Topic: No Man's Sky

[Xessive]

Has anyone checked out the trailer for this?

There's also a developer interview with Anthony Carboni, here.

It looks alright but what really gets me interested is the procedural world. The scale of it is just staggering.

[idolminds]

Yeah, it could end up being really cool.

[MysterD]

Has anyone checked out the trailer for this?

I saw an interview w/ the developer on Spike's VGX (so-called) "Awards" Show - yeah, it looked jaw-droppingly good.

[ender]

Bringing back this dead thread.

I downloaded and played No Man's Sky last night until about 3:30 AM. I didn't want to stop. It's a very slow-paced game... but there is something very mystical and addictive about it. I think it's one of the most unique games I've played in some time. While we're all conditioned to games where things happen and demarcated as being eventful or of great importance (drama, basically) this game functions as a sort of beautiful, zen meditation on scale. The loneliness of exploring planets, galaxies, the universe – where you may never come across another like yourself. The feeling of being stranded, with no way out except strict resource management and survival. I believe this is a step not towards redefining gaming... but in what a virtual experience can be.

Looking forward to spending more hours exploring and being soothed into a trance.

[Quemaqua]

I really want to play it. I have a feeling I will be very into it for a short time then get very bored with it, as there doesn't seem to be anything especially compelling once you've seen a lot of what the game has to offer. But time will tell, as it can really go one way or another for me with these games. I am still suuuper into Subnautica, for instance. Either way, I can't afford NMS, and Hello Games didn't respond to a request for a review key. So oh well, I guess. No idea when I'll end up playing it, but it will probably be long after every detail has been thoroughly figured out by other people.

[TheOtherBelmont]

I played a few hours of it last night and didn't want to stop as well, but I had to in order to get some sleep for work the next day.  I've only landed on my second planet so far and I have enjoyed the little bit I've played so far.  Looking forward to diving into it some more.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Well, I thought I was going to have a good time tonight, but the game had other plans.  It decided that it needed to provide a vital main quest location underwater that doesn't go anywhere and when I get close to the marker it disappears then reappears in the same place when I get back in my ship.  Looking online a couple of other people have had this problem as well so it looks like I get to delete my save and start over. Thanks, video game.

[Xessive]

Just a thought, if Pug (or his team)  reviews this game, they have to title it "Noman's Sky"

It's an opportunity that cannot slip by. Just saying.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[ender]

Damn sorry to hear Belmont.

I played more and more hours last night. Really couldn't stop. I'm starting to travel intergalactically now and meeting all kinds of weirdo aliens and being attacked by space pirates left and right. Pretty exhilarating. I think this game is actually an extension of the thinking of Zork series... a true immersive world played out for exploration. So glad something like this was made in the era of pre-scripted, movie-esque video games.

If anyone knows my gaming tastes... immersive worlds and rejection of cinematic tropes in gaming is what I live for. Really digging this game right now.

Also.. yes, I keep calling it NOMAN'S SKY in my head LOL.

[Cobra951]

Well, I thought I was going to have a good time tonight, but the game had other plans.  It decided that it needed to provide a vital main quest location underwater that doesn't go anywhere and when I get close to the marker it disappears then reappears in the same place when I get back in my ship.  Looking online a couple of other people have had this problem as well so it looks like I get to delete my save and start over. Thanks, video game.

That's seriously disappointing.  I thought this game would end up selling me a PS4, but the more I read about it, the more cautious I get.  First, I expected it to be mostly about exploration on the grandest scale yet, then it turns out to be more about micromanagement-intensive survival.  And now it turns out that the freedom is not so free after all, with "vital quests".  Quests that if broken break everything?  In a procedurally generated universe where no one can be sure that each of the quintillions of planets is going to work out, and where you're not allowed to go back across multiple saves?  (You're restricted to restoring only the most recent save, and then the game kills you.)  What a letdown.

Damn sorry to hear Belmont.

I played more and more hours last night. Really couldn't stop. I'm starting to travel intergalactically now and meeting all kinds of weirdo aliens and being attacked by space pirates left and right. Pretty exhilarating. I think this game is actually an extension of the thinking of Zork series... a true immersive world played out for exploration. So glad something like this was made in the era of pre-scripted, movie-esque video games.

If anyone knows my gaming tastes... immersive worlds and rejection of cinematic tropes in gaming is what I live for. Really digging this game right now.

Also.. yes, I keep calling it NOMAN'S SKY in my head LOL.

