Since the official reveal of No Man’s Sky two years ago at E3, the gaming community has accumulated gazillions of questions about the game. The developers managed to create an incredibly sizeable procedurally generated universe with billions of stars and planets that can be freely explored by anybody.
Choose any star system you want, choose any planet you desire, land on it, walk around the strangest flora and fauna – be the first to discover the new world. You can even collect resources and items that will upgrade your spaceship and then move forward to another planet.
But is this all the game can offer? What’s the point of this adventure that has seemingly no end? Let’s try and figure it out.
The Final Destination
The main goal of No Man’s Sky is to find your way to the center of the universe, which seems like a pretty big task for a video game. You need to explore the planets on your way there and upgrade your character – there is no way around it.
More than that, you can travel in open space and steal asteroids, trade with caravans or just rob them. Yes, you can get into a fight – you even have a weapon to do so, which, by the way, you can also upgrade.
The main goal of No Man’s Sky is to find your way to the center of the universe.
However, that’s basically the end of it. You can’t create anything; you can’t build a new ship or a base. You can only scavenge for materials required to improve your transport and weaponry.
The developers keep in great secret what it is that you will find when you achieve the center of the universe. They say that it doesn’t even matter that much – what matters is the way there. They also say that the universe of No Man’s Sky is full of surprises, so it never gets boring.
Procedurally Generated Sky
Every planet has its own unique set of resources that are literally just scattered all over the surface. Some of them, such as crystals, need to be destroyed first in order to be collected, while plants can be simply picked up.
The animal world is quite interesting as well since fauna also plays the role of the resource materials. You can hunt as much as you want and you never know what treasures these strange beasts will hide inside their bellies. They can literally drop some important upgrade items for your spaceship.
Besides wildlife, No Man’s Sky features intelligent forms of life, although it doesn’t guarantee that you will immediately understand them. The alien races speak in their own tongues, which you need to learn first by discovering ancient relics and artifacts. Then, you will be able to trade with them and even take on side-quests.
Columbus with a Scanner
As soon as you arrive on a new planet, you want to immediately start scanning everything with your special tool. You have to do this in order to authorize your discovery that is being kept on a game’s database, known as Atlas, which can be seen in this No Man’s Sky trailer.
The animal world is quite interesting since fauna also plays the role of the resource materials.
You can give names and titles to the new worlds and species that you will discover there, unless they’ve already been scanned and named before you. By the way, the developers promised that explicit words will be carefully checked and eliminated from these custom titles, so don’t try to be smarter than the system.
Since every planet is procedurally generated it means that you don’t have to carefully explore every corner of the planet, which would take days if not weeks. So, you just have to focus on the area of your landing, as every other part of the planet will mostly just repeat itself.
One Man’s Journey
No Man’s Sky requires an online connection since the digital universe is kept on a server. However, there is no chance that you will meet another player online due to the huge amount of star systems – No Man’s Sky is definitely a one man’s journey.
This game is all about survival skills and intuition. You have to understand that you will never visit most of the planets and you will never see most of what this game can offer, which is actually a bit sad.
The only question that remains is if No Man’s Sky can keep us excited and for how long. We will know for sure after the official No Man’s Sky release date of June 21, 2016.
Pre-order Now
No Man’s Sky is now available for pre-order as a download and in disc format for $59.99 at Playstation Store.
No Man’s Sky Special Limited Edition can be pre-ordered for $79.99 at GameStop.
The Limited Edition includes:
- SteelBook case including No Man’s Sky PS4 game
- Adventures in No Man’s Sky Comic
- The Art of No Man’s Sky – 48 page art book
- PS4 Dynamic Theme
- Bonus In-game DLC
System Requirements
Minimum system requirements for No Man’s Sky PC version are following:
- CPU: Core i3-530 2.9GHz or Athlon X4 730
- GPU: GeForce GTX 480 or Radeon HD 6970
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: WIn 7 64bit
- Direct X: DX 11
- HDD Space: 10 GB
Recommended system requirements for No Man’s Sky PC version are following:
- CPU: Core i7-860 Quad 2.80GHz or FX-8120
- GPU: GeForce GTX 960 2GB or Radeon R9 285 2GB
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: WIn 7 64bit
- Direct X: DX 11
- HDD Space: 10 GB
What excites you most about No Man’s Sky? Will it be as successful as everybody says? Share your opinions in the comments section.
Published: May 4, 2016 06:09 am