but all that ability and understanding and agency that I'm accumulating has to be 'for' something. The way I tend to prefer this circle to be closed is, first one goes out into the wide world and is changed by it, then one comes back and what they found enables them to meaningfully change the world. So I do think that its important to have a touch-stone or base or fleet or something, which you can return to and which is altered by the products of your exploration. That way, there's a means to show the player changes. For a more epic scope, you could instead have the things discovered through exploration actually influence the universe systematically and globally as a whole - when you find and activate 8 Cthonian Ruins, the Hidden Planets emerge from the darkness between dimensions and begin to be found in some systems, etc. Terraria did this pretty well with how progressing through the bosses would actually alter the terrain and rewrite the game world.

5) Novelty isn't the same as combinatoric variety. This is the really tricky one. Just making a lot of procedural content doesn't actually make a lot of content. If I think about games that feel 'full of things to discover' to me, they're games where when I've been playing I think I understand what kinds of experiences I'll have and then the game repeatedly says 'nope, I'm not done showing you new stuff yet'. Often its new kinds of gameplay, new ways to interact with the world, new things to take into account, etc. Finding a hidden character, a minigame, etc - something that says 'this thing really is different from all the other things'. Exploration is in part driven by a feeling that if you haven't gone and checked, something like that might exist somewhere.

In a very confined game like a traditional RPG, its actually easier to create this because the boundaries are so visible and the shadows can almost be enumerated. Players have been taught that until you've gone everywhere, tried everything, there might still be secrets to find. And then almost every shadow can in fact contain some kind of secret (even if its just an easy-to-miss treasure or something like that), reinforcing and rewarding that exploratory behavior. The occasional over-sized secret like a hidden dungeon helps expand that illusion that there could be an entire hidden world if only you found the right access point.

But in an extremely open game, players cannot look into every shadow, cannot even count the shadows. There will always be more shadows than places the player has gone, and they can't all contain true novelty. So the problem is, most of the time when a player goes to look, the game is going to be telling them 'nope, its more of the same, you're not likely to be rewarded for looking'. Or you place those novelties everywhere, but then the player will discover a ton at the start where they'll get lumped in with the novelty of playing the game itself for the first time, but then less and less as they play - it becomes too front-loaded. So instead, I think you have to use a different metaphor here. Rather than rewarding someone for being particularly thorough with the game as a whole, I think the key point is to reward attention. Have true novelties, have them be hard to chance onto, but have it be quite easy to chance onto the threads that one can follow to systematically find them.

I don't know how much NMS has hit these points since I have yet to play it, but it feels like a lot of the way these procedural exploration games miss has to do with these points.

[Sajiri]

So here's what I got up to today.

Spent a lot of time on a planet that looked a lot like my first one with different colours. Hilly, rolling grasslands, occasional forests, some cute looking deer creatures I fed that dug up rare resources for me. Found an alien that traded me a new and better multi-tool. After a couple hours of trying to find everything I could there, I headed out to sell my haul at the space station and got attacked by space pirates(?) and died ): Took out two of them with me at least. Found my missing cargo, and decided it was time to jump systems.

After my first two or three planets that looked very samey, I landed down on one that was completely barren on the surface aside from some plutonium crystals scattered everywhere. Harsh windstorms, cave entrances scattered everywhere that I didnt go too far into since I didn't want to get too far from my ship in the storms. Came across a single abandoned station with some rather..vague notes as to why it was abandoned, some disturbing growths over everything, and one of those same damn thorny vines growing off the roof that knocked me off a cliff yesterday.

To be honest, even though I didnt come across any life on the planet, the desolation of it after my previous ones really disturbed me. Kinda gave me a Pitch Black vibe. Headed out, mined some gold off asteroids in space, got attacked again by space pirates and took those suckers out. Landed down on a moon that was complete contrast to my last planet, animals everywhere. Place was extreme toxic and I didnt have any upgrades for my suit yet so I didnt go wandering around, but just standing next to my ship and turning in a circle scanning everything Im pretty sure I got 12-15 different animal species right there.