That's the game I want it to be.  But is it?  I'm getting such conflicting info.

[ender]

I think a game that is this open is going to have divided impressions. To me, you can follow all the collecting and searching for things or wander aimlessly. I tend to switch between the two, but when I am caught up exploring I find markers that lead me into these weird quests that end with meeting some funky little alien that has some new thing to trade me, which in turn leads me to another galaxy. I think it definitely balances a subtle narrative that way.

[Cobra951]

I found a piece summarizing the differing views on the game, and recommending slowing down and enjoying the ride, rather than trying to hurry through.  I guess this is a lousy reviewer's game (notice the lack of a hyphen).  They can't hurry through it to meet their deadlines without getting a bad impression.  And to make matters worse, they couldn't play the final version until release, because of the massive Day-0 update.

[ender]

I agree that this game is the best when played slowly. That's where I get lost in its world... which I find nice, compared to all the hectic  games out there. In a discussion on the Gamespot forums I said if most games are a pop/rock song... this is like an extended Brian Eno ambient track. It isn't for everyone, but if you can slow down and melt into the pace... I think it's pretty phenomenal. It's funny to me that people rave about games like Uncharted 4, when they are essentially the same thing as the last game with better graphics. Here we have a fairly unique game that is trying a more ambient approach to gaming and people are quick to rip into it. I am sure that has to do with expectations mostly. I am glad there is an alternative to the sameness we're constantly delivered.

[Cobra951]

That's exactly my kind of game too.  I never rush.  And what matters to me is what I choose to do, not what a story forces me to do.  I spend hundreds of hours in games like The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, and maybe a dozen hours on their stories.  Minecraft grabbed me for about a year, and not because of survival.  Character development, full exploration, and mastery of the world and my alter ego are the goals.  The sandbox is everything.  So my concerns about NMS are the impediments to complete freedom.  I'm willing to endure a lot of grind to get it.  I am not willing to play a game that is all grind.  Make sense?

[ender]

The more I play this, the less I am starting to think of it as a game. It really is the beginning of full-on virtual experience and immersion. Many pretenses of gaming start melting away at points... and un-interrupted experiences begin to develop. it's a very weird feeling when you realize you could just keep going... even become totally bored, blasting your ship into the universe for unlimited amounts of time. It is a fun experience too... but I think there is a deep psychological and philosophical thing that this game is pointing toward. I will be interested to see how this type of frame work plays out when full VR systems are the mainstay. Haptic gloves, helmets, gyroscope suspension, etc.

I will be interested to see how this expands with further add-ons.

[Pugnate]

Just a thought, if Pug (or his team)  reviews this game, they have to title it "Noman's Sky"

It's an opportunity that cannot slip by. Just saying.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

hahaha... since IGN USA is already doing that we won't... but we could do an op-ed... probably won't call it that though.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Tonight went much better than last. I ended up starting over again and made it past the point I got to in my previous save in a little less than an hour and got the bonus of getting on a planet this time that is rich in gold, so now I am swimming in money.  The next star system awaits but I'm going to explore a little bit more of my starting star system with its 5 planets first.

[ender]

I just found a really beautiful planet covered in vast bodies of water, rolling hills and tons of alien technology to learn languages from. It's pretty huge... I've walked across it for 3 hours finding weapons and suit upgrades. Kind of dreading my walk back to my ship, but I didn't want to waste too much fuel flying it around. Kind of lost on this planet, in a good way. It does have terrible rain storms though!

[Cobra951]

IGN Spain loved it.  The reviewer is clearly a huge fan, and of a like mind with ender and me.  I posted this elsewhere before, but it's going to die there, so let me double-post it here.  Basically, bullet-points, translated:

- The game can't be understood from the beginning.  It requires small steps while honing our understanding.

-While we've been given a lot of snippets of info for some time, we know nothing about NMS.  Playing it is the only way to know it.

- The planets are not created from scratch, but using predefined pieces.  Building with Lego blocks can lead to many variations, but you will always see the Lego.

- The visual aspects of NMS are a treat.  The pieces mesh together perfectly.

- Traveling on foot or on a ship across the thousands of millions of planets is therapeutic, and the variety of vistas diminishes the more tedious aspects.

- We have not noticed major problems.  The game is stable.

- Survival is, together with exploration, the high concept of NMS, and its motive force during the first weeks of play.

- The elements needed for survival are widely available.

