Thankfully developers are “busy on the next patch.”
No Man’s Sky is an unfortunate example of an over-hyped game that has failed to meet players’ expectations. This action-adventure survival video game has been talked up as 2016’s next big thing–an open world like we’ve never seen before. It presents players with an infinite galaxy to explore and in which to survive. You can travel to any planet you choose, and each one has its own unique environment and lifeforms.
Damaging Reviews Abound
Despite these amazing features, players are giving the game a resounding thumbs down. Reviewers have reported yes, No Man’s Sky does have many planets, many lifeforms, and many ships. However, you can see the game’s complete variety within a couple hours of playing. The planets all have the same resources to collect, settlements with lifeforms that are all similar, and ships that all handle exactly the same way. Overall, No Man’s Sky did not deliver what was promised to players, and they aren’t happy.
Out of over 70,000 total reviews on Steam,
only 32% are positive, giving No Man’s Sky “mostly negative” overall user feedback. More recent ratings are even worse; over 5,000 users have reviewed the game in the past month, and only an astounding 12% were positive. This gave No Man’s Sky’s recent feedback an “overwhelming negative” label, a rare sight that is sending many Reddit users into a frenzy. Some are even claiming this breaks the record for the lowest Steam rating, though there is no official data to support this.
Next Patch on its Way
Developers at Hello Games have been pretty quiet the past few months, especially its founder Sean Murray. After some prodding from players, audio chief Paul Weir tweeted, “Sean is fine and we’re all busy on the next patch.”
While some players have renounced No Man’s Sky all together, some remain hopeful that Hello Games will release updates that add the features they’ve been promised. What side of the spectrum do you fall on?
No Man’s Sky is available to play now on PS4 and on PC via the Steam Store.
5 comments
Multiplayer creeps wanted to be able to form teams and pick off newbs…
Reviews, player “wish-reviews” (I hope it…!) were so off base, compared to the stated and shown (dev descriptions and video previews) gameplay…
Etc.
Seemed like a lot of false expectations, knew this was coming.
I will agree the price was outrageous, especially since this was sort of a “reverse-Minecraft” kind of game…but,…just explore, for gods sake!
Nope, rip through it in a few hours, don’t bother to enjoy it…First!
Then head to Steam and badmouth it…
Multiplayer creeps wanted multiplayer. They said it would have multiplayer.
Followed this closely (did NOT buy)…
They offered up some “multi-player” aspects, the planet etc. naming process for instance and implied more, but every time I’ve challenged a post like this, I’ve said the same thing to everybody…proof, please.
Screenshots, description (beyond what I’ve already acknowledged), anything. Not the sticker covering multi on the European commercial addition, read that, and the debunking…not proof of anything.
Too bad, I actually enjoy playing NMS. There’s literally no point in rushing in the game because it seems the point of the game is to just enjoy the environs.
It would be _nice_ to interact with other players, but to be honest, it’s nice to have a whole universe to yourself to just explore. Whenever I encounter worlds that others have discovered, I’m actually surprised, because the rest of the game has been so meditative in a solo-mindset, that when you see traces of other people having been there… it is almost jarring.
Note, I started playing NMS without really any expectations. So compared to early adopters/etc… I’m probably more forgiving.
I think the game was over-hyped, and the bearded Sean Murray is to blame for it. He did countless interviews and online publications, telling consumers to expect the unexpected, be prepared for the vast amount of content in the game, etc…
And all we got was a random number generator which flicks colours/body parts/terrain and space ships and not very well as it’s hard to notice a difference between planets most times.
There is no Multiplayer base as advertised and then retracted. All the PS4 players are still plagued by game crashing whenever warping, PC players do encounter this from time to time as well. And the load times back into the game after a crash is tedious.
Buildings are spawned under terrain, making objectives impossible to complete. The price of ships doubles as you start to upgrade making the game turn into a grinding mission. Although once you find a planet with a rare resource you have little need to actually go anywhere else in the universe as you can simply collect, cash in and upgrade, rinse and repeat.
Space battles are a joke, Enemy ships forever spawning until you run out of resources to repair, got to 40 something kills before i completely ran dry and had to warp away. The “whole” entirety of the game can be experienced in the first hour of play and it’s a joke for a $60 dollar title.
I’ve seen 2D side scrollers with more depth. 20+ hours of game-play and I’m just bored with it, i thought getting to the center would make the game better, but the animals just get more glitched out and silly looking.