Followed plot stuff a bit which I wont talk about because of spoilers, but I was pretty disappointed that the system I ended up in for this plot stuff was discovered by someone else first who named it Crap Nebula. Kind of put a dampener on the whole experience, even though I did laugh at the name at first.

I'm now trying to save up to buy a new ship. I can afford a couple I've seen but if Im going to spend all that much money I really want to get something thats quite a good upgrade. Inventory space is at a premium, but I have seen some ships that have a lot more space, too bad they're just way out of my price range yet.

[SuperPanda]

over the last few years I've only bought a handful of new games but this one is on my radar. It looks like it could be really dull or really really fun depending on the whims of the RNG.

I don't have a next gen console but I'm thinking of picking it up on steam when it gets released (or more likely around Christmas).

The one thing I want, and this is gonna sound silly to the extreme, is a ship that feels like it could have been a Trek shuttle prototype. I've seen screens that have ships that look like they were inspired by X-wings but I feel science fiction explorer and researcher fits trek aesthetics well. I know NMS is its own thing, still I'm hoping for vaguely trekish styles as options for ships.

[Aotrs Commander]

All sounds very much like it's in the Spore mould in that its ambitions overreach the execution. (Or perhaps they don't, as people have said the devs are seem more excited about the actual procedural generation processes than anything else.)

It also would seem to embody what I've said for years - randomisation is not a substitute for intelligent game design in any type of game, computer, table-top or otherwise.

[Eldan]

Thing is, I don't think the devs ever really claimed it was anything it wasn't. People just saw it and started to project all their dream space games on it. Oh my god, it's Spore and Freelancer and X3 and Fallout and Starbound, all rolled into one game!

[Aotrs Commander]

Thing is, I don't think the devs ever really claimed it was anything it wasn't. People just saw it and started to project all their dream space games on it. Oh my god, it's Spore and Freelancer and X3 and Fallout and Starbound, all rolled into one game!

From what I'm gleaned from hearing people talk about it, that does seem to be the case.

[Narkis]

Thing is, I don't think the devs ever really claimed it was anything it wasn't. People just saw it and started to project all their dream space games on it. Oh my god, it's Spore and Freelancer and X3 and Fallout and Starbound, all rolled into one game!

Yeah, the dev interviews I've seen didn't seem to overhype the game at all. If anything, they kept trying to lower expectations after people saw the first trailer and started extrapolating.

[DigoDragon]

Well that's disappointing. And pointless. Why have it be online at all then?

Right? Why do I need an internet connection for what's essentially a single-player game?

Anyways, unless I can create a series of structures proclaiming my glory on every planet, I'm not all that interested. Maybe if I can get it for cheap off of Steam.

It's like if the US landed on the moon, but never put up any flags or plaques as a testament to the achievement. If one was able to leave something behind to show "I was here", it could be interesting for others to follow the path when they discover it. Might even turn into an intergalactic geocaching thing.

[Sajiri]

Here's my view on this game. It's a niche title that was never meant to be huge, it was just someone's personal dream project and that someone has been incredibly excited to share it with others. I heard about it long ago but didnt really start following it until recently, so I didn't have months or years of being hyped for it. All I was looking for was something casual to sit on my couch and play on my own. This game could definitely be something boring, Im not going to claim it's this amazing pinnacle of gaming. But if you are looking for something specific that doesnt really exist in other games out there like this, then it's great. If you want something with a clear goal and heavy plot, this isn't it, and that's fine. If it werent for the fact I'd been playing so many mmos lately and setting goals for myself to get the best gear/complete current content on current patch cycles, I'd probably be less into NMS right now. If you want something where you can just take it easy, explore pretty or not so pretty landscapes, do some space trading, etc, then this is a pretty good game.

I feel like there's a lot of people in here so far who havent tried the game and just feel unsure about it, so I'll say more of my own (admittedly limited) experience with it.