- Exploring is the heart of the game, its true high concept.  Traversing planets and galaxies haltingly on every find is a big part of the essence of NMS.  An average planet can take over 20 minutes to navigate from one side to another by spaceship at full power, and we'll find tens of points of interest along the way to investigate. if we wish.

- The survival-and-exploration experience can become repetitive, in fact it will, as in any other survival game, because repetition is intrinsic to the genre itself.  Is this bad?  It is, if survival games are not your cup of tea.  But if you can stomach Minecraft, DayZ, Don’t Starve or Terraria, you will be fine in NMS.

- The search for the center of the universe is a goal, an objective, not the end of the game.  We don't even know why it is.

- The lore of the game is perhaps the definitive puzzle from Hello Games.

- We recommend chatting with a friend who's playing at the same time.  This is the true online experience of NMS.

- The immensity that they promised us is more than real.

- We have tried to talk about NMS with the greatest sincerity possible, because Hello Games deserve all the support in the world, or so we believe, with a project with these characteristics.

- Veredict:  9--Incredible.  As Murray himself has said, it's not for everyone; but for lovers of this niche it will become one of its top exponents.

[ender]

Agree with many of those points. I think it will take quite a bit of time to really understanding the full essence of this game. My play styles in it have changed about 4 or 5 times... I spent about 2.5 hours flying my ship toward a beacon that never seemed to arrive on this massive planet. I started getting anxiety, but it was fun and beautiful to fly across the planet. When I finally arrived, after much frustration... it was a joy. I think that was the magical part, that it induced the same fears and unknown that actual experience does. I am surprised this is a mainstream release at all... it feels very specific and experimental. Not shocked if a larger, mainstream fanbase doesn't like it.

It reminds me how I felt about Deus Ex in 2000... it wasn't a perfect game, it had issues, but the world that it opened up was radically important for immersive experiences. I remember several reviewers giving tha a 7 or 8, etc... but I really dug deep into that game's world.

[Quemaqua]

I really want to play this. I have read multiple pieces of criticism describing the strengths and weaknesses fairly consistently, yet coming to wildly different conclusions. It sounds like the game here is very, very thin, and there's little to actually do beyond walk, harvest resources, walk some more, and fly to a new place to do it all over again. Jim Sterling (who I actually hate with a passion, so don't take this as reader bias) confirmed one of my greatest fears: none of the planets are mechanically different to any real degree. Minor nuances, but mostly whatever hazard is present boils down to the same loop of meter with different icon drains, get resources to fill meter, walk around until meter drains again. The animals are also paper thin, apparently, and they basically don't do anything but wander around aimlessly. Which ... on some level I'm glad the game doesn't demand you do too much with them, as I have less than zero interest in animal murder simulators, but it also makes it a bit hollow if they don't have a somewhat interesting daily life.

Procedural generation has a tendency to feel hollow when done poorly, and that's what I suspect this is going to feel like for me because systems tend to make themselves very obvious to my brain. Without some layer of decent obfuscation, this game just seems entirely too obvious about everything it does. And I'm a person who can get an awful lot out of looks alone. I suspect one of my greatest joys with this would be taking a million screenshots. Idol knows. I took several thousand in the short time we played WoW together, and several thousand more when we played Guild Wars. World is a big deal to me, but that loses a lot of its value when it feels like its made of cardboard.

That said, I still REALLY want to play this game. My curiosity is killing me. I want to know how the actual feel of being in charge of my own ship and actually visiting and exploring the planets will potentially change my perceptions. So I wish I was jumping on board tomorrow, but I just can't afford to pay $60 for this. My car insurance just came due and I have school books to pay for. So I guess even after all this, I still don't get to find out what No Man's Sky really is.

[Pugnate]

Dan Stapleton doesn't seem to be liking it after the initial excitement wore out.

[Pugnate]

IGN Spain loved it.  The reviewer is clearly a huge fan, and of a like mind with ender and me.  I posted this elsewhere before, but it's going to die there, so let me double-post it here.  Basically, bullet-points, translated:

- The game can't be understood from the beginning.  It requires small steps while honing our understanding.

-While we've been given a lot of snippets of info for some time, we know nothing about NMS.  Playing it is the only way to know it.

- The planets are not created from scratch, but using predefined pieces.  Building with Lego blocks can lead to many variations, but you will always see the Lego.

- The visual aspects of NMS are a treat.  The pieces mesh together perfectly.

