No Man's Sky (Linux Proton)

Fixing the broken ship is one of the first tasks

With Proton, I could get No Man's Sky to work easily on Linux/Steam. And no wonder, it's about eight years old and a major release. Back then it got lukewarm reviews at best, but famously the game got a lot of upgrades and now it's supposedly very good. But is it?

After some 10 hours of play, I feel a little uncertain if I will continue far with it.

Coming from 8-bit Elite and 16-bit Frontier, at first I have to say the focus is of course much more on planetary exploration.

Here, docking isn't difficult. Or even necessary.

The basic game play is smooth, I have had no problems or crashes. WASD and mouse your way around, use the raygun to mine away rocks and plants and receive raw materials. Then craft and research and craft and build some more. And then you get past the initial survivalist and tutorial-like phases, and you can choose to fly elsewhere and trade with aliens and build bases and whatnot.

There are occasional reminders of past games. Apart from the obvious Elite comparisons, flying in space reminded me of the hilariously compact universe in Starglider 2. I had some vague Ultima/Space Rogue vibes especially when visiting the space station. But if this was Ultima, I'd already have a more coherent idea of the world and its purposes. I don't expect a linear story—best Ultimas really didn't—but there is some kind of heart missing.

Gaming went through a phase where crafting, upgrading and building had to be added to nearly all games. No Man's Sky is practically built on the entire premise. I'm guessing many are now sick of the excessive crafting and tinkering, and want more straightforward experiences. I know I do.

One of the numerous alien creatures you'll encounter

This is not to say the game doesn't have its moments. But the exceptional events also often amount to nothing, or result in the same humdrum actions you can do anyway. For example, after I built a base a trader landed with its ship to the premises, enabling me to discuss and trade. This felt nice, but I actually had very little to gain from this encounter.

The same could be said with the sudden discovery of a trading post on the planet I was exploring. It was refreshing after the rather repetitive landscapes. A bustle of activity, ships landing and taking off, persons to meet, language to learn, items to trade and ships to buy.

Yet, in the end the characters don't have even the dimensions of the hand-written short keyword dialogues of, say, Ultima IV. Granted, I've not yet learnt much of the Gek language, but it already looks like they have little to say.

Guess we're now spoiled, in 1990s small events such as these would have felt mega.

A trader appears. The Teleport in the background.

I could perhaps look even past all this vagueness, if the game's relation to space was more disciplined. And with this I mean the teleportation, and some details concerning with terrain manipulation.

The game encourages you to build a base and a teleport. After the teleport is built, you can visit the space station you have previously found, and teleport between them. Not only do you teleport, but your spaceship teleports too.

And I'm then left wondering what is the point of the spaceship logistics after all. Ok, after finding more planets you don't immediately have a teleport and a base, but discovering space stations does produce new teleport locations.

This also means the trading and upgrades aren't a minor satisfying prize after a successful journey (like in Elite). You teleport to the station, find you didn't grind enough materials on the surface, then teleport back.

Gee whizz, yet another planet and some crystals to mine

Secondly, the planets mostly provide a repetitive sandbox where everything you materially need is usually found within reasonable distance.

Well, some planets have a decent amount of macro-structure, such as oceans and subterranean caverns. Yet large wrecks, outposts, settlements tend to be the similar and also offer similar activities.

Another thing is the landscape. On first sight it offers obstacles to overcome, but if you insist you can dig a staircase through a mountain with the mining beam. The same item that enables Minecraft-esque manipulation of environment, also tends to trivialize the whole idea of the "landscape". If there's nothing that blocks your way, are you really in a credible environment?

Some happenings in the obligatory all-too-dense asteroid field

I sort of get that if the player can't move fast and teleport between systems, it could make traveling boring. But it's a game design and scale issue to solve. The exploration would be more meaningful and memorable, if it was a little more grounded.

After hitting on something that looks like might be some kind of major quest in the game, things might  begin to improve. The game is also quite good at hinting at future possibilities, such as a wheeled vehicle and different types of spaceships.

It's just sometimes there appears to be so much to do and so many threads to follow, I feel like I can't be bothered with any of them.

Despite all the missions, trading, quests, expeditions, activities and building, I can't somehow shake the feeling this is some kind of gigantic, glorified Farmville, where my next task is simply defined by what I happened to activate previously.

My base, resembling a 1970s detached house. Soon to extend underground.

I can't say the old games always solved these things much better. How Elite got around this was the fact the planets were not genuinely that different, so it didn't matter much where in the universe you were. But it at least used a simple but effective RPG fight/reward structures. 

With Frontier I felt it would be genuinely interesting to visit some distant star system, and you needed to make at least some effort to get there.

Maybe I'm envisioning a perfect space exploration game somewhere in the middle of a triangle made up from Elite Dangerous, Everspace and No Man's Sky:

From Elite Dangerous, I'd take something of the realistic nature of the universe. No instant teleports between star systems, unless as a very rare stargate-type event.

I'm not sure 3rd person walking elements should be part of the game. At least visiting space stations is exciting enough to justify it. No Man's Sky planetary exploration is I guess almost good enough as it is, but as said it could benefit more from planetary macro-structures, unevenly distributed resources and less options for manipulating the environment.

Everspace provided an enjoyable combat system and ship upgrades. Fighting against larger ships was an interesting challenge and sometimes even tremendous fun. Also the derelict ships, space stations and large asteroids were nice environments for exploring.

Exploring an underground cavern

Granted, I haven't yet seen much of what No Man's Sky has to offer, but it quite doesn't yet have the pull on me. It's a little weird that I got most Elite-vibes from Everspace, even if it's not very open. Or perhaps just because.

Thumbs up to No Man's Sky as a huge Proton-enabled game.