The game is procedurally generated but it's not entirely random, stuff feels fitting still. The toxic planet that had giant mushroom forests and strange insect looking creatures seemed to make sense, and the deer and bison looking creatures I found in the grassy hills with flowers and blooming trees all made sense as well. The planets from what I've seen so far are one biome basically but they do have variation on them. Like the barren planet I mentioned in an earlier post, but peeking into the cave systems I saw a completely different sight down there of glowing plants and mushrooms and rocks. Flying over the planet I noticed a whole lot of these cave entrances. Different areas (or planets even) have an abundance of different materials over others. I'll find certain materials up on a rocky cliff, then something entirely different when I make my way down to the valley below in the forest. Keep walking for a time, I've found myself in a swamp, and there's something different again.

There is a plot from what I can tell, although I'm sure it's rather basic and not too invasive. The day 1 patch mentioned three paths were added. These arent seperate storylines or anything, they're just different ways of accomplishing the same goal I believe. That goal is rather vague (and Im sure its just what the devs have always said about you're encouraged to make your way to the centre of the galaxy), but there does seem to be some interesting lore to it that makes me want to get there and find out about these mysterious, well, things are that I keep finding (I could say more but spoilers I guess). I've come across, I think, 4 different sentient alien species so far. Two of them seem to be major/important species, one is..well Im not really sure what it is. A worker species? And the fourth...was a single guy I came across in a building on a planet's surface. Havent seen his kind anywhere else, don't even know what he was. He did grab my arm and give me a new multi-tool though, so that was cool. I have seen pictures online (both from trailers and other people's screenshots in game) of other races I've yet to come across. Of the two major species I found, finding the knowledge stones and learning little bits about their history, even just the specific words I learn of translation (for example, one race is clearly more war-like. The other is maybe more spiritual?), has me incredibly curious to learn more of them, and when I touch down on a planet I immediately start trying to find the knowledge stones or ruins or anything else I can.

The early game is definitely more survival than exploration focused. And it really feels like there just isnt enough inventory space, especially if you're like me and you find something rare, and want to hold onto it in case you need it instead of just selling it. Now that I've travelled a bit more, I've started to realise where I can go back to find that rarer stuff if I need it. I like stopping in the space stations and watching the different ships that land in, seeing some that I'd really like to buy because they just look great, and then hoping I see them again when I can afford them.

I like the visuals, but then again Im someone who is more fond of the slightly cartoony look, to me it just ages better. The music is fantastic. People were complaining of bugs but I've yet to experience any.

Basically this game didn't promise to be a lot, but I feel like to me it's succeeding in what it did promise. Maybe its because, like I said, I didnt follow it until recently, so I didn't overhype myself for it. This just has left me feeling pleasantly surprised and entertained by a lot of it. It's not an AMAZING game, if you want to compare it to more story or action focused ones. But what it does do, it does well, IF it's the sort of game you're looking for. I know I havent really given a proper review or anything (Im running on very little sleep thanks to construction work right outside my house, so sorry for potential rambling). But this is just what I've experienced from it so far, and I've been having plenty of fun.

Only thing I don't like is that I have to play what I assume is a male. I can just pretend my character is whatever I want them to be, it's 1st person so not like I ever see them. But the very masculine grunting and panting when I use my jetpack too late after jumping down a cliff sort of shatters the illusion

Edit: Also as for the multiplayer-not multiplayer thing. IDK. Everything I'd seen stated was that it's not a multiplayer game, but you have the potential to run into other people if you're online. You can upload your discoveries to the database and other people can see planets or systems discovered by other people. Such as the one I came across someone decided to name Crap Nebula. I know about the people who showed up on the same planet in the same spot and couldnt see each other. I've also noticed on my game it always seems to say in the database 'lost connection to online servers' and I cant find a way to reconnect, so....I dunno if there's something I and other people are missing, if it's a bug, or maybe the servers are just overloaded.