- Traveling on foot or on a ship across the thousands of millions of planets is therapeutic, and the variety of vistas diminishes the more tedious aspects.

- We have not noticed major problems.  The game is stable.

- Survival is, together with exploration, the high concept of NMS, and its motive force during the first weeks of play.

- The elements needed for survival are widely available.

- Exploring is the heart of the game, its true high concept.  Traversing planets and galaxies haltingly on every find is a big part of the essence of NMS.  An average planet can take over 20 minutes to navigate from one side to another by spaceship at full power, and we'll find tens of points of interest along the way to investigate. if we wish.

- The survival-and-exploration experience can become repetitive, in fact it will, as in any other survival game, because repetition is intrinsic to the genre itself.  Is this bad?  It is, if survival games are not your cup of tea.  But if you can stomach Minecraft, DayZ, Don’t Starve or Terraria, you will be fine in NMS.

- The search for the center of the universe is a goal, an objective, not the end of the game.  We don't even know why it is.

- The lore of the game is perhaps the definitive puzzle from Hello Games.

- We recommend chatting with a friend who's playing at the same time.  This is the true online experience of NMS.

- The immensity that they promised us is more than real.

- We have tried to talk about NMS with the greatest sincerity possible, because Hello Games deserve all the support in the world, or so we believe, with a project with these characteristics.

- Veredict:  9--Incredible.  As Murray himself has said, it's not for everyone; but for lovers of this niche it will become one of its top exponents.

I was so confused! Because IGN allows only one review. But that's one review per language.

Anyway, thanks for translating. Will probably get the game too after I talk to our publisher.

[PyroMenace]

[Cobra951]

I was so confused! Because IGN allows only one review. But that's one review per language.

Anyway, thanks for translating. Will probably get the game too after I talk to our publisher.

Oh, that's interesting that you didn't know.  I'm surprised, because I've been seeing the multiple reviews (in multiple languages) for a while.  I didn't know it was one per language, though.  I figured any country with an IGN . . . office? (chapter? affiliate?) could do their own if they wanted.

Glad to help.

[Quemaqua]

Out on Steam. 4k+ reviews, mostly negative. Apparently the PC version is a clusterfuck. Very disappointing. Feel bad for Hello Games, this is going to be a lot of work to come back from.

[Cobra951]

Damn.  Bit off more than they could chew.  I admire them for reaching for the moon (and far beyond).  Hope they get some help from Sony, or other pros who want this to succeed.

[MysterD]

The problem w/ a game that has tons + tons of things to find, but the absolute depth of just jumping into a very shallow swimming pool will likely do NOTHING for many players. I think that's why there are many having this disappointing reaction.

It's exactly why I can't play sandbox-games like Mount & Blade, Sid Meier's Pirates (remake), Black & White series, & Age of Pirates series for ridiculous #'s of hours - there lacks some kind of major hook in the sandbox to keep me going for more than a certain amount of hours. After a while, usually about 10-20 hours, the game shows all of its hand to me - and it gets repetitive and boring, after a while. Even with tons to do still - I just don't feel compelled at some point to keep on trucking, even if those first 10-20 hours for the most part, were awesome. Fortunately, most of those games, I didn't bet the farm on (i.e. I didn't spent $40-60 on), so I didn't feel like I threw my money into a waste bucket.

No Man's Sky sounds like basically the very extreme of the Skyrim + Fallout 4 formula of "OMG, there's so much content here" - but it sounds like Hello Games basically here tossed out most of the mixture of hand-crafted quests, Radiant AI quests (quests that the game generates on its own; like Skyrim does to push you to explore places you ain't been or Fallout 4 can do w/ Preston Garvey w/ getting you do keep doing Settlement quests, in areas you've never been or explored before), and any other interesting + compelling things that make Skyrim, Fallout 4, or any Bethesda game at least interesting and had a major way to hook the player to point them somewhere + to "keep on exploring" and playing.

I think what Hello Games needs to do is this - come up w/ MORE hand-crafted content + quests for No Man's Sky. I don't know if they should make these free updates, pay DLC's, or what - but it all sounds like this game lacks compelling reasons to hook the player to "keep on exploring". A lot of how open-world games work - such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed series, etc - is they still compel the player to keep going b/c of this mixture of open-world exploration + hand-crafted quests. A lot of times, we get lost in the exploring b/c we're on the way to go do a major quest, it's done really so you end up actually going in a certain direction that the game wants you to go - and you find a bunch of other interesting things on the way to check-out first. So, this major quest you want to do gets side-tracked & backlogged b/c you go ahead to explore other things, which are often considered random exploration stuff or side-quests; so you'll get to major quest later, when you feel like it (if you ever get that far, back to the main quest).

Let's face it - nobody plays a Bethesda game for its story + character development in its quests, whether main or side. They ain't the best at that; no way - you'd be better off w/ Obsidian or BioWare, if you want that stuff. Bethesda gives you so many different short-stories, more or less - whether main or side - mixed in with the exploration factor of this huge sandbox. You have this sense when you reach a huge level number, you're this bad-ass b/c you've done shit-tons of stuff, in which many of it matter and made you earn your Level 150 character. I doubt anyone's playing No Man's Sky for story + character development, either - but there also needs to a little of that there, something else there besides finding wildlife, jumping from planet to planet, and mining resource to your heart's content - b/c after a while, it probably gets repetition and boring.

If anything, sounds like No Man's Sky wound-up basically being similar to EgoSoft X series. Don't buy at full price, of you'll be running into tons of bugs, repetition, and whatnot at some point. No Man's Sky sounds like it will lack the compelling reason for me to keep on going, at some point - just like EgoSoft's X games. I've never finished ONE of those damn games - but I do love them for the time I play them, despite their clunkiness, "meh" UI/inventory & repetitive-ness - and just at some point, I just stop playing and have had enough. It's not like EgoSoft X games are story-rich or character-rich; and I bet NMS falls into that category, as well.

[Quemaqua]

So I bought the game on Steam because I knew I could refund it. Technically, the game isn't great. It wasn't a shitshow for me, and my FPS (once I upped the limit in settings) was fine, it just was stuttery at intervals, felt poorly optimized.

I also felt like the game had weird FOV problems. It lets you set the FOV, but things in the foreground always somehow seemed too close, to move unnaturally across my vision compared to things in the distance. Overlooking a landscape felt completely normal, but when a hillside was in front of me, even if it was basically a sheer cliff face, it just felt wrong somehow. Like I was trying to see it in 3D but it wasn't. Or something. Upping the FOV to 90 or 100 helped, but it was still odd. I have to imagine this is some kind of intended effect, but boy did I not like it. It was bearable with the FOV over 90, though. I also had screen tearing issues even with vsync on, which further added to just making the whole thing feel sort of discombobulating in an unpleasant way.

But still, the game seems neat. I played just enough of it to want to play more, and also to get a fair sense given what I've read and seen already of its limitations. This is not a deep survival game by any stretch, nothing like Don't Starve or Subnautica. And it's not a builder at all, so you don't get that end of the spectrum either. It's basically a scenery simulator with an attached progression and a text-based story delivered via cardboard cutout NPCs. The world is lively, but not very lifelike.

My guess is it's going to be a cool game in the end, but one that demands certain big things don't bother you. Explore for a while, and either the dreamlike advance of it will overtake you and you'll carry on to the end, or you'll eventually start wishing it would start being a game at some point and quit. It feels like a weird middle ground between something like ABZU (and Journey, Flower, etc.) and an "actual game", and there will be people in that middle ground that it serves really well. The game may not be deep, but at least there's a framework there, even if it's not a big one. The "experience" part, on the other hand, is cool and beautiful, but it's also just a little bit fakey-feeling because of the procedural stuff. It can't match the weight of a much shorter, hand-crafted experience, but will have more legs for somebody that doesn't mind.

My two cents from fiddling with it for a couple hours. I do wish I could have kept going with it despite the problems.

[Xessive]

I've played about 4 hours so far. I can't even give an honest, complete opinion yet because I feel I've only scratched the surface.

Its technical presentation is not impressive but its scale is awe-inspiring.

I'm glad they chose a more artistic look but I can't help but feel like they borrowed a lot from Destiny in terms of visuals and interface. You have a similar circular cursor to go through a minimal grid UI. It's almost identical.

It feels like Destiny and No Man's Sky were once a single massive game that split into two; Destiny taking with it all the combat and multiplayer glory and No Man's Sky taking all the exploration, crafting, and space-faring. Come to think of it, if both were combined into one epic game it would probably solve all the complaints players have about both games (people will still find stuff to complain about).

Anyway, coming back to NMS, it's interesting to say the least, but it's easy to get bored by the repetitious actions involved in gathering the necessary crafting materials. I generally need some kind of narrative to keep me going, so I've chosen to follow The Atlas to try to make sense of the universe's story. So far that seems to be gradually turning into a quest to answer the big questions in life (in and out of the game).

I will let you know how that all goes.

[Cobra951]

This is the most interesting writeup I've read yet.  Nihilism.  The universe doesn't care about you--at all.  Your journey is all yours.  It won't make a difference to anyone but you.

And then this comes along, pretty much agreeing with the former piece.

[Pugnate]

Oh, that's interesting that you didn't know.  I'm surprised, because I've been seeing the multiple reviews (in multiple languages) for a while.  I didn't know it was one per language, though.  I figured any country with an IGN . . . office? (chapter? affiliate?) could do their own if they wanted.

Glad to help.

Basically, they want one review per language so there is one official English language review... otherwise you have lots of different IGN reviews and it's confusing.

[Cobra951]

OK, I see that now.  I hadn't really thought about it before.

[Quemaqua]

Interesting take. I didn't feel like that at all in my time with the game, which admittedly was very short. I wonder if more time and exploration would make that happen. I've seen people playing enough to understand the scale, and I think my takeaway has been that the game just feels far too friendly/easy to make me feel that small. Everything seems big, but nothing is dangerous. Walk into any interior and the enemy robots leave you alone for no reason even if they're two feet away, and all you have to do is go back to your ship to reset a lot of meters and what have you. Or even just go into a cave. It's a game that feels overly built around the player, which takes away from the reality of it. The best games in terms of immersion feel like they're built for themselves, you just happen to be there, you know? Subnautica, for instance, has real consequences at every turn, and that was hyper-immersive from the beginning for me, made the world feel more like you could touch it. It felt tangible and dangerous, and that sense of being small felt much more prominent, just being this tiny person in a huge ocean. NMS feels like window shopping by comparison. A little bit like a plastic and cardboard diorama. Pretty to look at, something where you can admire the craftsmanship (that stuff really is cool), but not especially real-feeling.

Just some thoughts. I wish I could afford the game. If the PC port had felt better I probably would have kept it. I'd get it on PS4, but I know I'm not likely to sit down and play it much there.

[PyroMenace]

I'm honestly not surprised what this game ended up being and the developers silence of it only confirmed it even more for me, which ended up being damage control for it's price tag. It also only hurt them in the long run, since most seemed to just build this thing up to completely unrealistic proportions. I am completely fine with No Man's Sky being an interactive screensaver, not paying $60 for it though.

[ender]

I've played for quite a while now. Upgraded suits, multi-tools, flying a new ship. I still find myself weirdly addicted to aspects of it... but some of the interest in exploration is getting a little stale. I've played for about 20 hours so far and every once in a while some interesting story element will pop and send me off into the universe... but I believe I am hitting that breaking point where things still feel fresh. I really hope some add-ons come out for this, because I think it is a world that is worth building on.

[Quemaqua]

That's part of what makes me curious. Even though this has aspects of a game like Starbound or what have you, it also doesn't appear to be the sort of game where the developer intends to make huge additions or content infusions over the course of a long period. But if they were to do that, it could become a very different and potentially much better thing. And I guess they already did add some things in the first patch, so maybe there's some hope for that. It'll be interesting to see. Imagine for the first while they're going to have their hands full trying to fix the broken-ish PC version.

[Cobra951]

It would be interesting to see how they would handle that.  Adding personalized details to every planet simply isn't possible.  (A single byte of individual data per planet would fill over 300 million bluray discs.)  So any additions would have to follow the player somehow, along his chosen path.  Perhaps they'd be personalized based on the class of planet, or proximity to the goal.  Any story elements would need a certain amount of determinism in the universe.  Building bases, stations or huge ships is certainly doable, locally per player at least.  I don't envy them the task of figuring out where to take the game from here, and I'd not be surprised if it really goes nowhere.

At least we have the first real-time full-universe simulator, and if nothing else, someone will figure out a better use for the tech in the future.

[Pugnate]

Looks like IGN USA will give it a 6.0.

I was stunned that IGN Spain reviewed it so quickly.

[Cobra951]

That 60-70% space seems to be the consensus among non-controversial pro sites.  IGN Spain's review read like a fan's ebullience, really--not that I minded.  I wanted to feel that way about NMS too.  It's the sort of emotion I wanted it to foster.  I wanted it to be transcendentally awesome.  I wanted it to propel me into new hardware.  Now, well, reality sets in.